What Impact Will the Supreme Court’s Unrighteous Judgment Have?

So what impact will the Supreme Court's recent unrighteous judgment have? That's a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, what with the attempted removal of the president from office earlier this year, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and left-wing uprisings in cities across this country, it would have been easy to miss an extremely consequential Supreme Court decision recently. The New Yorker magazine put it this way, quote, in a 6-3 opinion written by the Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch, the court ruled that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was the single biggest victory in the history of the LGBTQ rights movement, unquote.

Now, if a left-leaning writer for the New Yorker magazine makes that conclusion, Christians better pay attention because it is those who believe in biblical marriage and morality, especially in the workplace, that will be faced with surrender or else. So this weekend on the Christian worldview, John Bersch, senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy for Alliance Defending Freedom joins us to explain what this means for Christian liberty going forward. John has argued 12 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than 30 state Supreme Court cases since 2011. We're going to get to the interview with him and afterwards we have more on the Black Lives Matter movement, but let's get to the first segment with John Bersch.

John, thank you for coming on the program today in a very eventful last week or so with the U.S. Supreme Court. I think a lot of people missed actually what was taking place because of everything else going on in our society right now. New Yorker magazine said this about these cases. It was the single biggest victory in the history of the LGBTQ rights movement, this particular decision, and you mentioned it was three cases in one opinion. I think the first question people want to know is what happened and why is this significant?

I'm just going to preface my remarks by saying that the New Yorker got it wrong. It's not as significant as they claim and we can get into the details, but we'll start with the cases. It's three cases where employees were claiming that they were discriminated against in their employment. Two said that they were discriminated based on their sexual orientation. One, the case I was involved in involving gender identity.

That involved Harris Funeral Homes was the employer, my client. All three of them asked the court to interpret the federal law that prohibits discrimination because of sex in employment. Now that law, Title 7, has been on the books since 1964 and everybody agrees you need to interpret it based on what the general public meaning of those words were in 1964. In 1964, everyone understood sex to be biological, male and female based on physiology or genes, something that cannot be changed.

It's immutable. The question were, were these folks discriminated against because of sex? The US Supreme Court held contrary to dozens of circuit opinions over the last 30 to 40 years. Contrary to all the attempts to amend Title 7 to add those categories, 50 attempts to try to amend it to include sexual orientation are rejected. They said that when you fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, it necessarily is because of their sex.

What they did is they significantly expanded potential employer liability under Title 7. Now, the reason why it's not as significant as the New York Post thinks is that where the conflict will most often come in is when you're dealing with a Christian employer who for religious reasons, their beliefs about marriage or their beliefs about human sexuality have some policy in place that requires employees only to be married to someone of the opposite sex or requires them to identify with their biological sex for religious reasons. In the opinion, the court specifically carved out all those cases of religious beliefs and said, we're not deciding that today in this case. All we're doing is deciding what the statute covers. It covers sexual orientation and gender identity. Sometime in the future, we'll decide the religious liberty question. Oh, and by the way, we're also not deciding other difficult questions about males identifying as females for purposes of competing in women's sports, or what you do with someone identifying as the opposite sex with a shower or a locker room or an overnight accommodation or a women's shelter. All those still have to be resolved too. What the court did is significant, but there's a lot that still needs to be decided by lower courts and ultimately by the Supreme Court in the future.

John Bersch with us today here on the Christian Royal Youth Senior Counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. He was part of the arguing of these cases last year before the Supreme Court. I'm going to read you a paragraph from the New Yorker magazine. They said the Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination on the basis of sex like male versus female. The employers in the Supreme Court cases argued and the Trump administration agreed that sexual orientation and transgender status are distinct from sex. The lawyers for the dismissed employees that you mentioned, John, argued that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. Pamela Carlin, the Stanford law professor who argued on behalf of Donald Zarda and Gerald Lynn Bostock, the two gay men, proposed a hypothetical.

