The Predictable Result of Educating Children Without God

The predictable result of educating children without God. Alex Newman joins us today right here on the Christian Real View radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Real View is a nonprofit, listener-supported radio ministry. We are able to broadcast on the radio station, website, or app on which you are listening today because of the support of listeners like you.

Thank you. You can connect with us by calling our toll-free number, 1-888-646-2233, writing to us at Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331, or visiting our website, thechristianrealview.org. Well, it's axiomatic, in other words, self-evident, that the one who teaches children is the one who shapes their worldview, and thus, society at large. Now, the Bible assigns the teaching and training of children to parents. For instance, in Proverbs 22, verse 6, it says, Train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. This is not a guarantee, but this is a promise. This is a command to do this, and by God's grace, oftentimes it will turn out just as it says there. But of course, in response to that, God rejecting man has a, quote, better idea. Remove children from the redefined home to be indoctrinated by government so-called educators for up to forty hours each week from age four to age eighteen. With a government that ignores the most important truth or reality in life that God exists and He has spoken to us in Scripture, how do you think that's going to turn out for the kids?

Well, it turns out just as planned. John Dewey, who lived in the second half of the 1800s into the first half of the 1900s, is considered the father of the modern American public education system. Here's what he said, quote, There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion.

With dogma and creed excluded, immutable truth is also dead and buried, unquote. And that's exactly how the government school system operates today, as if there is no God. Now, in case you're not convinced by that, quote, Dr. Chester Pierce, who was a professor of education and psychology at Harvard, said the following at the Childhood International Education Seminar fifty years ago back in 1973, quote, Every child who enters school at age five is mentally ill because he enters school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, our founding fathers, our institutions, the preservation of this form of government we have, patriotism, nationalism, sovereignty, and I'll add his or her parents. All this proves that the children are sick because a truly well individual is one who has rejected all those things and is what I would call the international child of the future, unquote.

Well, mission accomplished. Taxpayer funded, federal government mandated public education has shaped generations of these international children with unsuspecting parents losing almost all influence. The moral confusion that reigns in our children today and our nation more broadly shouldn't be surprising at all. International journalist Alex Newman joins us for a second week on the Christian worldview to discuss what government education has become and what Christian parents should be doing in response. Alex is the author of The Educators, how utopians are using government schools to destroy America's children.

He's also the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media and a senior editor for The New American magazine. Before we get to that interview, I looked up briefly on a website called Leader in Me, where they have an article entitled History of Education, the United States in a Nutshell. This is not written from a Christian perspective, just sort of the facts as they see it. Quote, the history of education in the US has had a long journey from the 16th century to the 21st century. In the 17th century, education was not a requirement. Societal needs emphasized children help the family at home or on the farm. Even if children had the luxury of getting an education, they were often taught by a family member in their home, as if that's a bad thing. The main purpose of education in the US at this time was to teach children how to read the Bible and how to align themselves with Puritan morals. In the 19th century, the article goes on to say, education philosophy experienced a paradigm shift from, look at the word, privileged, religiously based education to common state-sponsored education. After society embraced this new philosophy, the first public school in the US was established in the year 1821. In 1867, education in the US received a major boost, at least it occurred to this writer, the Department of Education was established. By 1870, public schools were present in every state with secondary public schools outnumbering private schools. By the 1920s, children were transitioned from factories to public schools.

The Progressive Education Association was established in all 50 states with an agreement to fund transportation to school children. Last paragraph, as the world makes further technological and societal advances, soft skill needs in the workplace are arising, such as leadership skills and social emotional intelligence. The modern workplace no longer requires a factory-making mindset, but a mindset that can adapt and overcome new challenges. Educators are faced with the new challenge of adapting their teaching methods to these needs.

Enter social and emotional learning, SEL. You can just read when you hear that, critical race theory. As mentioned, Alex Newman is our guest today in the program. Here now is the first segment of the interview.

Alex, thanks for coming on the Christian worldview today. I want to start out by reading a portion of a column you wrote recently. I think it's titled, The United Nations in Biden Unleash Transgender Indoctrination in Schools Worldwide. Now, you've written a book entitled Crimes of the Educators, How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children. And just a short excerpt from the column, you say, the UN scheme was launched on what is being called, quote, Transgender Day of Visibility, unquote. All around the world, you write from India to Europe to the United States, government schools celebrated gender confusion and indoctrinated children to believe that they can choose their gender. In the United States, the Biden administration sent letters to every state attorney general, threatening them if they stand in the way of males using girls' bathrooms or playing in girls' sports. The administration also said children must be offered life-altering hormones and surgical mutilation of genitals. The administration also unveiled a battery of new programs to peddle transgenderism to children in schools. These include, quote, unquote, trainings to, quote, support transgender and non-binary students in schools, as well as using tax dollars to peddle sex changes for children now described as, quote, gender-affirming care, unquote. Last two paragraphs, as the Newman Report highlighted just a few months ago, the transgender craze is just the beginning. All across the nation, children are now coming to school dressed as animals and making animal noises.

