The Eric Metaxas Show - E.W. Jackson

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Bishop E.W. Jackson stops by the studio to discuss his powerful new book, "Sweet Land of Liberty: Reflections of a Patriot Descended from Slaves."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blob starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of the blob. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film,

but they had to cut his scene because the blob was supposed to eat them. But he kept spitting him. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest. Eric the Texas! Wow. I'm back. I feel like I just came back like, you know, with some kind of a time machine or something like, boom.

Oh, look around. We're back. It's 1975 again. Yeah. No, honestly. Can I just say you look like you're in five different time zones right now. I have that. I have that.

I have that feeling. Like my body doesn't know which, uh, which, uh, which continent I'm supposed to be straddling. Twilight Zone. I, um, I, um, I just got back from an eight day trip. That sounds like a setup for a punchline. It does. Uh, I just got back from an eight day trip. And I want to tell everybody about, uh, most of it.

The parts that I can tell. And, um, I, before I get into that, uh, first of all, today is Wednesday. Wednesday? Okay. Yes. Tomorrow I'm leaving again for Denver, Colorado. But that's nothing compared to what I've been through. I'm speaking twice in Denver, Colorado, and then I don't travel for a little while.

Praise the Lord. Okay, today in both hours of the show, I'm going to be speaking to, I can't say this if he's here because I don't want to embarrass him. But one of the finest legal minds in America. I'm here, but I'm here. No, no, no, no. It's not the other one. The other one. Yeah.

His name is Hadley Arks, A-R-K-E-S. He is someone that could have been, I'm not kidding, on the Supreme Court. He was friends with Antonin Scalia. And, you know, just a tremendous legal mind constitutional scholar. He wrote a book called Mere Natural Law. We're going to be talking about that. him on not so long ago, but it was via Skype and the connection wasn't great. And I thought, if you ever come to New York, it'll be a big deal to have a conversation with him. And frankly,

he's the sort of person that if I could, I would love to do with Socrates in the city with him because he's extraordinary. So we're going to be talking to Hadley-Arx for most of the day. And I'll tell you, this is my favorite kind of conversation. But before we get to that, we got a lot of ground to cover, Albin. First of all, tomorrow in the studio, before I leave for Denver, theoretically, Ken Fish. fish will swim into his ken like a planet in the skies what is that poem it's the uh is that wordsworth like a planet when a planet swims into his ken or stout cortez uh gazing at the pacific from a peak in derien anyway ken fish okay will swim into his ken uh tomorrow on the program yeah and uh and and that's exciting yeah

And then I go to Denver. But I, we've got to announce the grand prize winners. Yes. For the CSI campaign. I want to say this again, folks. We did a campaign. It's over now. If you didn't participate, too late.

I'll tell you, to those of you who did, we are very grateful. You've changed innumerable lives. I really don't even want to talk about it because I get choked up. It's so unbelievable. but CSI Christian Solidarity International freeing slaves in Sudan. It's the real thing. Whatever you gave, we put your name in a hat and we picked out three names randomly. And Albin, I wonder if you could pronounce that middle name.

I'm going to, well, maybe we won't pronounce the last name, but just like a, right? Oh, we can only say that, you know what, yeah, you're right. Let's do that because we don't want people pounding on their doors. Hey, give me some money too. Yeah, we're only sending you sign books and swag. And t-shirts and hats and stickers and flamethrowers. So, okay, the first winner, these are the three winners. Herb, or is it herb, a herb from Verona, New Jersey.

There's got to be more than one herb in Verona, New Jersey. But one of them is our grand prize. Herb, honestly, congratulations. Thank you. This guy's from Raleigh, North Carolina. The last name is very Greek. The first name is also Greek. Stratos, from Dirae, North Carolina.

How you say this? Stratos, Sincharitia, eh? Seriously, this is exciting. We've got two winners. Herb from Verona, New Jersey. Stratos from Raleigh, North Carolina. And then finally, this name looks vaguely Irish in background. Bernadette.

O'Malley or something, Bernadette from Bowie, Maryland. Those are the three grand prize winners. God bless you. And to everyone who gave to everyone who gave, thank you, thank you, thank you. And God bless you. We are just tremendously grateful. Now, Albin, we've got a lot to cover here. First of all, I wanted to tell about my trip.

