The Eric Metaxas Show - #216 - Ryan Helfenbein

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

What did America’s Founders actually mean by “religious liberty”?Ryan Helfenbein of Liberty University joins Eric to discuss the Christian influences on America’s founding, the Constitution, religious liberty, and why he believes the modern understanding of religious pluralism differs significantly from the framework held by many early American leaders.Eric and Ryan also discuss the postwar changes that reshaped the public role of religion, what Ryan calls “evangelical Gnosticism,” why many churches became hesitant to engage political and cultural questions, and the relationship between Christian faith and public life.Earlier in the program, Rod Martin joins Eric to reflect on the approaching third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the continuing debate over Israel and Gaza, and airline security following a recent violent incident involving a flight bound for Israel.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Chapter -- Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/🦅 Patriot Mobile -- America's ONLY Christian Conservative Wireless Provider: https://patriotmobile.com/partners/metaxas🏛️ Socrates in the City CRUISE: https://socratesinthecity.com/cruise/0:00 Eric Opens The Show4:24 Rod Martin Joins5:20 Three Years Since October 711:19 Iran, Israel And The Middle East13:32 Airline Security And The Flight Incident17:14 Ryan Helfenbein Joins19:06 What Did The Founders Mean By Religious Liberty?24:48 America’s Original Religious Liberty Framework28:25 Immigration, Secularism And Religious Pluralism34:02 “Evangelical Gnosticism” And Leaving Politics Behind40:33 Christianity, Public Life And “Loser Theology”44:32 Why Ryan Says Christians Must Understand Public Life- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to Tuesday, October 6th, 2026. We are still in the super centennial year. If you have not yet purchased a copy of my book Revolution, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know what to tell you. Everybody's raving about the book. And I have to say, I was not expecting that. When I was writing it, I was hoping. I just hope it's true and good. But people are saying it's that I can't put it down. It's a page turner. It reads like a novel. just go to Amazon and read the reviews. It is kind of shocking. I have to say, I am so blessed by the reviews. Friends of mine who've read it have said similar things.

It's very gratifying. But more importantly, it's important that we know our history. And I think this is the year. This is our 250th year, our super centennial. Very important that we know our history. So please get a copy. I should say that if you go to Amazon, that's the best place to get it.

The price is like 28 and change. They have lowered the price very, it's a $45 book. They've lowered the price on Amazon. Do not buy it at Barnes & Noble. We're boycotting Barnes & Noble. They don't carry the book. They're Marxists.

I don't know what's going on. But please get it from Amazon. Also at Amazon, they have bizarrely lowered the price of the Kindle from $30 for the Kindle to $3.99. I don't know how this has. happened. They've got some crazy 87% off sale on the Kindle. So, you know, if you want to read it on your phone, when you don't want to carry the book around, it's only $3.99. But please go to

Amazon. That's the best place to get it. That's my recommendation to you. I also want to say, in a moment, I should have said this up front. In just a moment, we're going to have our friend Rod Martin on the program. And after that, we're going to be talking to our friend Ryan Helfenbine. of Liberty University. I will be there tomorrow at Liberty University. Speaking at the convocation, 10,000 students, unbelievable signing books afterward. I'll be at the CEO forum in the evening,

signing books after that. But I want to say that my first guest, Rod Martin, I told you this. He has a new book out. And I'm begging you to get a copy of this book. If you want to know what President Trump is really doing because President Trump will not tell you. He's playing the game where he does this stuff. He confuses his enemies, but he confuses his friends sometimes too. If you want to

know what he is doing, he's reordering the whole global order. It's magnificent. He's dismantling the deep state. It's it's big. But Rod Martin writes about it and talks about it in wonderfully clear ways. And that's what his book is about. We're trying to get copies to the president. We will get copies to the president, actually. That'll happen in the next day or so. But the book is called Trump's New World Reorder. Trump's New World Reorder.

It is an important book. I ask you to buy a copy. And when you're done ordering Trump's New World Reorder, please reorder Trump's New World Reorder because you're going to want to give a copy to a friend. It's just a great book. I should also say that we, Odysseus books are the publisher under Skyhorse. So not only did I write the forward, but we publish the book, Trump's New World Reorder. I should also say, if you want to get most of my books, except for Revolution, which I say go to Amazon, the rest of my books, you can get really cheap at my store.com if you use the code, Eric.