Estimates suggest there are now hundreds of thousands of these self-styled furries, as you call them, nationwide. Last paragraph, government indoctrination centers are no longer safe places for children. These dangerous brainwashing programs being weaponized against children worldwide are literally an existential threat to innocent young people, their bodies and their families.

It is time for sensible people to say enough is enough. And just before I follow up with a question here, Alex, here's a piece of audio from either current or former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry with who she thinks your children belong to. We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children.

Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments. Again, that was Melissa Harris-Perry, a former or current host at MSNBC, talking about who has ownership or who children belong to. That is really a globalistic, communistic ideology that she talks about there. Completely against what the Bible says that children belong to parents and that parents are responsible primarily for raising their children. So the question, Alex, is the government educational system has been godless and humanistic for a very long time. But it seems that this new religion of wokeism has completely taken over our public government educational system. What triggered that, do you think? And why is there this all out push for specifically transgenderism now?

Well, thank you, David. And that is such a huge question. We could spend hours talking about it. So I'll try to give the really condensed history of this and then bring it up to the present day. But what we're dealing with here is a coming to fruition of an agenda that's been in place for well over a century. In fact, if you look at probably the most important architect of the government school system today, and I think even calling it a school system is not the right terminology, but we'll just use it for simplicity sake. But the key architect of this system was a guy by the name of John Dewey. And he was a communist.

In fact, he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, a blatantly communistic document that rejects God, that rejects the Bible, that rejects the moral truths revealed in the Bible and in creation, incidentally. And he wrote this essay in 1898. This was early on in his career as a so-called educator and philosopher.

And he kind of gave the game away. It was such an important essay that we republished it as an appendix in the book Crimes of the Educators, Dr. Sam Blumenfeld and I, who co-wrote that book. And one of the key quotes from that book, he says that change must come gradually.

To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction. So John Dewey, from the beginning, as he was taking over the architecture of public schools that have been laid down in the decades before by people like Horace Mann, standing on the shoulders of an earlier communist Robert Owen, as he was taking this over, he realized that he couldn't just come out and say, hey, guys, we're going to take the Bible out of schools. We're going to brainwash your kids to be good little anti-God, godless collectivists.

He knew that the change had to come gradually because if parents and teachers figured it out, they would have probably tarred and feathered him. So what we saw was the agenda in place and then a multi-generational process to get us to where we are now. Now, a lot of people look at the early 1960s as the real turning point. I say that the 1960s never could have happened had it not been for the indoctrination taking place earlier than that. But 1962, 1963, we had those two major Supreme Court decisions where the Supreme Court ruled that you couldn't have Bible in school.

They ruled that you couldn't have prayer in school. And I think that paved the way to what we're seeing now. But if you read John Dewey's writings, it's very clear that he was a communist. He was a Marxist. His chief difference, I think, with the revolutionary Marxists was that he believed in a gradual process of change ultimately bringing about this communist utopia rather than a revolutionary change involving armed force and a revolution. So they had really a difference in tactics. He thought, hey, let's indoctrinate the kids in public schools rather than the more revolutionary idea of let's rally the working class and go chop off the heads or hang the bourgeoisie.

But it was really just a difference in tactics. Their end goal was exactly the same. And so in 1962, 1963, they kicked the Bible and prayer out of school.

They said that the First Amendment prohibited those things. And I think that was really the final nail in the coffin for whatever Christian ties the school system in America may have had. And that inevitably paved the way to getting where we are now. And so one of the big tenets of Marxism, in fact, Karl Marx was very, very open about this. And even Marxist predecessors were very open about this was the need to dismantle the nuclear family. The family is kind of a transmission belt of values and culture and faith and religious beliefs and worldview from one generation to the next. That's how civilization gets passed on from one generation to the next. And so Marx and other communist theorists understood that to disrupt that transmission belt, children would have to be separated from their parents. Now, the transgender craze, to bring it back full circle to what we're talking about, the transgender craze, I think is the next element in that process.

So, you know, the one before that was the homosexual movement, right? They told us that, well, you know, two dads is better than no parents, right? Or two moms is better than no parents. And so right there, they're telling you, you don't really need a mom, you don't really need a dad. Well, the transgender movement takes it one step further. Now they're saying there is no such thing as dad, there is no such thing as mom.