Two employees who come in, both of whom tell you they married their partner Bill last weekend. When you fire the male employee who married Bill, a male-to-male marriage, and you give the female employee who married Bill a couple days off so she can celebrate the joyous event, that's discrimination because of sex. And Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump, agreed with that particular reasoning. He said basically the same thing in his opinion. How would you, John, counter that argument?

It's interesting they quote that portion of Professor Carlin's argument because they leave out a far more important thing that she said during that argument. One of the justices asked her, well, what if the employer makes a decision based on sexual orientation and doesn't know the sex of the employee? They put up a sign, no employer would ever do this, but you know, I won't hire anybody who's gay. And someone comes and they fill out an application and they don't disclose whether they're male or female, but they do disclose that they're gay. And the employer says, oh, I'm not going to hire them because they're gay. Well, then the employer has not made any decision based on the sex of the applicant.

They don't even know what the applicant's sex is. So the justice posed that hypothetical to Professor Carlin and she said that would not be sex discrimination. So she admitted that sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination are really two different things.

And the problem with the comparator that she used that Justice Gorsuch ultimately adopted is that you're changing two things. You're changing their sex and their sexual orientation. And then you can't decide, well, which one is driving the employer's decision.

Let me use the example from the funeral home case. In our case, it was an employee who for years had followed the sex specific dress code in accordance with biological sex. He dressed as a male, but then came to the funeral home owner and asked to meet with grieving clients presenting and dressing as a woman instead. Well, the employer wouldn't go along with that, not because the employee was transgender. The employee could have aligned their gender with their biological sex. They could have been gender queer. They could have been non-binary.

The employer didn't care. The reason he said no was because the employee wouldn't follow the sex specific policy, the dress code. Again, it's possible to separate sex from gender identity and the court failed to do that. But you know, again, I don't, I don't want to get too bogged down in those things because ultimately the court rejected our arguments on those. But it left open this hope that for religious employers, they would be able to litigate these issues about their beliefs on human sexuality in future cases.

Yeah, that's going to be very important. I can think of many Christian organizations that have those standards that you talked about for Christian ministries. Their mission has to do with the gospel, Christian principles, and they have policies in place that their staff members must be heterosexual.

There's morality clauses. So that's going to be a very, very important decision because then it bleeds out of secular culture and starts impacting churches and parachurch organizations. John Bursch with us today here on the Christian Real View Radio program, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Their website is ADFlegal.org. Now, I think for Christians, John, there's been a sense of betrayal that President Trump nominated what he thought was an originalist judge, a conservative judge who's going to interpret the law according to the plain interpretation of it. And there's been a sense of betrayal here that Neil Gorsuch, one of most people thought was on the conservative side of the court, five to four leaning conservative at this particular point in time. Why do you think Neil Gorsuch, a supposedly originalist judge, decided this way? Well, I think he just decided it based on the text of the statute, which is what we ask our conservative justices to do. And he disagreed with our position.

I don't think anyone could have predicted this ahead of time. I certainly don't fault the president for picking someone who, by all accounts, is an originalist, is a textualist, and had ruled that way in countless number of cases. So it's difficult to understand. I guess one of the things that I cling to besides him possibly creating this carve out for religious liberty is that he also acknowledges in future cases that sometimes biology does matter, that biology is not bigotry. And that's why he says, well, I don't resolve the shower issue or the locker room issue. Think about it in the context of a business, Christian or not, that owns a pool, a water slide park or something like that. And so they invite patrons to come and swim in the pool and go on the water slide park. If they have lifeguards as employees, and they require the men to wear swim trunks, and they require the women to wear swimsuits that cover their bottoms and their tops.

I don't think Justice Gorsuch or any reasonable judge would say you can't do that if female lifeguard identifies as male and wants to wear the male swim trunks but not cover up the top. There are going to be cases where biology matters and I don't think any of that's been foreclosed yet. Just wait. It's probably coming.