I don't know. Can I, do we have time? We have some time. Before we get to Hadley. Before we get to Hadley. Before we get to the constitutional legal discussion. Yeah. I know I say this all the time.

If you go to Ericmataxis.com, much of this I've communicated to those who are on my email list. So you go to Ericmataxis.com. And if you go to Ericmataxis.com, the bonus, which we sent out yesterday, which you can never get on this program, folks, is the photographs. And the photographs make it. But where do we start? All right. On Memorial Day, you know, I was in Danbury, Connecticut with my folks on, you know, that weekend. And but then had to come home Sunday because Monday, Memorial Day, not seem so long ago,

I've taken six plane rides since then and spoken seven times. On Memorial Day, I flew to California. Why? Because Jack Hibbs, the great Jack Hibbs. was putting on a pastor's conference in Huntington Beach. And it was so impressive. I mean, it really was a very big deal. I didn't expect to, it was a one-day conference,

but I just showed up at the dinner because I spoke in the evening. I was like the main speaker. And I walk into this ballroom, and there were way, there were over 500 people in this ballroom, you know, pastors and their wives. And the idea that Jack Hibbs, pastor Jack Hibbs, you can go to jackhibbs.com and find out more about him. But he's a heroic figure in America because he's a pastor who understands that what I've been trying to communicate in my book, led it to the American church and what others have been trying to communicate that. Those of us who understand what America is and how it works have an obligation to step up and to do something.

We can't just sit back. And a lot of it has to do with the pastors and the churches. And so he's been heroic. So he put on this conference. It was an extraordinary conference. I believe all of these talks that I gave, we've sent out on the email, the Eric Mattaxas.com newsletters. So I spoke that night.

The next night up in Chino Hills, about an hour away, inland, is his church. What a church. Amazing. Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills. and he had a Wednesday night service and I had a conversation with him. So it was, you know, like one of those conversations. So that was the beginning of the trip. And I thought, you know, I'm all the way in California.

Do I want to go all the way back home to New York, only to get on a plane really quickly and go all the way back because I had to be in Portales, New Mexico? Most people in New Mexico, when you say, do you know where Portales is? They say, what? Yeah, those are the people that live right next door. Those are the people live right next door. Portales is this tiny town. And I posted the photograph. When I entered Portales, there's a billboard that tells you population 4,700, whatever.

It's really a, so I knew I had to get to Portales. So I said, maybe my friend Skip Heise, who's a pastor in Albuquerque, or as my father says, Albuquerque. Maybe he would let me speak in his church, so it would kind of make sense for me not to come all the way home and whatever. So I went from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. But even before that, where do I start? Albin, you know what? We're going to go to a break here. When we come back, I'll tell you the rest of the story, and then we will have a – I've got to tell you, I'm excited to have a conversation with Hadley Arks.

His book is Mere Natural Law. He's the kind of guy I think, boy, do I wish I had a professor like this when I was in college. Absolutely fantastic. So it's Wednesday. We're back. Hadley Arks tomorrow. Ken Fish, yada, yada, yada. We'll be right back.

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tell you, folks, I just come back from this trip. I was just telling you about it, that I was on the West Coast and then some. I don't know what that means, but it's true. I was in the West Coast, and I came up with one joke during my talk. Like, sometimes, you know, you're talking, this happens to you all the time. You're talking in like a stupid joke will occur to you.

And so I've been using it in every speech. When I talk about my book, Letter to the American Church, I say, and it's the shortest book I ever wrote, which is true. And I say, in fact, it's so short, you probably want to buy two or three copies. That's good. Which doesn't make sense.

No, it does. But it's sort of, it almost makes sense, which is the best jokes almost make sense. And your brain goes, what? So, yeah, it's such a short book. You really owe it to yourself to buy two or three copies. So, but, so I was traveling around. So I was mentioning I was at Jack Hibbs in Huntington Beach, California, where I ran on the beach. Now, people don't know this.

I certainly didn't know this. I left on Memorial Day. It was sunny and bright and wonderful. And you go to Southern California, you think it's going to be more of the same, right? Wrong. They have this thing called June gloom where basically it's like 65 degrees, chilly and overcast.