How could you say mom and dad or two moms and two dads? Gender is just in your head, right? This is just a social construct. So I think this is part of a deliberate strategy, not just to wage war on God's truth, which itself evidently is doing, but also to further undermine the nuclear family, which of course, in the Marxist view, serves as a bulwark against progress, because you have these these crude parents that are passing on their values and their traditions to the next generation, they need to interrupt that. And so just like every dictatorship of the last hundred years has understood you've got to target the children, the children are more impressionable.

And I think that's what we're seeing with the transgender craze in the school that's being pushed by the UN and the Biden administration, and is now ubiquitous. Alex Newman with us today on the Christian worldview, just a quick follow up to that you mentioned taking prayer out of schools and Bible reading out of schools back in the 60s. Do you think the founders could have done a better job designing a way for the Christian faith to be integrated within society, without there being the US government establishing a national religion?

Well, the interesting thing, David, is I don't think the founders would have foreseen this. Government school is basically a very recent innovation. For thousands of years of church history, parents have been primarily in charge of the education of their children. And that was true for hundreds of years in America, long before even the United States of America was established. Parents were primarily the educators of their children with support from older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents and things like that. Government school did not become the norm in America for most children until after World War One.

So we're dealing with a very, very recent innovation here. And I think the founders actually did a very good job. If you read the First Amendment, this is what's so crazy. The Supreme Court never could have gotten away with those rulings in the early 1960s if the American people had not already been dumbed down and brainwashed. The First Amendment is very clear. It says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. And we know what they meant by that, right?

We don't have to speculate. I mean, the text is pretty clear. But if you read what they said about that, if you read the Federalist Papers, if you read the debates they were having at the Constitutional Convention, as recorded by the founders who were there, they fully understood what they were doing as being a barrier to the establishment of a national denomination. They understood that America was a Christian nation and that Christianity was the religion of America. In fact, most of the states, when the First Amendment was written and ratified, believe this or not, had established churches. And I'm not arguing in favor of an established church. I think at this point in American history we're way too diverse of a society. It would just lead to endless arguments. And frankly, I don't know that we want the government having anything to do with religion.

But it's very, very clear. When the First Amendment was written and ratified, most states had an established church. And so the idea that the First Amendment was intended to prevent a state government or a local government or even a school from teaching the Bible or from having prayer in school is absolutely preposterous. And nobody, except somebody who didn't know American history, could possibly believe that that's what the founders intended.

Again, the evidence is overwhelming and indisputable. So I think the real question is, where did we go wrong here? I don't think the founders did anything wrong. I think they did their best to preserve religious liberty. And I understand why they wouldn't want federal involvement in religious affairs.

They didn't want a national denomination. But they certainly understood that Jesus Christ was the Lord. In fact, at the bottom of the Constitution it says, in the year of our Lord. They're not talking about Buddha or Mohammed or Vishnu.

They're talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. So the founders understood very clearly that they were establishing a Christian nation, but they didn't want to have the Presbyterians or the Baptists or the Anglicans, Episcopalians, try to create a national denomination and enforce their orthodoxy on the rest of America. So I think the founders did good. The real place where we went wrong, I think, was by letting the state get involved in education. As I read the scriptures, I see all authority over the education, raising and discipling of children placed on the shoulders of parents.

This is crystal clear. Deuteronomy speaks to this. You're supposed to be teaching your children when you wake up, when you're walking by the way, when you're eating, when you're going to bed, all the time.

There's no time to hand them over to Caesar. So I think the real mistake we made was by saying, all right, let's let the government get involved in education. Education, again, traditionally was controlled by parents and then there was a supplemental role for the church. The church is supposed to be equipping the saints. And so, you know, to the extent that assistance was needed by the family, they would turn to their church. And we had church schools all over this country. All the different denominations, at least most of them, were operating their own schools. They provided free tuition to children from poor homes who couldn't afford it. So we really had no need for a government education system. But I think it's one of the most fascinating stories in American history is the story of how we got a government school system. And maybe that's a topic for another day.

But what you find is that it is communists and godless individuals who wanted to turn our nation away from God, away from the Bible and away from individual liberty that created the system from the very beginning, David. All right, we need to take a short break for some ministry announcements. Stay tuned.

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It's 264 pages, hardcover, and retails for $24.95. To order, go to thechristianrealview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Welcome back to The Christian Real View. I'm David Wheaton.

Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Now back to the interview with Alex Newman, international journalist and author of the book, Crimes of the Educators. One more question on education because it is important to all of us who have children and to our country, just broadly speaking. Just an example here, here in Minnesota where we're from, this is according to Alpha News, Alan and Julie Quist wrote a column titled Teachers Must Demonstrate a Marxist Worldview to Obtain Their Teaching License. I don't know if you heard about this story, but it says, Marxist ideology and practices are coming to Minnesota schools disguised as new teacher licensing rules, things like incorporate social and emotional learning, SEL, into all classes, which seeks to transform the values, attitudes and beliefs of students and achieve full compliance with equity and gender ideology, to understand systemic trauma, including racism and microaggressions, to be inclusive, to reflect diversity of cultures, it goes on and on and on. But it basically says that non-public schools as well generally hire licensed teachers, these licensing requirements or standards will apply to them as well. I know you speak on this topic of education, but how do you try to help parents understand because a lot of parents went to their local public school and they sort of think it's the same, maybe a little different now. They maybe don't understand the danger they are putting their children in by going to a government school.

And has a tipping point been reached? It sounds like you think it has been reached, maybe not even recently, but a long time ago, that children of Christian parents should really not be in government schools. They should either be homeschooled or in a good Christian school.

Yeah. And I think that much is very clear from reading the scriptures. You know, Jesus, our Lord, gave us a very simple litmus test for all people in institutions, right? He said it in Matthew, he said it in Luke, whoever is not with me is against me. So our Lord, our Savior, our King explained that there are two camps in this world.

There's one that is with Christ and there's one that is against Christ. And I think it's a very simple exercise to look at the government school system and determine which camp the government schools fall into. The Christians come back and they say, well, I need my kids to be salt and light in a public school. And I say, look, you know, you wouldn't send your children to Iraq or Afghanistan with an M-16 for obvious reasons because we don't send child soldiers into war because children are not prepared. They're not properly trained, right?

They need experience. In exactly the same way, we should not be sending our children to do spiritual warfare in a godless institution that according to our Lord's litmus test is anti-Christ, is against Christ. So up until the early 1960s, you could have maybe made the case that, you know, hey, they're still saying prayers, they're still reading the Bible. Okay, maybe the public schools are still with Christ. I think it would have been a very bad argument, but at least you could have said that. Today you can no longer say that.

So I think for Christians, the choice really should be very, very clear. And you know, what's happening in Minnesota is happening all across the country. I actually, I know Julie Quist, she sent me that article. I published it on my website and they're doing wonderful work. She's with the Child Protection League.

I spoke at their conference last year in Minnesota and sounded the alarm about this. But as far as when the tipping point was reached, I think it was at the very beginning. Again, you know, if you go back to the people who created the model, Robert Owen was the first one that I can find really since Plato that promoted the idea of a government school system. He was a godless communist. He set up a communist commune in Indiana that failed because it was based on communistic godless principles. And so he created an organization, a network to try to shift public opinion and get government involvement in education.

Horace Mann picked it up from there and implemented this in Massachusetts based on the Prussian model, which came from Robert Owen's idea. And again, at every point, these were godless individuals who wanted to use the school system to turn our children against God. And so if you look at the data today, and there's a lot of data coming out about this, Barna has come out with some, the Nehemiah Institute, Dan Smithwick has come out with some, depending on whose numbers you're looking at, something like 70 to 90 percent of Christian children from Christian homes who go through 12 years of the government school system are going to leave their faith, they're going to leave the church, they're going to go down that broad road rather than the narrow road. And so I think if we are truly Christians, if we truly value the well-being of our children, this really should be a no-brainer. And I'm not implying or suggesting that a good education, homeschooling, or Christian schools will save your children. Only Jesus Christ can save your children.

You can't, right? Sorry, it's beyond our purview. We are not saviors. But if we're faithful to God's commands, God will bless that. And I think at this point, my reading of the Bible makes it very clear that God's people must, and I'll say that word again, must exit the public school system. Well, we all are a product of our influences.

And when you're in a government school for that many hours per day, per week, with the kind of peers that are there, there's no chance of you not being influenced by the peers and the teachers in the curriculum. Alex Newman is our guest today here on The Christian Real View. He's an international journalist. He's the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media. He's also a senior editor for The New American magazine. We have all the links to what he's involved in at our website, thechristianrealview.org.

Go there and you can go from there to all the different things he's doing. Alex, I want to play a soundbite that just came out recently between Senator Josh Hawley and a professor, a female professor at the University of California at Berkeley. And they got into an interchange about a really current topic, even got into this with the Supreme Court nomination of Katanji Brown Jackson recently about what a woman is, what sex can actually give birth. I mean, this seems like crazy discussion, but I want you to hear the soundbite and then tell us how you think a Christian should respond to the kinds of accusations of transphobia that this Berkeley professor was making towards Senator Josh Hawley.