And you'll probably be on that case when it does. John Bersch with us today on the Christian worldview from the Alliance Defending Freedom. Why should someone, not necessarily in Christian ministry, we know the biblical principles there that guide their mission, but why should someone just playing the devil's advocate here come into work one day to their boss and say, you know, I don't identify as the male sex I was born with. I now identify as a female and that employer decides to fire them for that purpose.

Do you think that an employer should have the right to do that if their performance hasn't changed, they simply perceive themselves differently? John Bersch of Alliance Defending Freedom will give a very good answer to that particular question. So I hope you'll stay with us for this first break of the day here on the Christian Real View radio program. We're talking about the impact of the recent Supreme Court decision on sexual orientation, i.e.

homosexuality and transgenderism. I also just want to mention that I'm going to be for our Twin Cities listeners, I'm going to be preaching tomorrow. You're invited at Faith Bible Church in White Bear Lake. Actually, they're meeting at the Charleston Event Center. That's Sunday, June 26th at 9 a.m. Charleston Event Center, White Bear Lake, Minnesota. You can look it up online.

9 a.m. I'm going to be speaking on Mastering Sin from Romans 6 through 8. So you're invited if you'd like to come. Anyway, a lot more to get to today. Here on the program, hope you'll stay with us. We have much more coming up even after this interview as we continue discussion about the worldview behind Black Lives Matter. Many sound bites with that. So stay tuned. You're listening to the Christian Real View. I'm David Weeden. People everywhere have anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic.

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You get the short takes every week, the highlights. So just go to thechristianworldview.org to do that. Our guest today in the program is John Bursch. He is a senior council legal lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, and we're talking about what impact the recent Supreme Court decision on sexual orientation and transgenderism will have in this country.

Let's get back to that interview. Why should someone, just playing the devil's advocate here, come into work one day through their boss and say, you know, I don't identify as the male sex I was born with. I now identify as a female, and that employer decides to fire them for that purpose.

Do you think that an employer should have the right to do that if their performance hasn't changed? They simply perceive themselves differently? The non-religious answer is really related to the religious answer.

You know, those who read the Bible see that God created them male and female in his image and likeness, and the Bible doesn't say that that sex can change. So as Christians, we believe you follow God's plan as put forth in the Bible, because when you don't, bad things will happen. That's called sin, and when we engage in sin, then we don't become the best possible version of ourselves. We become some corrupted version that never achieves the heights that God wants for us, because his love is always to want what's best for us.

That's the definition of love itself. It shouldn't surprise anyone that when someone doesn't identify as their own sex, and they're affirmed in that behavior, that there are bad consequences that happen from that. You often hear that someone who's suffering from gender dysphoria, and that's when your mind doesn't align with your body with respect to your sex, that they have depression and mental health issues and a high suicide rate. All of that's true, but the best long-term peer-reviewed studies that we have in the scientific and medical communities show that if you affirm that person, and they actually go through and they have a sex change operation to align their body with what's in their head, their suicide rate actually goes up, and there are no long-term mental health benefits from that.

By following society rather than following the blueprint, they actually end up in a much worse position. In fact, the science also shows that if you don't affirm the child who's having this dysphoria and having this struggle, in 80 to 95 percent of the cases, they'll naturally resolve things so that their mind aligns with their body, and they won't ever have these issues again. But if you affirm the child, 100 percent of the time, they will be dealing with that dysphoria the rest of their life in one form or another. If you want what's best for the human person, whether you're Christian or not Christian, it would not be to affirm the person who doesn't want to align body and mind. If you think about mental health generally, there are other diseases, mental health issues that look very similar to this.

Common sense tells you that we don't treat anybody else that way. If you have anorexia, you look at your body and you think that it's too fat, even though that's not the truth. Well, no one would ever tell their daughter or their sister or their friend who has anorexia, you should eat less and align your body with your mind. Or there's another mental health issue where people feel like a limb on their body doesn't belong there, and they will do almost anything to try to remove that limb. No doctor, no loving family member would ever hand them the saw and say, yeah, take off your arm. They would say, no, we need to deal with the underlying issues to align your mind with your body, not the other way around. Why is it that gender ideology is the only area of mental health where we get it exactly backward? In all these instances, it's entirely within the purview of an employer to say, I think this is harmful to the individual. I think it's harmful to others in the culture.