Mystore.com, my store.com, that's her friend Mike Lindell, Mypillow.com, my store.com. Use the code Eric. Amazing prices. MyStore.com with the code Eric, most of my books. And we have a new sponsor. Patriot Mobile is a new sponsor on this program. We'll be telling you more about that. But right now I want to go to our friend Rod D. Martin. Hang on.

Hey there, folks. Here we are with Rod Martin as promised. Rod, I've been talking about your book a lot yesterday. I emailed President Trump's office. We're getting him copies and I need you to get him signed copies. We'll be talking about that off the air. But I would like to think that anybody

wondering whether I should vote in this election, if they have your book, they're going to be like, oh my goodness, how did I miss this? And how you missed it is nobody else is writing what you're writing in your book, which is kind of a problem. So folks, I'll say for the, thousandth time already.

Trump's new world reorder. Get a copy on Amazon. Immediately please pre-order a copy. Okay, Rod, what is going on? I wanted to talk to you in the news, like, you know, but I can't help but think tomorrow, you know, I mentioned I'll be at Liberty University tomorrow, but tomorrow is October 7th. And it is almost inconceivable that what happened in this country, or I'm sorry, around the

world after October 7th, the fact that we have people condemning Israel, condemning the IDF, saying free Palestine, calling this war that was started by these terrorist monsters, butchers, a genocide. They're calling it a genocide. I mean, it reminds me of what's happened, generally speaking, with voices like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. It's like the world has gone mad. And we can't process that what was done on October 7th was evil. And I just, I guess I really just wanted your thoughts on this very grim anniversary three years ago.

Well, it really is a marvel. I mean, Jews seem to be the only people on earth who can be the victim and be blamed for it, except Christian white men in America. So, I mean, it's really quite extraordinary and very consistent on the left. They have groups. They demonize. They define them to be the enemy and therefore, not just hateable, but in need of destruction. And we have seen that throughout the explosion of wokeness here. We saw it in China in the 60s and 70s with the Cultural Revolution. It's the exact same playbook. It calls itself by different names. It calls itself here by critical theory and the various subsets. thereof, but it's really just Maoist, and that's what we're seeing. So in the Israeli context, you know, let's just have a little bit of history here. Originally, the Palestine mandate,

as granted to the British under the Treaty of Versailles, was all of what is now Israel and the West Bank in Gaza and Jordan. And so when the British carved off Jordan, they already gave the Palestinians 80% of the land. And then in 47, when the UN said, hey, we need to have a Jewish and an Arab state in the remnant of the Palestine mandate, the Jews agreed to that. They're like, that's fine. Okay, of the 20% remaining, we'll give half of that, so 10% of the whole, to the Arabs. That's fine. We just want a place we can call our own. And everybody in the world agreed to this, except the Arabs who all invaded Israel and didn't establish a Palestinian state. I think that's the most salient fact.

When the Arab armies invaded the land and they took the West Bank and they took Gaza, they didn't create a Palestinian state and nobody in those territories thought there should be a Palestinian state. They were made Jordanian and Egyptian nationals. and that continued until Israel captured that territory in a defensive war in 1967, and then all of a sudden we have to have a Palestinian state. Well, first, you already have one. Second, it's been offered to you three separate times. Bill Clinton is especially bitter about this.

He staked his legacy on a deal with the Palestinians. Got them 97% of everything they agreed to, including sovereignty over the Temple Mount. including a capital in Jerusalem, and they launched a war instead of taking it. So when that's what you're dealing with, there's no question who the aggressor is here. The Israelis have every right to defend themselves. Proportionately, October 7, I think I saw the math, for that to be equivalent to 9-11, we'd have had to have lost about 50,000 Americans on 9-11. it's not equivalent to 9-11, it's equivalent to Nagasaki, and somehow they're the bad guy.