Professor Bridges, you said several times, you've used a phrase, I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it. You've referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy. Would that be women? Many women, cis women have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy. So this isn't really a women's rights issue.

It's a what? We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley. So your view is that the core of this right then is about what? So I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic and it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing that.

Wow. You're saying that I'm opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies? So I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide. So I think it's important for us- Because of my line of questioning? Because- So we can't talk about it? Because denying that trans people exist and pretending not to know that they exist- I'm denying that trans people exist by asking you if you're talking about women having pregnancies? Do you believe that men can get pregnant? No I don't think men can get pregnant. So you're denying that trans people exist?

Thank you. And that leads to violence? Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you? Absolutely. Or are they also treated like this? No, no, no. They're allowed to question me.

They're told that they're opening up people to violence by questioning. Oh, we have a good time in my class. You should join. Oh, I bet. You might learn a lot. Wow. I would learn a lot. I've learned a lot just in this exchange. I know. Absolutely.

Extraordinary. You heard that interchange there between Senator Josh Hawley, he's conservative, and this professor from Berkeley. That was just a worldview divide, a worldview battle coming from two totally different polar opposites. But this accusation of transphobia, as in, transgender people, they say, the statistics show, they say, commit suicide, there's violence done against them. So that's the immediate shutdown to anyone who would question this queer ideology.

So how do you think a Christian should respond to these allegations? Like if you don't affirm this, well, you're just you're causing violence against the transgender community. Yeah, I think we need to be honest. And being honest means pointing out that this is completely and utterly absurd.

And in fact, it's very dangerous, David, and I'll explain that in a moment. But, you know, a Christian cannot play along with somebody's delusions in good conscience. A Christian has to speak the truth in love.

And I think we're required to do that in this case. Now, I think the simplest explanation for what we just observed there is to go to Romans 1. What we're dealing with here is people who have deliberately suppressed the truth, the knowledge of God. His attributes are, of course, clearly seen in creation. And so a person has to be willingly ignorant to deny the existence of God, the fact that he's all knowing and loving, etc.

This is a willful decision. And we know what happens then is God hands people over to a depraved mind. And unfortunately, that's what we're dealing with here. But I do want to address the danger of this line of thinking because it is being weaponized right now. And it is going to be further weaponized in the months ahead in a way that is very, very dangerous for Christian families.

And so that's what I want to really emphasize here. They are setting up the argument to say that anyone who doesn't affirm somebody who is confused about their gender is necessarily a danger to them because this person who is confused about their gender may then be tempted to commit suicide as a result of somebody not affirming their delusions. Now this is the line of thinking that's being used right now by child protective services and by schools around the country and I've interviewed parents who have been victims of this where their child is coming to school, their child is being indoctrinated to believe that if it's a boy that maybe he could be castrated to be his true self, if it's a girl that maybe she could have her breasts removed, that she could have her genitals surgically mutilated to be her true self. And then when parents try to stand in the way and say, no, honey, sorry, you're a boy or you're a girl, God created you to be a boy, God created you to be a girl, every cell in your body testifies to the fact that you're either male or female, when a parent comes in and says that under this line of thinking that we just heard from this so-called educator from Berkeley, the parent then becomes a mortal danger to their child. And of course the job of the child protective services is to protect children from dangerous from dangerous home environments and if the parent might cause their child to commit suicide, they are by definition a danger to their child. And so we're already starting to see this and we're going to see it much, much more in the months ahead, David, unless we somehow as a society managed to get a grip on this. They're going to be splitting up families.

We're seeing it happening in Canada, we're seeing it happen in parts of Europe and we're going to see much more of it in the United States. But I think a simple analogy would suffice here to show the absurdity and the danger of entertaining these delusions. The example of a girl who's anorexic or bulimic is really perfect to illustrate the point here. If I had a daughter and I don't, I've got lots of sons but no daughter. If I had a daughter who came home and was skinny as a rail and said, hey, you know, I think I'm really obese, you know, I found out at school that I'm really, really fat and my teacher affirmed me in that and so I've decided that I need to go on a diet.

I'm not going to be eating anymore and in fact I think I would like some liposuction to try to get rid of some of this fatness so that I could be my true self because I want to identify as a skinny person. Actually I think, I don't think it's controversial to say everybody recognizes that a parent who said, okay honey, let's go get you liposuction, let's make sure that you can't eat anymore. Everybody recognizes that that would be abusive and absurd, why?