And I'm not kidding. So I thought, oh, I'm going to run at the beach. I'm going to get some color in my face. And it's just kind of feel like, you know, the summer has begun. Not even close. Not even close. But anyway, so. So after that, I went to this wonderful home in Beverly Hills, met these delightful people.

I'll tell you about that another time. But an amazing home in Beverly Hills since I had a day before I had to go to Albuquerque. I then ran on Venice Beach. Some people have heard of famous Venice Beach or whatever. I went for a run there. So now I go to Albuquerque, all right? I land in Albuquerque. And as I mentioned, my friend Skip Heitzig, who has an amazing.

church in Albuquerque. He said to me, yes, Eric, want you speak Saturday night and then Sunday morning, but then Sunday morning, I don't have to get in a car to drive three and a half hours from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Portales, New Mexico. So Skip Heitzig, being the delightful friend that he is, says, you know what, I may be able to work it out. Somebody in my church has a plane, he may be able to fly you to Portales, cutting it from three and a half hours to an hour.

The only problem is he can have to get in a twin-engine Cessna, and who knows. But when I arrived in Albuquerque on Friday night, I had dinner with the great Stephen Collins. Now, some folks know he's been on this program. This is the man who discovered biblical Sodom. Now, if you get my newsletter, Eric Mattaxas.com, you saw the photos, folks. and I only posted some of them. But after dinner, he took me to this warehouse,

and this is like something out of a movie. You go to a nondescript, like just this crummy-looking area with, you know, like there's a nail salon and a this and of that, and then there's some other building with no windows, opens the lock, opens the door we walk in. And there is tons of stuff from biblical Sodom. The stuff that was there,

37 centuries ago, when God's judgment fell on Sodom, blasted into thousands of pieces, reconstructed over these decades that he's been doing these digs there. I walk in the room and here it is. Here's all the stuff. And he showed me the original piece that, if you've read my book, is atheism dead. And I want to be very clear.

I don't care if you read the book, but it wouldn't kill you to buy a copy. In the book, I talk about this moment when they're excavating, you know, they're not sure yet if this is biblical Sodom, because a lot of people think, well, come on, you're never going to find Sodom, you know, from the Bible. So this is when they go and they dig down and they get to the 1750 BC kind of strata, stratum, and they find a five-foot-thick layer of. ash and soot. They call this the destruction matrix. I love these terms. And within the ash and soot,

scattered in a way that no one's ever seen anything scattered before. Again, if you read about it and is atheism dead, you'll get the details. But no one's ever seen anything like this before. Because here you have an average of five foot thick of this soot and ash that nobody knows what to make of it. It doesn't line up with anything from, anything else, you know, volcano, earthquake, fire, nothing makes sense. What is this? And within it,

they find tiny bits scattered like through a blender of these little, what is it, like melted human bone, melted brick, a piece of pottery burnt on one side and not the, like bizarre stuff. So the first thing they find, and of course this is, Dr. Stephen Collins is a ceramic typologist. So like from a hundred yards in the dark. He could be like 1425 BC, olive oil jar, Nick. He sees this piece of pottery, and he knows that it's from 1750 BC because he knows this stuff, but it has a green glaze on it. And he says, that's not good.

If it's got a green glaze on it, like a glassy glaze, it can't be from 1750 BC because the glassy glaze technology was not invented until 700 AD. by the Muslims, like this is all messed up. Wow. So he ticks the piece, he looks at it, he flips it over, and he determines, no, no, no, it actually is from 1750 BC. What is this glassy glaze? And that's when he takes it back to New Mexico to have it looked at at a lab. And they say, oh, yeah, this was subjected to, like, you know, 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit heat, which melted the – imagine melting the ceramic.

This is like melting the surface of it into, like, like, you know, a half a millimeters worth of, glass and then, you know, what could do that? So bottom line is he hands me the piece itself that he found. And I get to look at this. So I took a picture. He shows me melted brick. He goes, this is where the brick bubbles from 10,000 degree heat for, you know, a millisecond. He shows me all this stuff. He shows me these explice. I mean, imagine, again, this is hard to imagine. But when the, what they call the airburst event happened, which is a meteor comes into the, atmosphere and explodes, creating like an infinite level wind and heat for, you know, it scatters everything.