And I'm not going to do it for that basis. And all of that would be consistent with wanting what's good for the other, whether you're Christian or not. Now, we know all this to be true because of our Christian beliefs and because of what the Bible tells us. But as is always the case, science and real life experience aligns with those beliefs.

Yeah, it's very well said. But I'm just thinking about the impact of what you just concluded there that an employer can say this is bad for your health, it's bad for our company, and so forth. And so therefore, we're going to not employ you anymore. But could that then be taken to other things that are bad for us or sinful?

Someone who's living with someone before they're married, someone who's engaged as being a homosexual, someone who maybe takes drugs or something? I mean, again, if these things aren't affecting job performance, do you think an employer still has the right or should have the right to be able to terminate those kinds of employees? They call it at-will employment because the employer is allowed to do that.

The only things that are prohibited are to treat someone different because of their race, their sex, their ethnicity, their religion. Anything else is on the table for the employer. But I would actually go farther than that and challenge your premise that when someone is engaged in those types of behaviors, in the end, it will affect their work performance. If you're an alcoholic or you're on drugs, the fact that you might show up sometimes to work not high or not drunk doesn't mean that you're going to be able to successfully do that every day.

It's going to affect your job performance. In the case of the funeral home employee, we're talking about a funeral director. This is the face of the funeral home, the person who is the first interaction between the business and the family members after they've lost their loved one. Now, the whole reason for having a sex-specific dress code and codes of conduct is so that those grieving families can focus on processing their grief and not on the funeral home and its employees. It's not unreasonable for the funeral home owner to think that when a family comes in because dad died in January and they meet with a male funeral director and they come back in April because mom died and now they're meeting with the same funeral director and a dress in high heels that they might not be able to focus on processing their grief. It's inevitable that when you make choices like that, they do impact your job performance. That's just the way that life works. You can't separate what you do on your personal time from what you do on your work time.

They're going to come together and complain at some point. So yes, employers do have the right to do what they think is best for the company and what's best for that individual. John Bursch with us today on the Christian worldview, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom. He's argued 12 cases before the US Supreme Court.

Their website for this excellent organization is adflegal.org. I think it was Chai Feldblum who was in the Obama administration. I think something to do with human rights. I can't remember what the position was, but I remember the quote that came from this person that the homosexual rights or LGBTQ rights and Christian liberty, it's a zero sum game. Either one wins and they're losers or vice versa.

Is that actually true? How do we get along in our society nowadays going forward? Absolutely, Ron. If you look at some of the other cases that we have where these issues come into conflict, it's very easy to see how you can have amicable resolution where everybody can get a win.

Take someone like Marinel Stutzman. She's the florist from Washington State. Her case is still pending. She's been persecuted by the ACLU and the Washington State Attorney General because she declined to create custom floral arrangements and bring them to a same sex wedding because it violated her Christian beliefs. What you need to know about Marinel, if you haven't heard this before, is that she loved and served all of her customers who came in the door. In fact, Rob, the customer who requested this order for his marriage, was a friend of hers. She had faithfully served him for nearly 10 years. She had made custom floral arrangements for Rob and Rob's same sex partner knowing that he was gay, even for things such as anniversaries and Valentine's Day. It was only participation in the same sex wedding ceremony itself that she felt went too far and violated her relationship with Jesus Christ. When he came in and asked her to do this, she took him aside where no one else could hear what was going on, took his hands and said, Rob, you know that I love you, but because of my relationship with Jesus Christ, this isn't something that I can do.

She referred him to five other nearby florists that she knew would do a good job. If they had just let things go there, everything would have been fine. Baranel would have respected the dignity of Rob, as we're all called as Christians to do, and Baranel would have been able to live by her religious Christian convictions by not participating in a sacred ceremony that violated her religious beliefs. But what happened?

Rob went away. He was disappointed, but he kind of understood her position. He told his partner.