Because the child is not actually overweight, the child is not actually obese, the child is entertaining delusions and then to affirm that with surgery or other radical interventions would be cruel, it would be criminal and it would be dangerous. That's exactly what we're dealing with here and actually we were just talking about the Child Protection League when I was up in Minnesota last year speaking on education for the Child Protection League. They had a woman who came there who was a former transgender person. She had been and I got her on camera, she gave me her testimony, it was simply incredible. She had been indoctrinated to believe that she needed to impersonate a man and that she needed to take these hormones and she needed to go through these whole procedures and then she met the Lord and she realized that she had been deceived and so I think the loving thing to do as Christians is to say, look, your identity is not as a transgender person, your identity is not as a homosexual or whatever it is that the world is telling you. That's not who you are, that's something that you're thinking, it doesn't mean that's who you are and Christ can transform us.

So I think it's critical that we address this, David, we can't buy into the diabolical propaganda that there's something hateful about telling somebody the truth, that there's something dangerous about telling somebody the truth, that's preposterous. Very well said, Alex Newman with us today on the Christian Real View. Let's take a short break for some ministry announcements, help us sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ by calling 1-888-646-2233, visiting thechristianrealview.org or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. David Wheaton here inviting you to the Christian Real View golf event on Monday, September 19th at Woodhill Country Club in Wysetta, Minnesota. This is a rare opportunity to experience Woodhill with its immaculate condition, challenging greens and beautiful setting all in support of the Christian Real View Radio Ministry. Your registration includes lunch on the lawn, practice range, player gift and 18 holes with cart followed by appetizers and awards. Take a hole in one on number 16 and you'll take home a brand new Chevy. Bring your foursome or we can fit you into a group.

There are lots of hole sponsor opportunities as well. We hope to see you on Monday, September 19th. Registration deadline is Labor Day. To find out more and to register, visit thechristianrealview.org or call 1-888-646-2233. That's 1-888-646-2233 or thechristianrealview.org. For a limited time, we are offering My Boy Ben for a donation of any amount to the Christian Real View. The book is the true story of a yellow lab that I had back when I was competing on the professional tennis tour.

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It's 264 pages, hardcover and retails for $24.95. To order, go to thechristianrealview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for joining us today on the Christian Real View.

I'm David Wheaton, the host. Just a reminder that today's program and past programs are archived at our website, delchristianrealview.org. Transcripts and short takes are also available.

Now let's get back to the interview with Alex Newman. Alex, I want to transition here just in the last moments we have for this interview to talk about an article that's really representative of a lot of different articles being written about the evangelicalism in our country now as being so divisive, so attuned to Donald Trump, the president, former president, and so forth. So just to give you an example of one, it was written toward the end of last year in the Atlantic magazine.

So consider the source. It's a left-wing publication. It was written by a man named Peter Wehner, and he is a contributing writer to the Atlantic.

He's also the author of The Death of Politics, How to Teal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. So I think we kind of know where he's coming from, but the title of the column is The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart, and he goes into the division taking place right now between kind of the social justice side of evangelicalism, the more theologically conservative side, and then he writes this. He said, the root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, Christians become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation, it's having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.

One more paragraph. The first step was the cultivation of the idea within the religious right that certain political positions were deeply Christian. Still, some claims are not at all unprecedented in American history. The 2000s, even though the religious right drew its energy from the culture wars as hard as it had for decades, it abided by some civil restraints. And then they say this, to close a paragraph, then came Donald Trump. When Trump was able to add open hatred and resentments to the political religious stance of true believers, it crossed a line.

So you look at this, and this is the whole tone of the whole article. It was critical only of one side, the theologically conservative side as being those that are persecuting, basically, those who want more moderation, shall we say, within evangelicalism. Christians' views, Alex, are sourced—they should be, at least—directly from Scripture, how they interpret Scripture. So you take an issue like abortion or homosexuality, transgenderism, as you've been discussing, even race.

Don't show partiality, welfare, man won't work, neither let him eat. All the issues that really biblical Christians have, they try to understand Scripture in light of those issues. And so in the last election, you had a choice between someone like Donald Trump, who many evangelical Christians did not like his manner and his boastfulness and those kinds of things. But the other option was Joe Biden, who has completely rejected a biblical worldview for government and on these policies I just discussed. So the choice was fairly obvious for most evangelicals, at least conservative evangelicals. So how is linking evangelicals to Trump useful as a bludgeon for those trying to, I guess, marginalize or do something to those who are theologically conservative? Yeah, and I want to point out, David, that that's exactly what's happening here. They are trying to demonize conservative Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, and they're using Trump as a weapon to do that.