So it's not just that the pottery, any pottery that was not vaporized, gets blasted across like 100 yards. So then you have to go and reconstruct. It's so bizarre. So they reconstruct some of these things. And he shows it to me. And you can see the burn marks. And I thought, I'm looking at, 37-year-old burn marks.

from when God judged Sodom and Gomorrah. So this is in my newsletter, Eric Mataxis.com. But to get to see this stuff, it is actually way too much for the brain to take in. And again, there was an article in Nature magazine about two and a half years ago.

I challenged you to read that article. This is in a peer-review journal. You tell me what you think. But I got to see all this stuff. It was just absolutely amazing. He told me other stuff to look forward to. So, okay, then the next day I preach in Skip Heidzig's church.

Sunday comes, I preach in Skip Heidzig's church twice. We go to a little airport. We get on the Cessna, and we fly across the vast Martian desert to Portales. I land in Portales. I go and I speak at a fairgrounds in Portales. Now, by now, I'm a little tired. I'm tired just listening. I'm tired just recounting it.

And then after that was, by the way, the people in Porteisle's, could not have been sweeter. The sweetest people, oh my gosh, just wonderful. Then I got to get in a car and be driven an hour and 45 minutes to Lubbock, Texas, because that's where I'm going to catch a plane, which I did catch, to fly to Dallas, where I slept in the airport hotel so that the next morning you, Albin, and I, Eric, could get on with John Smirak to do a show, which was that Monday? That was Monday.

Today's Wednesday. Yeah. Then I got on a plane, flew back to San Diego. I'm ready to take a nap, just to just talking about this. Flew to San Diego. From San Diego, in San Diego, I collapsed in a heap. And then I spoke at a T.P. USA Faith Pastors event. Actually, T.P.O.S. Faith event at a church called Foothills Church in El.

it's El Calhoun in El Cajon which is the San Diego area and that was the night before last yesterday I woke up poured myself into a plane seat

flew home and here we are but honestly the details if you go to Ericmontexis.com you'll see you know if you get my newsletter so Alvin I just want to tell some of the highlights of the trip we have a lot coming up this week.

I mentioned this week we've got our friend Ken Fish coming up. We have Bishop E.W. Jackson. He's kind of a big deal. He's written an important book called Sweet Land of Liberty. A lot of crazy things coming up. I think we better go to a break. When we come back, we're going to have a very significant conversation with the great man, folks. Get ready.

Hadley, Arcus. We'll be right back. If I could fly like birds, High, then straight to her arm. That goes sick. It's far beyond a star. It's near. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain.

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You can also find deep discounts in all MyPillow products, including the MyPillow 2.0 mattress topper and My pillow towel sets. Don't wait any longer to get the best sleep of your life. Take advantage of this amazing offer. Go to mypillow.com and click on the radio podcast square and use promo code Eric at checkout. Don't wait any longer to get the best sleep of your life. Call 800-978-3057 or go to mypillow.com now and use promo code Eric. Folks, we have a change in plans. We in the football world, we call it an audible, where we say, you know what, we were going to do that, but now we're going to do this. We were going to have on the constitutional legal genius Hadley Arks, but we have a change in plans. Evidently, he was picked up by a UFO. That's the thing now. But they said they're

going to bring him back for tomorrow's show. So today, actually, I'm thrilled. We get to talk to Bishop E.W. Jackson, who's with us in the studio. Just so happens, you're with us in the studio. And I was going to talk to you anyway. Welcome. Thank you so much. Now listen, you're a little complicated because I've known you and of you for years. You have a new book out called Sweet Land of Liberty, Reflections of a Patriot descended from slaves. So our main topic today is this book, Sweet Land of Liberty by Bishop E.W. Jackson. But when I look at your bio, you've got a complicated bio. So I want to mention this to folks, just so you get some background of who we're dealing with here, right?

Okay, you now, and you go by EW? What do you people call you? Yes, EW is fine. Yes. You joined the Marine Corps in 1970. You went to the University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1975, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1978. While there, you studied at Harvard Divinity School, and you were licensed as a Baptist minister. You were ordained as a pastor in 1979 and consecrated as a bishop in 1998. Now you're the host of a national radio talk show called The Awakening.