I'm sorry, I just don't see it. Well, the bloodthirstiness of Arab Muslims, who, you know, we have to be clear, folks, they're not like, you know, defending their backyard and their kids. No, they are butchering innocence. We have to be honest about this. If you can't be honest about this, you cannot have a conversation. They're butchering innocence. They went in on October 7, three years ago, and they butchered innocence, young couples, children.

This is what they did. Now, if you're so messed up that you can't face that or you have to call that Jewish propaganda, that's what the Nazis did. Okay? The Nazis said, you know, all the stories of, you know, killing Jews. It's Jewish propaganda. It's international Jewish Bolshevik. propaganda. Okay, if that's where your brain is, good luck to you, because I have nothing to say to you.

There is nothing that can be said. There are people that are so out of touch with reality. But if you really want to understand what happened, it was an act of terrorism that is just almost unbelievable, almost unbelievable, but unfortunately it is believable when you understand the bloodthirstiness of these folks. They want to start a world war. They want a bloodbath. This is their theology. Well, here we are. It's been three years tomorrow to the day.

Very grim, very, very, very difficult to process. I guess any other thoughts on that before we move on to other subjects, Rod? I would just point out that October 7th was an Iranian op. The Iranians pushed Hamas to do. this, knowing that they would get annihilated in the process for the purpose of torpedoing a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And that succeeded for a while. It's not going to succeed in the long term, but it did delay it. And that was essential to the Iranian program. That's also true of Hezbollah, of the Houthis, of the Shia militias in Iraq, of the Assad regime in Syria.

There is not an armed conflict in the Middle East that isn't directed from Tehran. And so the president is perfectly, perfectly correct in trying to chop the head off that snake, that has to end. And when it does, we see the results. Everywhere in the Middle East, you're seeing peace agreements and commerce rather than chaos, and these last boxes have to be checked. But if the Palestinians want a prosperous future, all they have to do is stop all of these attacks. They can turn Gaza, and we will help them turn Gaza into a new Riviera, into a new Singapore.

All they have to do is want it instead of just murdering Jewish school children forever until they draw a response. Well, look, this is like saying to the Blue State mayors and governors, we can turn Chicago, and San Francisco and Portland and Seattle into glorious cities such as they once were. Let us help you. Their answer will be and has been to the president, no thank you. We prefer the crime and drug abuse and homelessness. We prefer that. Somehow that reflects our values.

Having people sleeping in their own feces and squalor, we prefer that because we don't want your help, federal government. We don't want your fascist help, President Trump. in improving our situation. We're in love with the misery. This is what we're dealing with on the left. It's madness, ladies and gentlemen, you have to just understand.

It's madness and it's evil. And that's what we're dealing with. We just got a couple minutes before we go to Ryan Helfenbine. But I want to ask you, Rod, what happened on that plane the other day? Again, more terrorism, more Muslim lunacy. We have a radicalized. terrorist,

um, Islamist, Muslim, trying to stab a pilot to take down a plane of Jews. Ideally, to crash it into Tel Aviv Airport, we now know that this was his beautiful goal.

What a beautiful thing for a beautiful religion. To want to butcher Jews, uh, in Tel Aviv. It's just, this is, this is the religion of peace. But,

um, you have any thoughts on this almost hard to believe again, uh, terrorist plot and the, glorious, glorious ability of people to save those hundreds of lives? Well, they are heroes, much as the flight 93 passengers and crew were heroes. And we just can't possibly say enough good about them. I'm so glad that these guys survived.

But I think what it tells us is that after a long hiatus, the age of plane hijackers, has returned. It was started by the Palestinian terrorists, and here we are again. So I think it's about time we notice that this happened on a fly Dubai flight. It did not happen on an L.L. flight, L.L. being the Israeli airline. L.L. hasn't had hijacking since 1977. when Bibi Netanyahu's brother was the only person who died at Entebah, other than the terrorists, in rescuing the passengers on the plane,

an extraordinary operation. And they have instituted airline security that actually works, consistently works. And it's about time that we noticed and took a page out of it and quit doing the airline security theater that we've been doing since 2001. want. Oh, don't get me started. Okay, Rod, I'm sorry, you have to go, but we love you. Folks, if you have not yet, listen, I'm demanding this. This is like a federal law. Trump's New World Reorder is the book. Go to Amazon pre-order a copy. Trump's New World Reorder. Rod, we'll talk to you very soon. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.