The partner posted it on Facebook because he was angry. And then the attorney general sees that and swoops in and decides that Baranel is public enemy number one. Forget all the other problems that Washington State might be having. We have to stamp out this loving Christian woman who tried to accommodate a customer and served him for years. She didn't have any animus based on his same sex attraction, based on the fact that he was gay.

She loved him no matter who he was. That's a perfect example of how everyone should have been able to get along and coexist. But where the LGBT advocates pushed it because their goal is nothing less than to weaponize anti-discrimination laws, to wipe out Christian thought anywhere in the public square. We can't have Baranel's. We can't have Jack Phillips. We can't have someone like Chief Cochran. He was the Atlanta fire chief. And he was fired for writing a private tract for his men's Bible study away from work, not for work consumption, about what the Bible teaches on marriage. Well, the fact that he wrote that and how those beliefs was too much in Atlanta fired him. We sued Atlanta and prevailed.

We got a very favorable settlement for him in that case. It just goes to show how these laws aren't being used to promote equality and to get everyone working together. Instead, they're being weaponized to persecute those who have beliefs that the left doesn't like. And so I absolutely reject and repudiate anybody who says this is a zero sum game. Baranel has showed us exactly how this could be done while respecting everybody on both sides.

We just need advocates on the other side to appreciate that and buy into the program. John Bursch, everyone here today on the Christian Royal View Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom. I think he's a sharp critical thinker.

That's probably why he's arguing cases before the Supreme Court. I thought his last answer was very interesting. Unfortunately, as gracious as Baranel Stutzman was, she still was attacked relentlessly for her beliefs. We'll come back. We have more with John Bursch after this, and we'll get into some on the Black Lives Matter movement. This is the Christian Royal View.

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It's pretty overwhelming and we're just so grateful for your support of this ministry. Today in the program we're talking about what impact will the Supreme Court's recent decision on sexual orientation and transgenderism have upon Christians in this country because Christians are always the target when these particular things occur. Now our guest is John Bursch, he's senior counsel lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, an excellent organization that is, by the way, supported by people.

It's a non-profit organization but they come to the aid of Christians typically when their religious rights are being violated. So John has argued many cases before the Supreme Court and he's talking about these recent cases, these three cases with one decision that was surprisingly went against the side of religious liberty. I actually think in his first answer today when he talked about that he doesn't think it's as significant as a lot of people are saying including those on the homosexual side.

I think it is pretty significant though from a standpoint another stepping stone in the wrong direction for this country toward homosexual rights away from Christian liberties that are enshrined right there in the First Amendment of the Constitution. But we have more interview with John coming up so let's get back to the final moments with him. Recently there was a column that came out by the, I believe he's the CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, Michael Farris. Also Charles, is it Chaput?

Is that how you pronounce it? Chaput, yeah, the retired Archbishop of Philadelphia. Okay, so he's Catholic.

Michael Farris, I believe, is an evangelical Christian. They came out with a joint article entitled, Unjust Rules for Religious Believers. Just one sentence from the column, when public officials, and now we're moving on to what's going on here with coronavirus and the states not allowing churches to open while casinos and bars and you name what else are allowed to be open. When public officials allow people to gather in secular settings but not religious ones, the government effectively declares that religious practice is not really necessary. And that reveals not only a disregard for the First Amendment but also a complete misunderstanding of people of faith and why they gather to worship. You know, I think of the state of California right now and many other places where there's still ongoing restrictions against gathering for worship services. John, what is your thought on what churches should be doing right now in that situation when they know they have a First Amendment right to assemble, freedom of religion and all these things that the state is telling them, no, you can't do this.

You can only do it in a very, very limited way. And a church is caught between the idea of, well, we want to be obedient to the state and want to be good citizens. But we're also having our first freedom liberties infringed upon.