You have a television program. I'm getting fatigued just reading your extraordinary short biography. But you're a man of many talents and accomplishments. I've heard you preach. The last time we were together was at Andrew Womack's conference, maybe a year ago or something like that, up way north of, not north. The altitude was higher than Colorado Spring.

It was like 9,000 feet up. Andrew Womax got this university up there. And I thought, this is what it feels like, you know, if you don't sleep for two days or, you know, whatever, like major jet lag being at 9,000 because there's no oxygen. So that's the last time that I was with you. And I was just focused enough to hear you preaching. And it was wonderful.

But that's before this book came out. So I want to talk to you about your life story and about the book, Sweet Land of Liberty. What led you at this point to write a book like this? Well, it's been in process for a long time. but what motivated me, Eric, and by the way, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be on with you because, and first of all, for you to say my life is complicated and busy, I kind of get a sense of what you're doing so. I'm just trying to throw people off the track because my life is like loony.

But no, but you are. You've done a lot of different kinds of things. And it's such a joy when we can have someone with us in the studio. You know, usually we do things other ways. But it's just a joy when you're only coming from Virginia. Virginia, so you're able to make it here. But I'm just grateful to have you here. Well, I'm glad to be here. Look, the motivation for writing the book is, to just put it very simply, Eric, I love this country. I really believe that America is one of the greatest gifts God has ever given any people.

If only you could get this message out to Whoopi Goldberg. Just kidding. Okay. You are a patriot, and I've heard you many times, and you do love this country. And that's why I'm a patriot. I'm it's so important to hear from you. But I guess have you ever told your story in book form like this before? No, this is the first time. And, you know, it's interesting. I begin the book by talking about musing as I have from time to time. What if I had been born some other place?

What if I had been born in some other country? And I talk about the results, what the results could have been. I'm an outspoken person. I like expressing my opinion about things. There are places where I probably would be dead by now. Yeah. Or in prison somewhere. Yes.

Many times over. Yes. But we grew up in America. Amen. We're allowed. We have this crazy thing. It's called freedom of speech. It's amazing.

And the idea that God gave us, that God gave us that right, not human agency. Well, isn't it amazing that God gave us that right, but we live in a country that enshrined the rights that God gave us. our Constitution. That is pretty amazing. It is extraordinary. How do we get the word out about this great discovery? Because a lot of people don't know this. Well, look, that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book and why I'm so grateful to be able to talk about it. Because part of what my thesis is, look, I understand slavery. I've studied the history of slavery pretty well.

I know that I am a descendant of slaves. But I also understand the history of the world enough to know that it wasn't unusual. It wasn't unique. It wasn't different. It was kind of the way the world was. So I have to look at America in light of that. And then in light of what we did about it. And in my view, we rose above it in a way that no other country ever has. And so that's something to celebrate. I'm not resentful of my country. In fact, it makes some people irritated. I've gotten some bad reactions. I tell people, you know what, I don't care how my ancestors got here. I'm just glad they got here because they got here. That made it possible for me to be here. But also, Eric, I really believe that the hand of God was behind engineering the existence of this nation.

And when you peel away the obvious, oh, slavery was terrible. And yes, it was. But when you see the hand of God moving like he did with Joseph to put people where he wanted them to be at the right time. For me, there's nothing to do but celebrate and be grateful. Well, I mean, there's that famous passage from the story of Joseph, except we're at a time in this second. I will quote the scripture. When we return, don't go away, talking to Bishop E.W. Jackson. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Bishop E.W. Jackson, the brand new book, Sweet Land of Liberty, reflections of a patriot descended from slaves. So we were just talking about, you know,

what you said, that how you got here, how your people got here through the slave trade, something that anybody with a brain knows is a satanic abomination, a wicked thing. But in the scripture, in the story of Joseph, what man intended for evil, God intended for good. Now, if you don't understand God, it's impossible to get that. And I understand there's some people that they just get angry. But you were just talking about the fact that however you got here, you're in America and you're grateful to be in America because there is no country like America that has overcome so many of its own sins and things and continues to try to get it right. Just that idea is extraordinary.