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That's 972 Patriot. Okay, folks, it is now my joy to be joined by our friend Ryan Health and Bind of Liberty University. Ryan, welcome back. Hey, Eric, great. be on with you blessings brother i was just telling everybody i'm going to be there actually later today you and i uh by the grace of god should the lord terry we will have dinner tonight and tomorrow morning i'm speaking at the liberty convocation if there's anybody uh that wants to come they can come to the

convocation to hear me talk about my book on the revolution i guess correct yeah so there there is a way to get there for guests specifically your guests uh that could could technically come and uh they just need to email us at news at liberty.edu. News at liberty. You can get their information and then we can get them in. That'd be amazing. And there's going to be a book signing after the convocation so people can get books signed.

Yes. You'll have the ability to do that. Okay. Yes. Okay. And then in the evening at the Champions Center at Liberty University, I'm going to be speaking at a CEO forum. I believe the event is closed, but there's a.

a book signing afterward if you want to come and get a book signed after the CEO forum in the evening at the champion center okay well Ryan listen uh I wanted to have you on for some time because you and I when we bump into each other you start talking to me about religious liberty and how you think uh some of our friends are getting this a little bit wrong in other words we both believe in the concept of course of religious liberty and liberty in general But in America, what does that mean? In other words, I would say religious liberty means if somebody wants to be an atheist or a Muslim or whatever they want to do, they have the liberty to do that. But there are limits to this ultimately.

And you talk to me about that. Right. What are the limits of religious liberty? In other words, as set down in our constitution, what is religious liberty and what is it not? So the first thing that everybody needs to understand is that we did have a historic founding. I mean, you wrote about this in the revolution. Many Americans today, and I would say evangelicals included, are our own worst enemy when it comes to our understanding of the historic founding of America. Most of us have been taught in a post-1940s, 50s, 60s understanding of our history.

and that has been reframed in a understanding of a post-war liberal consensus. So after World War II, there were a lot of changes when it came to the Supreme Court. There were various rulings that were handed down going from 1947, all the way to 1972, that changed our understanding of an ordered liberty of various restrictions. And this is true when it came to criminal law. Mirandizing, you know, criminals, having greater leniency when it comes to sentencing. There was a lot of changes that went on in the 50s and the 60s. But one of the biggest ones, the most pivotal, was on the understanding of religious liberty,

no longer was it a Christian framing, sort of a Christian consensus where we understood that our Constitution is a Christian document. there is Christian common law that our nation is a Christian nation. And by the way, all of these words that I'm using were rulings in the 1800s. You go back to the Holy Trinity case of 1893, Justice David Brewer said that America is a Christian nation. There was a case in, I think it was 1848, the Vital case, which ultimately said that our common law is a Christian common law. And we can go back further. But our problem today is not just secularists, but even evangelicals who have bought into the idea of religious pluralism. And they've understood

freedom meaning that everyone and anyone who comes to the United States has full unfettered access to, let's say, put up a statue of a Hindu god or to put a mosque on any locality. or even to put a shrine in the Iowa state capital to Satan. And that all of that is basically religious liberty. Wrong. It's not. And we have a huge problem because there's a vacuum right now. And as we immigrate more people and as more people are born, you know, post-1950s and 60s, they have a completely different understanding and fundamental assumption about what the rule

of law entails and what religious liberty actually means. And the biggest problem is that as we get further and further away from our founding and we have less and less people understand what ordered liberty actually means, we no longer can guarantee the other fundamental assumptions of basic pre-political human rights because they're all Christian. They're the right to free speech. the right to a fair trial and due process, the right to have no unlawful searches and seizures. All of that is based on a Christian understanding of the common law, which stems all the way back to England. And many people today, if you come from a secular's background, if you lean Marxist, if you're Islamic, and you want to practice Sharia law, none of that is compatible with the historic Christian framing of the Constitution. the problem. I want to remind my audience, I'm talking to Ryan Helfenbein, who's the VP of Communications

Public Engagement at Liberty University. He's also the founding executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center, where he's the host of the Give Me Liberty podcast. I just want people to know your credentials because, you know, you speak with authority on these issues and not as the scribes. And some of the scribes are friends of ours. So this is very important stuff. Let's go back to what you just said. In other words, what are the limits of religious liberty and what at what point do we diverge? In other words, you know, when you just said that illegal search and seizures, all the stuff that we kind of take for granted as liberty, you say is unavoidably linked to a biblical view of everything. So at what point does religious liberty threaten that understanding?