I think we need to start with some fundamentals. And I ask Christians this often, what part of your life is Jesus not the Lord over? If we are Christians who love the Lord, should be the Lord over every part of our lives.

He should be the Lord of our families, the Lord of our businesses, the Lord of our politics as well. And I think you pointed out very well that in the most recent election and in the one before that, by the way, we had the choice between somebody who at least claimed to value the Bible, at least claimed to want to stop the slaughter of unborn babies, claimed to have a more constitutional point of view. And so I think for a lot of Christians, it was easy to do that. Now, Bible believing Christians understand very clearly that we are not supposed to be putting our trust in princes, right? And to the extent that any Christians actually did idolize Trump on that level, that would be irresponsible.

But I think that was very, very limited if it even happened at all. I think that's the impression that the radical left and their allies in the media want to give though, that somehow Christians who support Trump have idolized him or have made him into a god. I don't know any Christians who have done that. But the goal here I think is to really try to divide the church and to try to marginalize more conservative elements. And this is not a new phenomenon for many, many decades in the seminaries. The liberal seminaries have been teaching pastors and church leaders that they should be very active in politics, they should be very active in social justice, that Jesus would want us promoting wealth redistribution, that Jesus was practically a socialist, right, and all these things. And of course, that's nonsense. The Bible explains very clearly what is the purpose of government, Romans 13, it's meant to punish evil.

God explained what evil was, murder, theft, adultery, things like that. So a Christian already has very clear guidelines as to what the purpose of government is, what the role of government should be. And in this country, as a self-governing people, where ostensibly we the people are supposed to be in charge, we Christians, when we go to the voting booth, we need to keep all of those things in mind. But they have been teaching conservative pastors, on the other hand, that, oh, politics is yucky.

Politics is worldly. Jesus's kingdom is not of this world, and so you shouldn't get involved in politics and things like that. And so what we see is a liberal, left-wing, so-called Christianity that really has departed from the Bible in so many clear and obvious ways, being highly active in the political realm. And on the other hand, conservative churches that have really retreated from the culture, from the political realm. And so what we're left with then is the godless in coalition with apostate Christianity misruling our nation and driving our nation over a cliff. So I believe, and actually I'll be teaching at a pastors' conference very soon here, the Liberty Pastors Conference, I believe that pastors and the church should be involved in all of these issues, again, with the clear understanding that we don't put our trust in princes, we put our trust in the Lord. But still, God has called us to make the Lord the Lord over every part of our lives, and that very much includes culture, entertainment, our homes, our families, and of course our politics.

Right. Alex Newman with us today on The Christian Real View. You had mentioned in our last part of our interview, one of the first questions I asked was about, where does the left, they're doing things that seemingly are just harming our country, not seeming, that are harming our country, making us weaker in the world. And you said basically, just to kind of give a rough quote, that they're trying to destroy the traditional, historic, constitutional America and make it into something completely in their own globalistic mind, utopia. Where do you see things going, like let's say in the next six months to a year? What is our country going to be like? I know no one can predict the future, but what is your best prediction about where this is all going?

Well, thank you, David. I think it's a very important question for Christians to be thinking about. And my assessment is that we're headed for some very significant turbulence in the months ahead. In fact, we're already there.

I mean, the last two years, I think, showed us very clearly how far our country has gone away from its biblical foundations, away from its constitutional moorings and toward something that is really alien to the American experience. And at this point, the momentum is so significant that trying to stop that is going to be like trying to stop a runaway freight train. It's going to be extremely difficult. Now, over the long term, of course, I could not be more hopeful. I'm anxiously awaiting the return of Christ. And I know that evil is going to be absolutely and completely annihilated and polarized and every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess.

So we have that to look forward to. But I think in the near term, I think America is going to experience a lot of turmoil. And I don't say that to try to scare anyone.

The Lord has not sent us a spirit of fear, obviously. But I do think we need to be mindful and we need to make a sober assessment of where this is heading. I think we're going to be heading toward civil unrest. I think we're going to be headed toward some very difficult economic times. In fact, we've already entered them and I think it's going to get much worse in terms of the currency, in terms of the supply chains, even in terms of the food supply. And I think we need to be aware of that as Christians and we need to be preparing for how do we help our neighbors through what's coming? How do we show people that Jesus Christ is the answer to all the problems that afflict our nation and our communities and our world? And so we need to be thinking in those terms, I think, as the body of Christ, because times I think are going to get tough.