And when people try to kick that to the curb, you're thinking, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, no. Historically, this is a big deal. You've got to acknowledge it. And the Judeo-Christian roots and foundations of our country have made us the most charitable nation that's ever existed, have made us the nation that's proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world more than any nation. that's ever existed. You know, we've got so much to celebrate. And I say people ought to be

obsessing about what God wants to do through you in a great country like this of such opportunity rather than what you perceive, others have done to you, real or imagine. And, you know, and this is the other thing. I mean, not to put too final point on it, I was never a slave. You were never a slave master. And this idea of bringing the past into the present and trying to make us all relate to each other on the basis of institutions. that ended 150 years ago, I think, is really self-destrope. Well, look, it gets so crazy, right? Because my father grew up in Greece, okay?

The Greeks were enslaved by the Ottoman Turks for centuries. Many Greeks hate the Turks to this day, despise the Turks for that. Now, that's understandable. But I have met Turks who are my brink. brothers and sisters in Christ who love me and I love them. And to try to lock things in and to cling to this bitterness, we could go on and on tracing history. And it just gets crazy.

You and I know that black people today are enslaving other black people in parts of Africa. Today. Today. So it's at least very complicated. And when people try to say, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, black people are the victims, white people are evil oppressors. It's very simple. That's Marxist lunacy.

That really is not reflected in history. And we've just kind of be real about it. But people don't want to be real about it, which is why I'm glad you wrote your book, Sweet Land of Liberty, because people need to know, you know, from your perspective as a man who grew up in this country. And Eric, what I'm trying to do is give God's perspective on it. because God is not going to judge any one of us on the basis of our skin color or our ancestral background. It's what we do with our lives.

One of the things that incenses me most about this ideology of victimization is it robs people of a sense of any control over their own destiny. I was born into, you know, you said you could get into my background, but I was born into a broken home, raised in foster care. I ran the streets in the early adolescent years of my life, was committing petty crimes. I mean, I was the person you point to and say, that kid's headed for destruction. That kid's headed for jail or an early death. But through a series of circumstances, mainly my father, taking me out of that, that situation and taking custody of me, my life was transformed. But the opportunities that America offered were already there.

I was just on a track not to take advantage of any of them. And nothing changed dramatically in the nature of the country. It was always there. the dad who said, go, go for it, go do it. No excuses. I don't want to hear them. And so I wasn't it funny. You hear this story over and over.

Larry Eller was just telling this story. He tells it over and over again about how he grew up and his father's perspective. Unbelievable story. When you hear, I've had the privilege of speaking with Justice Clarence Thomas and looking at his book, reading his book and the documentary about his grandfather, giving him this tough love. And isn't it interesting how it is usually fathers that are willing to tell young men that tough, you know, like, listen, you better straighten up, you better.

It's kind of like God created men and fathers to be able to do that in a way that is more difficult for mothers typically to do, which gets us to the importance of fathers. But that's another story. Well, it's an important story because, frankly, Had it not been for my dad, who I really believe God used, my father got saved late in life. He wasn't saved then. But he was a man who honored and respected the existence of God and that God gave moral rules and guidance and direction that you shouldn't ignore. And had it not been for him, I probably would not be sitting here right now.

I probably would be dead or in jail. So I celebrate a country that takes a kid from foster care and says, hey, you can go to college, you can go to law school. I didn't know anybody important. I didn't have any great connections. I didn't have any money. How is this possible if America is so systemically racist? And, you know, like you said, Larry Elder and me, I heard Sonny Koston, I think, say to Tim Scott. Well, you're the exception.

Well, there are a whole lot of exceptions in America more than anywhere else in the world because the opportunities afforded here. It's an extraordinary thing, you know, when you talk about all of this stuff. I mean, I think a lot of people, most people in America, understand this stuff. It's only the liberal elites that are, frankly, just they're nuts.