Or I should say, at what point does an erroneous view of religious liberty, you know, as we've seen in the decisions from the 1940s onward and Supreme Court, at what point does that undermine actual liberty? Yeah. So basically, if you go back to the original understanding in the Constitution, if you go back to our founding, you basically have an understanding where the government cannot. punish you based on your religious affections, church attendance, they can't tax you on those things. That was the understanding of religious liberty back then. There were initially some faith tests that were in those early constitutions, but eventually those things got pulled out. There was a Supreme Court justice, his name was Joseph Story, writing in his commentaries in 1833 on the Constitution. He basically said that, the entire point of religious liberty was to eliminate rivalries among Christian sex. In other words,

the idea was not to have a state, at the federal level, a state church, similar to what you would have in Europe, whether it be Catholic or in England, if you basically had the Church of England in which the king or the queen sat on the throne was ahead of the church, a monarch heading the church, that America was going to be fundamentally different, right? William Rehnian. who was once our Supreme Court Justice, who was replaced by Justice John Roberts in 2005, he wrote in an opinion in 1985 that essentially the founders had it right, that their understanding of religious liberty was not pluralism, but was basically what I described, eliminating rivalries between Christian sex. In 1833, when Joseph's story was writing his commentary,

he said that it was always about the promotion of the Christian faith in the public square. In other words, if you look at public schools, the primary text was the Bible. If you look at Congress, they used taxpayer dollars to fund the printing of Bibles, to proselytize the Native American Indians. I mean, that's unthinkable today. But basically he said it was not about the promotion of any other faith, including what he called Muhammadism, essentially Islam, even Judaism, even though we had Hebrew congregations, but it was always about the promotion of Christianity. So when you fast forward, after these cases

in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s that eliminated prayer from public school, Bible reading from public school, that defined in 1947 in the Everson case the wall of separation, which was a flawed premise coming from an obscure private letter that Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist of Connecticut who were griping about their own state and the restrictions on the freedoms that they had, he was talking about a wall of separation, meaning that Baptist should be afforded religious liberty in Connecticut.

Baptist should be able to practice their faith and should be tolerated. That was the point of his letter, and that was written in 1800. And so all of that's been redefined, Eric, and then in basically 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law the Heartseller Immigration Act. So prior to the 1960s, the primary immigrant population that we pulled from came either from Protestant countries or Catholic countries, but they didn't come from the two-thirds world. They didn't come primarily from India or Asia or even Africa, but primarily from traditionally Christian nations.

After the Hartzeller Act was signed, it flipped. All of a sudden, there became a priority to immigrate people from other parts of the world that did not have an assimilating ideology. Now, I just have to interrupt and ask you. First of all, we know the Democrats are bums, almost everything to be traced to them. LBJ, one of the most corrupt human beings ever to sit in the Senate, certainly in the White House. But what was it that made him in 1966 enact these new policies?

Was there an idea behind it? Why did that change? So here's the part where I'm going to speculate. So the Civil Rights Act of 1964 talked about no discrimination based on race, sex, religion, right? and agree with no discrimination. Of course we agree with that. Of course we agree with striking. That idea of no discrimination and toleration of differences, that is a biblical idea.

That is a Christian idea. It is not a Muslim idea. It is not an atheist idea. Exactly. So let us be clear that idea is a Christian idea. But go ahead. Yes. So all of a sudden, though, that gave way towards.