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And I think it's all about a matter of balance. You know, if there's a pandemic that requires everybody to be home, then because we're Christians and we love our neighbors, then we stay home too. Even if that means participating in worship service online or on TV or something like that, because no one's allowed to go out. But when we see the government allowing people to go to casinos and to marijuana shops and to buy lottery tickets at the grocery store and to protest in the streets and burn down buildings, but they don't allow more than 10 people to gather in a church, then something's wrong and we need to stand up for that.

And when you do that, two things will happen. Your great state of Minnesota, the Minnesota Catholic bishops stood up and said, no, we're going back to mass. And when they did, the government stood down and it allowed that to happen. That's one possible outcome. The other outcome is that the government gets its back up and says, well, no, we're going to go to court over this. And when that happens, then attorneys like at Alliance Defending Freedom will stand up and represent those churches, those religious religious leaders, those people, and make sure that their constitutional rights under the Free Exercise Clause are protected. We've won 14 lawsuits in the last two months across the country challenging discriminatory governmental practices with respect to the pandemic and churches, just like you've described.

And I'm sure there's going to be more of those in the days ahead. So yes, we do have to show respect to our civil governmental leaders. I think the church has been more than accommodating in allowing them to shut down churches over the last couple of months. But as things start to open up, churches cannot be treated worse than everybody else.

And if they are, then we need to stand up and do something about it and we will win. John, we appreciate your coming on the Christian Real View today and so much appreciate the values that Alliance Defending Freedom is standing for and representing those who believe in the constitution and religious liberty that they stand for. So thank you so much for coming on the program. My pleasure.

Thank you. Okay, that was John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom, very thankful for people like him who understand the law so well and are not unclear or unambiguous about what the Constitution means for Christians in this country and are just God-given, gracious rights that we have had that are so rare amongst all peoples in all history. And we need to be aware of these things and pay attention to these things.

This judgment by the Supreme Court could have been easily missed. And again, I think it's going to be a stepping stone to more. They're after that Equality Act where they actually change the nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation and gender identity, transgenderism.

This case didn't do that, but it allowed—it's going to have a trickle-down effect, there's no doubt. So we will pay attention to this going forward. Okay, I want to transition now to a topic that we dealt with last week about Black Lives Matter and some different sound bites that we have on the program today to play before the program concludes. And the first sound bite I just want to play is a promotional video—I'll just play the audio, of course—from Black Lives Matter, from their own website. And let's get into some of their beliefs and what they are pushing for. They have become the, I guess you could say, the most influential, most powerful political movement, at least fastest growing political movement in recent history. I heard just recently that they have raised something like $10 million since all this leftist uprisings have happened. They're a political force to be reckoned with now. We need to understand who they are and what they believe. Here's from their website about who Black Lives Matter is. Until Black people are free, no one is fully free, because the issues that affect Black people the most affect everyone.

Everyone. Can you imagine an America with no police brutality, without mass shootings and gun violence, mass incarceration, children in cages, racist immigration policy, voter suppression, environmental degradation, racial injustice? It's time to vote for an America where our lives are valued and protected, where police are held accountable, where we have access to quality health care, where we can thrive in school, where our water is safe to drink. It's time to vote for an America without low wages and low opportunity. Vote for an America without the oppression of white supremacy.

Can you imagine an America where oppression and fear are dissolved, where we are whole and healed? We are the most powerful voters in this country, so we will not be distracted by the noise they make. We are going to choose who leads us, those who truly represent us, and vote out those who don't.

Vote you out. We are going to show up and fight for what we need and vote for what really matters. We are what matters, 2020. Okay, so that's the Black Lives Matter promo. It's very significant that women were voicing that because this is an overtly anti-male organization that says that in their very statement of beliefs, we build a space that affirms black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.

This is right from their website. We do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift black trans folk. We make space, another belief, for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We foster a queer affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.

We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families in villages. This goes way beyond just, you know, standing up for the rights of a particular ethnic group in this country. This is a Marxist revolutionary organization that is getting widespread support and funding even from Christians as well. Now, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, one of the leaders of it, his name is Hawk Newsome. He appeared recently on a cable news program with Martha McCallum and she showed a video and his response to the video, I believe it had to do with what was going on, you know, with Black Lives Matter, the legislation they're trying to push forward, what's going on in the streets. And he responded by saying, well, it's interesting that you would pose this question because this country, this is a Black Lives Matter leader, is built upon violence. You get to see the worldview behind this now.