They have bought a narrative and they will not let it go. But growing up myself in a working class environment, middle class America, whatever, this is, most people understand this stuff. Especially if you're growing up like I did in the 70s,

you went to Harvard, law school in the 70s. In other words, the country had begun dramatically to move beyond the ugly side of this narrative and was allowing folks like you to go to Harvard Law School. And unfortunately, let Barack Obama go to Yale Law School. But it's kind of funny how people want, they want to ignore all that, and they want to get caught in that bitter narrative. And it makes you feel good because you feel emotionally.

or rather spiritually superior. And I bought into that. Listen, I drank that Kool-Aid when I was at Yale. I got all this junk when I was at Yale, and it's only by God's grace that I have seen past it. We're going to be right back. We're talking to Bishop E.W. Jackson. The book is Sweet Land of Liberty.

We'll be right back. Hey, get rhythm. When you get the blues. Come on, get rhythm. When you get the blues. Get a rock and roll. Welcome back. We're talking to Bishop.

EW. Jackson, what does EW stand for? Earl Walker. I was named after my godfather. Earl Walker, E.W. Jackson. All right. So you're talking about your story growing up, and I didn't know most of this, that you were in foster care. You were headed for trouble, and your father put you on the right path. You go to the Marine Corps, which will often straighten out people. and then you end up at Harvard Law School. When did you know that you wanted to achieve some measure of success,

go to law school, go to Divinity School, become a pastor? How did that all happen for you? Well, again, my father began to instill in me the moment he took me out of foster care, and it was dramatic. I mean, it happened in literally one hour. He picked me up off the street, took me to my foster home, told my foster mother, that he was taking me and she became hysterical. I mean, literally, crying, weeping,

because she'd had me since I was 14 months old. Oh. But my father said to her, if I don't take him, we're going to lose him. Because he saw that the foster family had not been able to keep you on the straight and arrow. And they couldn't, because I was resentful, Eric, I was a young kid.

It's why, in some ways, I have a lot of empathy for these kids who are out here committing all these crimes because my attitude was, well, my mother and father aren't here to tell me what to do. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. what to do. And so he taught me, look, son, you can do anything with your life that your gifts and talents and abilities will allow you to do. And you better go do something. My father had a sixth

grade education. He was a third class welder. And he used to tell me, I better not see you come to my workplace. You better be working with your brain and not with your brawn. And, you know, when I was about to apply to law school, I had three professors, all of them white, who told me I wouldn't try to get into Harvard Law School because, you know, black people don't do well on standardized tests. And so you ought to lower your sights a little bit and be a little bit more realistic.

There's an example of actual racism. Yeah. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah, you black people, you know, you got some things you're good at, but standardized tests, as a rule, when you got that color skin, that's not going to work for you.

Well, you kind of, it seems like you proved them wrong. Well, see, it made me angry because when I heard that, I thought, well, wait a minute. Because my father always said you go over, under, around, or through obstacles. You don't let anything stop you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish in life. So, you know, I did very well on the LSATs. Once they told me that, I said, well, let me just figure out what's the LSAT all about? I think the LSAT is considered technically a standardized test.

Just so happens. It's a standardized test. So you did pretty well on the LSDs. The law school admissions test, right. I'd been a straight-A student. And I thought to myself, and they say, Well, because it's culturally biased and black people don't get the culture. And I thought to myself, my ancestors have been here 200 years.

I think I've got the culture. Yeah. I think I understand the culture. And you know what, even if there is a little cultural bias, because look, this is no joke. I grew up in a working class European immigrant home. And I remember the SAT in the late 70s. There was a little cultural bias in there. I remember one question about a surge. suit, right? A blue

surge suit. Now I know, oh, a blue surge suit. But growing up in that world, I didn't know what that was. So I would have gotten that one wrong, you know? So yeah, there's some truth to that. But guess what? If there's a will, there's a way and somehow, uh, you found your way

through, even though, you know, I started taking practice exams on my own. I timed myself. I did it again and again and again and again. I wanted to walk into that test knowing exactly what I was facing. So, but here again, it wasn't that some, some thing happened and suddenly whatever racism might have been there. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I just saw opportunity and I went for it. This is, listen. That's the message. This is just the beginning of my conversation with Bishop E.W. Jackson. The book is Sweet Land of Liberty. Reflections of a patriot descended from slaves, Sweet Land of Liberty. We'll be right back with E.W. Jackson.