So remember the wall of separation. Christianity is being hollowed out from our civic institutions being replaced by secularism. And secularism is not a neutral belief. It is a religion unto itself. It's become a privileged belief and a status belief of all of our secular institutions. Nature abhors a vacuum. And when that comes into power, all of a sudden, if you noticed, we basically have a new form of discrimination. Secularists get to pick and choose.

winners and losers. And so oftentimes awarding status and privilege to minority religions. And so in 1966, I don't know if it was an early play of affirmative action or diversity, equity, inclusion, but the idea was to diversify the United States population by bringing people throughout the world into the United States. Many of many immigrants, obviously hard workers. many immigrants are cheaper labor for the Chamber of Commerce, you know, Uniparty. So the idea is they come to the United States. They work here. They live here.

And maybe it makes the cost of business cheaper by having more and more immigrants. But either way, when that changed, it introduced a whole new populace into the country coming largely from historically pagan, animistic nations. And the biggest part of assimilation when it comes to the constitutional order, when it comes to society, is the undergirding beliefs, right, that dominate their entire way of life. It basically, you have to have some kind of fundamental buy-in to become an American. In other words, you know, we talk about oftentimes, what does it mean to be an American? and, well, we're a creedal nation, you know. We go back to the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among them, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. That is all well and good. But behind that is the pre-existent presuppositional understanding of who is the creator. Who is the God of America?

Everything you just said, those are Christian ideas. And this is why I've gotten enraged in doing the research. on my book Revolution to see these are in these are unavoidably Christian ideas ladies and gentlemen you do not get the idea that all men are created equal from the Quran you do not get it from atheist philosophy you don't get it from the the Hindu writings you do not so these ideas that we all say all Americans have to believe are biblical ideas period there's no way around that And I think it's interesting, Ryan, because I think I want to get to kind of again how this happened. I think Americans are because we're fundamentally Christian, we're loving toward others with whom we disagree.

That's a Christian value, right? That we can disagree, but I'm going to love you. God loves you. That doesn't mean I agree with you. And we have leapt to this idea that we're going to tolerate other views to all views are equal, which they are not. Even the idea that I'm going to tolerate other views is a Christian idea. It's other views, I just said the Quran.

They don't believe in tolerating other views. They believe in wiping out other views, however they can get away with it. So this is a real, it's just a funny thing how this happened. And you talk about evangelical Gnosticism. Talk about that idea. In other words, how Christians. have bought into these bad ideas. Okay, so part of what happened in the 1950s and 60s, of course,

we had some institutions that were pushing back. Christianity today, we would all like just be shocked to know this, but once upon a time, this was a conservative magazine. Once upon a time Christianity today was actually Christian, which is an amazing thing to think back that far to when it was a good magazine. Okay, so way, way back when Carl Henry who was a Christian, was behind Christianity today. What did they assert?

So he basically warned about an impending evangelical Gnosticism. In other words, evangelicals would someday abandon the public square in seeking out comfort, the private life, the quiet life, or the pietistic life. Basically, the idea that, hey, politics is for politicians. we don't need to be invested in this. By the way, we leave here one day. We're going to escape the doom because Jesus is coming back. That's right.

You know, just hand out some tracks and groove on the rubble, man. We don't care about culture. Yeah. That's exactly. Yep. We've seen that theology. Yeah. And that came to actually define much of the evangelical world.

Now, we had some pushback against that in the late 70s when Jimmy Carter was president, the founder of this institution of Liberty University, Dr. Jerry Falwell, who once was an independent fundamentalist Baptist in the 1960s, who basically said, I want nothing to do with politics. He had a change of hard, change of mind after Roe v. Wade and basically said, no, no, it ends here. We are going to do something about abortion. We're going to do something about politics. And we need to come together and form a coalition. That's basically what he did.

And he worked with all kinds of people, including Chuck Colson and D. James Kennedy and many others in the 1980s, basically to form a mighty evangelical voting block. And that was important because it pushed back against that kind of malaise of we don't care about politics. No, we do care about politics because guess what? Politics cares about us, whether we like it or not. I love that promise from Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11, for I know the plans I have for you, the plans to prosper you, not to harm you, but to give you a hope in a future. That was God's promise to his covenant people.