What was the same revolution that, in other words, the revolution taking place now is no different than the original original American revolution? What is our diplomacy around the globe? We go in and blow up countries, talking about America, and we replace their leaders with leaders who we like. So for any American to accuse us, Black Lives Matter being violent, it's extremely hypocritical. Now, when we talk about us using self-defense, we, she goes on, let me see here, let me skip down here. We are talking about four or five police officers choking someone to death and someone from the community having the training to intervene effectively. When we go talk about upholding a second amendment, I think you should be applauding me. We should be armed ourselves who defend themselves. Anyway, he goes on and on like that.

And then we're going to play the soundbite of what's next, whether he talks about the justification for using violence after this break. Mary, and ultimately with God, who caused all things, even the hard things to work together for good. Order the book for your friend who needs to hear about God's grace and the gospel, or the one who has gone through a difficult trial or loss, or just the dog lover in your life. Signed and personalized copies are only available at myboyben.com or by calling 1-888-646-2233.

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Perfect for sharing with others. To order, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233. That's thechristianworldview.org. Back on the Christian Real View radio program. I'm David Wheaton, the host.

I mentioned this earlier in the program. I'm going to be preaching tomorrow, Sunday, June 26th at Faith Bible Church. They are actually meeting right now, not at University of Northwestern where they typically meet, but at the Charleston Event Center in White Bear Lake. Charleston Event Center, White Bear Lake, 9 a.m. Sunday, June 26th.

The sermon topic is Mastering Sin from Romans 6 through 8. So if you want to come to that, you can look it up online where it's located and hope to see you there. We're talking about Black Lives Matter as we conclude the program this morning, and one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, was on Martha McCallum's program on Fox News saying his worldview that this country is incredibly history of violence and racists. We export imperialism, although with typical leftist Howard Zinn, remember that interview a couple weeks ago? It's all about that. So you're believing a lie about the country.

Of course, this country is not sinless, but comparatively to every single other country in the world, there's no country that is as just and as good and as overcome its sins of the past like this country. But that's not the way they think. And they want to impose this America is evil. We hate this country and we're going to revolution to transform this country. And so then he had to say this to Martha McCallum.

This is Hawk Newsome from Black Lives Matter. I watched you talking and on a bunch of different interviews today and you said, burn it down. You said, burn it down.

It's time. So that makes me think that you want to burn it down. I said, if this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.

All right. And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally.

It's a matter of interpretation. Like, let's be very real and let's observe the history of the 1960s when black people were rioting. We had their highest growth in wealth and property ownership. Think about the last few weeks since we started protesting. There have been eight cops fired across the country. You remember they were telling us that there was due process. That's why the cop that choked Eric Gardner to death had kept his job and may get received raises for five years. Anytime a cop hurt a woman, hurt a child, hurt pregnant people, hurt our elders. There was always a call for due process.

You must wait, you must wait. But the moment people start destroying property, now cops can be fired automatically. What, what, what is this country, uh, rewarding?

What behavior is it listening to? Obviously not marching, but when people get aggressive and they escalate their, their protests, the country, cops get fired. Now you have, now you have police officers. You have Republican politicians talking about police reform. I don't condone nor do I condemn writing, but I'm just telling you what I observed. I don't condemn rioting. Did you just hear that? So you may watch the news at night and think this is terrible riots, burning of buildings, looting, violence against people and police officers and so forth.

That's not what black lives matter thinks about it. They think this is the way, Hey, more of the same. This is the way we're going to get our way. You see the results we're getting in Seattle. They're letting us build our own encampment in the city in Minneapolis. They're allowing us to take over the police precinct. This works, throw a tantrum, do violence. Due process doesn't work. Why wait?

