The Eric Metaxas Show - Frank Gaffney and Dede Laugesen
Episode Date: August 29, 2023Frank Gaffney and Dede Laugesen share an update on the plight of persecuted Christians around the globe. ...
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Eric Mattaxas!
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But before I do that, I want to remind you that we are doing a,
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Now, everywhere we turn, there's disaster, right?
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One of the things that we need to do is to step up and help those who can't help themselves.
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So before we get to my first guest, in the studio, my friend Frank Gaffney,
who's the president and CEO of something called Save the Persecuted Christians.
Also in the studio, D.D. Logason, I got to read this letter that I got.
And this was really, you know, sometimes I just can't believe what I'm reading.
Somebody named Buzz writes, hello, Mr. Metaxus.
I'm excited to attend the October 25th banquet at which I'm told you'll be the keynote speaker.
You see, I'm just a grounds maintenance worker, and I do the maintenance at the West Augusta Care Pregnancy Center.
This past year, there was a need for some major repairs at the facility, and I saw God answer prayers to get the work done in an astonishing way.
that was in September of last year.
I certainly have a story to tell.
It excited me so much that I went to my pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Augusta to talk about it.
There's some miraculous stuff.
And First Presbyterian Church did become more involved in supporting the work of the pregnancy care center.
God bless this man buzz tool.
Amazing.
He says, I also discussed some things with my pastor that have been troubling me that they didn't seem to want to talk about.
Then right after that, God basically threw it.
through your book Letter to the American Church at me.
See, this lawn care man doesn't read much lately,
but somehow God brought that book to my attention last September
when it was out off the press, and I read it,
and I realized it was talking about the same topics
I'd just been meeting with my pastor about.
So I gave, so I bought several copies of Letter to the American Church
and gave them out to several of my preacher friends,
thinking maybe they'll finally get fired up about things.
I'll have to say, sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case yet.
Anyway, this lawn care man has seen a lot happen in the past couple of years,
especially around the Augustic Care Pregnancy Center,
and I can hardly wait to hear you speak at the fundraiser banquet this October.
So this guy named Buzz, you know, this is my dream come true,
that someone who claims he doesn't read much is concerned.
He's talking to his pastor about how his pastor needs to speak up about the evil in the world,
about the myriad things falling apart.
And he actually goes and talks to his pastor.
That's amazing, folks.
That needs to be you.
And by the way, if you're at a church where they really do,
don't want to hear this stuff, they're not interested, you need to find another church.
I say this over and over again. There are churches that get it. You need to be a part of one of
those churches. Every single one of us needs to step up, but I want to say, God bless you,
buzz, for writing to us and letting us know that God put this on your heart and that you actually,
out of your own pocket, are giving copies of my book to preach your friends. It's just amazing.
Okay, folks, before we go to the guest, remember metaxis talk.com, we need your help. Hurricane
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clip right now. The warmth of the Atlantic Ocean. It's just so remarkably hot. And you've seen the
headlines of 100 degree water in the Florida Keys. Well, I mean, listen, it is record hot. And again,
The warmer the water is, the easier it is to evaporate that the moisture off the surface of the ocean
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Hey there, folks. Welcome back. It's my privilege to talk about what is unfortunately a very, very important subject. I am sitting here in the studio with my friend Frank Gaffney, who's the president and CEO of something called Save the Persecuted Christians. Also in the studio, D.D. Loggison, who's the executive director. To both of you, first of all, welcome. Thanks for coming to the studio.
This is a very important subject, and I want to, you know, from my audience, frame it because we hear about things that, yeah, there's not religious liberty around the world, people are suffering.
What led the two of you to really say that we've got to get the word out?
There's an urgency here that people aren't getting.
I would say for my part, it was the shocking evidence.
of the magnitude of this barbarous behavior towards people
simply because they follow Jesus Christ.
I think when we started, it was something like 240 million or so
people around the world, according to one of the keepers of this kind of data,
Open Doors USA, who were being heavily persecuted.
And that's not to say just mistreated or denied.
work or what have you, but brutally mistreated.
Today, despite our best efforts,
360 million, considerably more than the number of every man, woman,
and child in America are now being heavily persecuted.
So for that reason alone, we thought we need another approach.