That's not to rule out the possibility of divine intervention. Strange things could happen, but I think on the trajectory that we're on, we're definitely headed for some tough times. And I think it would be wise for Christians to prepare for that, prepare spiritually, potentially, even physically and financially, and not just to protect your own families, but also to help fellow believers and to help the lost all around us, because they're going to be looking for answers.

They're going to be wondering, what is happening to my country? What is happening to the economy? What is happening to our world? And we know as Christians, we have the answers. God gave us the answers in his word.

And so we need to be studying the word. We need to be in prayer, because I think it's going to be the time for the church to shine in the months and the years ahead. Alex, I really appreciate your concluding with that exhortation for believers to stay in the word, strong in the word, preparing for the future, trusting God, knowing that He's sovereign, these are all helpful things to have our footing to be able to stand firm in our rapidly changing world. Alex Newman, thank you so much for coming on the Christian Real View. We just wish all of God's best and grace to you. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it so much you having me on. Thank you for all that you do and to all the listeners out there. God bless you.

Now, again, you can find out all about Alex Newman by going to our website, thechristianrealview.org, and just going into the preview for today's program or going to the podcast notes if you're listening via podcast today. Now, just a few comments on the issue of education. Our government educational system is based on a communistic model. In other words, you are coerced out of your income through taxation, and then you're not given a choice where the money they take for education goes. They will only give it to a government-run school. Now, the government has interest in an educated population, so here's what they should do instead of only directing funds toward government schools. They should assign an educational voucher, a certain amount of money, to each student, and then parents can decide where they educate their children, and schools would compete to be better than the others so they attract students, be more of a free-market approach to education. But, of course, they will never do this because that would mean they would lose control over education and the children who go to school.

When you offer something to someone for free, so to speak, it's not free, of course, people tend to choose that option, even with the risk of having their children completely deconstructed. Now, we've experienced in our own family quite the gamut on schooling. We have just one son, and his first two years of school and preschool were at a local sort of quasi-Christian church school. Then he moved on to kindergarten and first grade where he went to the public elementary school where Brody and I both attended.

Now, this was definitely not a radical environment. All public schools aren't the same, of course. I would describe it as vacuous.

There was just little substance there. The books they would read or the books he would take home just had very weak substance to them because, again, government education ignores the most important thing in life, which is God, and that God has spoken to us in his word. We just came to the conclusion that what a waste of time to think you can be educated acting as if God doesn't exist. We decided to homeschool him in his second grade year, and that went well but wasn't really ideal for our family with just one child. The next year, we chose to put him in a local Christian school that's a part of a sound church, and he has really flourished in that environment.

We're going to stay with that for the foreseeable future. What I'm not saying by any of this is that your child can't turn out strong in their faith if they go to public school, but you're going to have to give daily attention to what they are learning and being very intentional about raising them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, countering what they're learning in public school. I'm also not saying that your child will turn out strong in their faith if they're homeschooled or go to Christian school, just like going to church doesn't make you a Christian. Some Christian schools can be little social justice incubation centers or teaching false or weak theology, so there's no guarantee there either. But generally speaking, and of course these are all generalizations I'm making, Christian values won't be constantly undermined, as you can count on if your child goes to a public school. God's word is pretty straightforward on parents' responsibility with their children. Ephesians 6, verse 4 says, fathers, interesting not to mothers, but to fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

In other words, don't constrain them so much that they have no freedom to move, but at the same time you're to discipline them, correct wrong behavior, and instruct them, teach good behavior based on God's word. The goal is to present the gospel so they can be saved and then sanctified. The gospel being that the creator of the universe, the holy almighty God, created each one of us in His image to be in relationship with Him, with the purpose of worshiping Him. But the problem is that we all, like sheep, have gone astray, we have sinned against this holy God, and the wages of sin is death, physical and eternal death, separation from God. There is great consequence to our sin against the King of the universe. But the good news is that God demonstrated His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's Romans 5, verse 8. And so that when we believe by faith alone in who Christ is, that He's the Son of God, and what He did for us on the cross, He paid the penalty that we deserve to pay for our sin, that God promises to forgive us and reconcile us to Him and grant us eternal life in heaven. That is the gospel.

If you've never believed in that, I urge you to do that today. If you need to find out more, go to our website, thechristianrealview.org, and click on the page, What Must I Do to Be Saved. Thanks for joining us today on the Christian Real View Radio Program.

In just a moment, there will be lots of information on this nonprofit radio ministry. Let's be encouraged. We live in a nation of godless indoctrination in our public schools, but we know that Jesus Christ and His Word are the same yesterday and today and forever. So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian Real View is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to Be Saved, go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Real View is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Real View partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianrealview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian Real View.