We'll go on the street. We've never made more, much more money. We've never had more cops fired than what we're doing right now. That that's the worldview. So again, they're looking at it completely differently than you. You're thinking this has got to stop. We want peace on our streets. That's not what they're thinking. They're thinking this is the way we're going to get our way. Otherwise we're going to burn it down.

All right. So with that as a context, reading their statement of beliefs in the last segment and then hearing from one of the leaders about how they think they're going to enact this revolution by violence, not through due process and voting and making the case and so forth for why their views are better than the traditional American views. That's why when you have the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest convention, the Protestant denomination in the country, J.D. Greer is also a pastor. Saying what he said about Black Lives Matter, it just makes it so much more egregious. Here's J.D.

Greer. Southern Baptist, we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue. Black Lives Matter. Of course, Black Lives Matter. Our black brothers and sisters are made in the image of God. Black Lives Matter because Jesus died for them. Black lives are a beautiful part of God's creation and they make up an essential and beautiful part of his body.

And we would be poorer as a people without them and other minorities in our midst. Let me echo my friend Jimmy Scroggins, pastor down in Florida and saying that Black Lives Matter is an important thing to say right now because we are seeing in our country the evidence of specific injustices that many of our black brothers and sisters and friends have been telling us about for years. And by the way, let's not respond by saying, oh, well, all lives matter.

Of course, all lives matter. But I've heard it described this way. Say you're in a group or with a group at a restaurant and the waiter brings the food to everybody except for one guy at your table, your friend Bob. And so you say to the waiter, hey, excuse me, Bob deserves food. And somebody at your table corrects you to say, no, no, no, all of us deserve food. Well, that's true, but you're missing the point.

Bob is sitting there by himself without food. And so we are saying we understand that that that that many of our black brothers and sisters have perceived for many years that the processes, the due processes of justices have not worked for them as they have for some others in our country. And by the way, like Jimmy, like Dr. Scroggins says, let's spare each other the quotation of stats right now.

You know, if you talk to some black friends, you'll know that they can tell you about their experiences and how some of them can be quite different from from others in our country. Just wow. Wow. I mean, knowing what Black Lives Matter believes for a Christian pastor, let alone the leader of the largest process of domination to repeat their slogan, the slogan, they've popularized, you could say, all souls matter, or you're, you know, black lives are important, whatever. But to repeat their slogan and all the things he said in that particular soundbite. Remember, we've said this in the past, whenever you couch something like, oh, this is a gospel issue, just the eyes and Christian's head sort of roll back. Oh, well, therefore, it's true. I mean, which what Christian doesn't believe that every person's lives matter, regardless of the color of the skin that that's just there's no one there's no Christian that who does not actually believe that. And then to go on to say all these evidences of injustice, as we've talked about this week after week, this whole thing is based on the lie of systemic injustice.

There is not systemic injustice in this country based on so many different studies. We don't even know of George Floyd's killer. The police officer was motivated by racial animus against blacks.

We don't even know that. But that that was assumed right away. And then secondly, then it was the next assumption was, well, the Minneapolis Police Department is systemically unjust. There's no evidence for that.

Now, there have been some cases, of course, but you know, it's just in the whole country is systemically injustice. So it's all based on a lie. And then finally, he goes into saying, don't say all lives matter. That's just a talking point of Black Lives Matter. And finally, he said, let's spare the quotation of stats right now. Like, don't worry about facts. That that is a tenet of critical race theory, which is based on people's experience rather than facts.

Just a useful pawn almost of this organization that's trying to revolution in this country. I hate to end on a discouraging note, but there is one thing that we can always count on in trust and above what any of them Christian leaders are saying. Jesus says the Bible says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And until next weekend, think biblically and live accordingly. The Christian Worldview is a weekly one hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to the Christian Worldview dot org or call us toll free at one triple eight six four six twenty two thirty three or write to us at Box four zero one Excelsior Minnesota five five three three one. That's box four zero one Excelsior Minnesota five five three three one. Thanks for listening to the Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.