And with DEDY's very considerable help,
we've tried to bring the idea that it's not enough simply to try,
try to minister to the people who are being oppressed or suffering or reduce the horrors
afflicted on them.
But we need to go after the persecutors.
We need to hold them accountable and we need to penalize them for what they're doing.
Well, so the question is what are we talking about exactly?
We're talking about many things, right?
First of all, we're talking about countries like North Korea.
So I think most people in response would say, well, yes, I know that.
that there are innumerable countries around the world
that do not have anything remotely close
to our American view of religious liberty,
that everyone is free to believe what he or she chooses to believe.
That is a rare thing in history.
It's unfortunately a rare thing still today.
What do you say to somebody who says,
that's just the way it is,
that we've got a lot of countries
where they don't believe in freedom,
much less religious liberty, and of course they're going to persecute Christians.
Well, I think what the world needs to understand is, A, persecution is bullying.
And religious freedom is a preeminent right here in the United States.
It gives you, it underpins freedom of speech, freedom of association, all those things.
The freedom to believe is that first foundational belief, to believe and form your own opinions
and to raise your own children in that regard.
There are 500 billion people in the world suffering under persecution.
Persecution is the systematic abuse of a group of people
by another group of people because of their beliefs,
be it political or religious or something.
The 360 million heavily persecuted Christians,
and that is a 65% increase in the last four years,
in a record number of countries, 148, reported back in 2018, more now.
It is with us. It always will be with us. People will have conflicts.
But pushing forward on that freedom to believe and to exercise your belief,
that is so foundational to peace and prosperity in the world that we must, as an entire globe,
work towards securing those rights, not only for Christians, but for all people of all beliefs.
It seems to me that the UN was flap and it scumns about this like a million decades ago.
When Norman Rockwell created those four, the four freedoms posters, and one of them was freedom of worship or whatever,
it seems to me that this is, as you say, this is foundational. This is very, very basic.
the United States has led the world and ought to lead the world in this.
But is the idea that an organization like the UN is turning a blind eye to this?
In other words, whom do we blame?
Because I don't really understand, you know, or is the United States itself,
have we been not beating the drum for religious liberty?
If I could just go back to one thing you asked earlier.
I think why this matters beyond our own borders.
is we have as a core, as did he said, foundational principle,
the idea that it is an unalienable God-given right
to have that freedom, not just because you're an American,
but because you're a human being.
So we have that as a responsibility, we believe.
But the problem is that the persecution that we tolerate,
and I think that's what we have been doing
as a government in a lot of places,
for some of the reasons that you've mentioned.
We have been doing it as a United Nations for sure.
In fact, worse than tolerating it, I think to some extent,
the United Nations is dominated by nations that are engaged in persecution.
I mean, that's the joke of the United Nations.
I mean, I just want to be real clear, folks.
I think the United Nations is a sick joke, really an evil joke,
because they have pretended that, you know, hey,
North Korea and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Iran,
they all have a seat at the table,
even though they don't believe in anything the UN was supposedly founded on.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought together
and was the purpose for the UN coming together in the first place.
And all of that has been shoved off the table.
You have China and others around and the worst of the worst
who are heading up the human rights commissions for the UN.
It's absurd.
North Korea, included.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I would just ignore the UN.
Are you saying that we should have a voice at the UN, that we should be fighting at the UN?
I just don't know.
No, I think you brought it up.
And I don't think our purpose is to promote the UN.
It's to recognize it's not doing what it was set up to do.
Yeah, that's a grand understatement.
Assure those fundamental freedoms.
But, Eric, the point that I wanted to get to is, and maybe you want to develop it a little later,
but if we had no other reason to be concerned about what is being done to Christians around the world.
And by the way, to Jews, too.
I mean, this is a people of the book problem properly understood.
It's coming here.
People who are tolerating it elsewhere are practicing it in our country.
So, as I say, this is not simply some sort of, you know, good of the order.
Well, now, what do you mean by that?
This is about protecting us and our inalienable rights in America as well.
When you say that people who are tolerant it abroad are bringing it here,
what do we mean by that?
I'm not clear.
I would say it's, for example, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is looking the other way.
Didi was recently in Nigeria,
and she can tell you horror stories about that as just one example.