Well, guess what? The government also has plans for you, and it's not always to prosper you. It's not always to do good for you. If you are not involved, it's still going to get involved with you. And many evangelicals through the years, as many might vote and vote in a pattern that is conservative,

and we see this year over year over year, there are still many, many more who are not voting. Carl Henry's warning of evangelical Gnosticism is still true today. 32 million evangelicals didn't vote in the 2024 election. It's estimated that many more will not actually vote in this election. And it's because somewhere in the thinking, and this has been ingrained through the decades, is that we need to just focus on preaching the gospel,

we need to focus just on conversion, and then we'll leave the troubles of the state to the state. Hey, if you decide to participate, that's great. But we're never going to talk about what's actually happening in our city, our county, our state, or even our nation from the pulpit. So many evangelicals are completely oblivious to what's actually on the ballot,

not just who's on the ballot, but what's on the ballot in the place that they live? Well, I've talked about this so much in the last, let's say, four or five years that I'm fatigued with it. It's unbelievable, really, that there are many, many, many churches that do not stick their necks out politically.

They seem to think, idiotically, that whatever their theology is, has no bearing on politics. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just remind you, that's insane. Okay. Do you have a position on slavery? Do you think slavery whites and slaving blacks? Is that a moral issue?

Well, because it once was a political issue. And if you don't speak against it, if you're okay with it, if it has nothing to do with your faith, I want to know what kind of faith you have. And there are plenty issues like that. Today, people say, no, no, that's different. No, it's not different. There are moral issues constantly that we have to deal with politically. And when you don't vote or you don't care or you go to a church that pretends like that's for some other person to worry about, you are complicit with evil. When evil comes to the nation and as it's been coming for decades and it's here, it's because Christians didn't vote or people that have a biblical view.

You don't have a Christian to vote in the right way. People who don't have a biblical view or an understanding of the Constitution don't vote or don't care. then the nation is taken over by dark forces that have a completely different view of reality. And so I say to people, if you're going to a church where the pastor doesn't take a stand on this stuff, my goodness, you need to find a church that is discipling the congregation to think biblically and to understand that living in America, we're free people. We have to vote. We have to vote on issues that will keep us free.

And there are just so many people who are in my church, we just preach. the Bible. Actually, you don't. If you're not talking about these things, you're not preaching the Bible. You're kidding yourself. I don't know if it was you, Ryan, that used the term conversionism. It's like this idea. The only thing that matters is evangelizing people. Well, no, folks, that is not Christianity. Evangelism is important. But if that's the only thing you focus on, it's kind of like saying, like, I believe abortion is wrong. And the most important thing, the only thing that matters is not having an abortion. Well, there's more. to life. So you need to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. And this idea that we can only

talk about one thing is madness. The Bible doesn't just talk about one thing. But I mean, we're dealing with this right now. I mean, it really ties into, you also refer to it as loser theology, this idea that like, we'll just lose graciously the way Jesus did. Like Jesus just said, well, you know, go ahead and crucify me. And I mean, it's a real theological error, basically. We have abandoned this whole idea or concept of the theology of a remnant, a faithful remnant, and the theology of victory. I mean, read Romans chapter 8. We are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John chapter 10, fear not for I have overcome the world. Yeah, in the world you're going to have trial and tribulation. Fear not I have overcome the world. We oftentimes will take out of context what Jesus says to Pontius Pilate when he

says, my kingdom is not of this world. That preposition of means from, okay, meaning that my kingdom is out of this world, but it's coming into this world. Remember the Lord's prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are to make as Christians the supremacy of Christ and the will of God first and foremost in every aspect of our life, and that includes politics. So, So this is kind of the classic Abraham-Typer statement. There's not one square inch in the whole of human domain or human existence over which Christ, who is Lord overall, does not say mine. It's all his.

And so Christians have thought about this largely in kind of fuzzy, almost platonic, you know, Greco-Roman terms that the point. of Christianity is only martyrdom. The point of Christianity is that we die here, lose here, and then leave here. But we don't think about what Jesus said in other parables when he compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which is the tiniest of all seeds,

but it's planted in the garden and then grows up into the largest of all trees providing shade to the garden. Excuse me, in the first century, we had some 500 followers of Jesus, watch him ascend into heaven after his resurrection. He commissions them to make disciples, basically obeying and following the command and will of God, not just converts, but actual disciples

who will do the will of God, who will obey him to the point of death, who will never surrender. There are only 500. There are now over a billion people worldwide. Now, I know they're not all Christian, but they do claim the name of the triune God, God the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit.

explain that in any other terms than Jesus actually fulfilled what he said, that the kingdom of God is the mustard seed, and it's grown up into this mighty tree. And we have something like 17 nations now who claim the name of Christ that are actually quote unquote Christian nations. They don't all have the same form of government. They don't all have the same laws, but they are better than any other kind of country or nation

that doesn't have Christ. And that's something we have to recognize. And I think a lot of Christians today are basically, they're baptized into the beliefs of secularism. They've been indoctrinated in public institutions. They've been doctinated in public schools, indoctrinated in public colleges. They may Eric go to seminary for three or four years

to learn theology, but they didn't learn American history there. They didn't learn about America's founding. They didn't learn about Reform Covenant theology in terms of how that actually had influence on our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. They didn't learn about the English Civil War or what John Locke's treatise on government was all about

in terms of the intersect of faith and public policy. Many Christians today have assumed the posture of neutral secularists when it comes to this question of religious liberty. That's why we have the problem. we have today. I have to say, I mean, this is so important, folks. We have an election coming up. I beg everyone to get involved.

Get involved with TPUSA. They're knocking on doors. This is very, very important. This, I mean, it's an interesting thing because God has called us, you know, to be salt and light. That means being involved in the political process if you can. Now, if you're a slave, you can't be. But if you're a free American who can vote, you have an ability to bring God's will into government,

to bring God's will into government in such a way that your tax dollars are spent in a way that blesses human beings, that blesses people. If you don't vote, there are people, they've got all kinds of other ideas. And so it really is vital that people get the vote out. There's so much deception out there. There's so many people who think of themselves as Christians that are very, very fuzzy on this. as you've been talking about, that they have a very sloppy idea of what it means to be a Christian. It's all focused on just evangelism, whatever that means. This is very, very important.

I mean, we have James Talariko claiming to be a Christian, running for Senate, and I just think, my goodness, I mean, look, we're all flawed. But what he is preaching, it's not just that he says something and falls short. He is preaching ideas and has preached ideas that are completely heretical. And that are more important to the issue, fundamentally destructive to the state of Texas and to the United States of America. And they're Christians buffaloed into the idea that maybe I can vote for him or I don't really like the other guy. I'll vote for him. I mean, it's just shocking.

It's shocking. Well, most elections are determined by very thin and small margins, largely these independents. I don't know who these people are. I've never actually met these people. You might have in New York, but I have not. like people who have no clue what they believe one way or another. I've met hard and leftist all the time, and I've met true conservatives.

But these people who are kind of mushy in the middle, what the Democratic Socialists are banking on and largely the Democratic Party and a candidate like Tala Rico is this pivot back towards some kind of simulacrum of religion, some kind of expression of faith, because they had a hard pivot back in 2012, You might remember they voted God out of the platform.

So the idea is, hey, maybe we can get somebody who can sort of posture himself as an evangelical. This guy was seminary trained from a left-wing seminary. But basically, he will go out there and be our mouthpiece. And there's a number of confused people in any state who will vote for him. Yeah. I'm afraid we're at a time. Folks, I've been talking to my friend Ryan Helfenbine of Liberty, University. Ryan, just a joy to speak with you. I will see you, by God's grace, should the Lord Terry,

I will see you for dinner tonight and we'll be together tomorrow at Liberty. Again, I'm speaking at the convocation in the morning at the CEO forum in the evening. Very excited to be with you. Thanks for being my guest. Thank you, Eric. God bless you. Hey there, folks. Suzanne and I want to invite you to join us for something extraordinary. It is a Socrates in the city cruise on the Mediterranean, August 24th, September 1st, 27. That's a year from now. We'll spend eight glorious nights aboard the magnificent sea cloud spirit sailing under full canvas through Sardinia, Corsica, and Elba. But this is not your typical cruise. Throughout the voyage, I'll host special Socrates in the city conversations

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