The government of the United States is embracing the government
that is responsible for persecution as essentially an official function in that country.
And Joe Biden has told the Department of Justice and the FBI that Christian, especially Catholic,
traditional Catholics and other Christian extremists are, you know, potential terrorists in America.
I mean, that's the same thing happening increasingly now here as well.
Well, and we see the Biden regime there.
They're bringing in liberal policies, Marxist policies,
divisionary policies.
In President Biden's speech, was that just last year?
Philadelphia.
Yes, the red speech.
He stood and he proclaimed that conservatives, people with traditional beliefs,
people who believe that a man and a woman, that is marriage together,
that you can't have anything outside of that.
These beliefs run counter to the left beliefs,
but the Biden administration is forcing these cultural beliefs onto religious people.
And what you see is that you have Americans who are caving to this.
They're losing their faith because they want to be polite.
They want to be friendly with their neighbors and accepted and they're caving.
That's, I mean, you know, before we go to our first break, I was just going to say that.
A lot of this has to do with civics, right?
In America, we supposedly were raised to believe in the idea of religious liberty
and in the sanctity of the individual and how,
that's a beautiful thing, and it's been rare on the world stage in history.
And, of course, we want to export those ideas.
Because we don't hold those ideas because they're American ideas.
They're true ideas.
They're ideas that are true, and we want to share them around the world.
And we increasingly have people in this country who don't believe in those ideas,
who are leaders in this country, who don't believe in those ideas,
and are working against those ideas.
That's the shocking headline, folks.
We'll be back.
We're talking more.
and if you'd like to go to the website, go to Save the Persecuted Christians.org.
We'll be right back.
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specials 800-9783057.3057. Use promo code Eric or mypillow.com. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Frank Gaffney
and to D.D. Lagasen, who head up Save the Persecuted Christians. You can find it at
Save the Persecuted Christians.org. So what we're talking about, as you said earlier, Frank,
before we started taping, that it's on two fronts. This is happening around the world. But the particular
horror is that America, which was once a beacon of liberty and a beacon of religious liberty,
preaching it for the whole world, leading the way at the United Nations back when, a lot of the
leadership in the United States has backed away from that and clearly doesn't even understand these
things. In other words, they've gone over to the dark side, but they're unaware, really, of having
gone over to the dark side. They're just not aware of the most basic things about what is religious
liberty and why patriots have died over the centuries for liberty. So to some extent,
you know, I always say that, you know, if America is in a bad place, which it is,
that's because of the church. In other words, the church itself needs to remind ourselves or
relearn, re-educate ourselves on these basics, that these are the things that ostensibly
flow from our Christian belief.
we need to preach those ideas and we need to spread those ideas. And so I always lay the blame
with the church because the church has a voice that it's not been using. But when you talk about
fake Christians like Joe Biden, it kind of amazes me that they're not just lazy and dumb.
They are actively working against biblical ideas, against American ideas. That's the astonishing,
I guess, you know, inflection point. If you're, if you're, if you're,
if you're looking at where we've been going.
Look, if you're talking about Joe Biden personally, who knows what he actually is thinking about anything,
but he's enabling or acquiescing at least on his watch to behavior that is completely unacceptable.
And, you know, one prime example of this, just to bring it home,
the problem that you were just articulating, Eric, is in the course of this pandemic,
churches were shut down.
Houses of worship, places that people would go to
if practicing their faith as refuge,
as places to reinvigorate their souls
in very difficult times.
Tattoo parlors, marijuana dens, you know...
Liquor stores and abortion clinics and so on were kept open.
That said volumes.
about the status of the religious community in this country,
and the fact that so few, to your point, stood against it and objected
and ran the risks associated with doing so.
Well, I mean, I think the question is always, have they repented, will they repent?
You know, in other words, it's one thing to screw up and then to realize, boy, we screwed up.
We failed that test badly.
The question is, do you ever get it?
Do you ever understand, like, yes, we did fail, yes, we screwed up, shame on us.
We need to repent and make sure we never do that again.
And that's what I am trying to be a voice for to tell people,
if you're going to a church that is still on that page, get out of that church.
Don't go to a church that doesn't understand this kind of thing.
Because it really is fantastic to, you see it through history.
The complicity of the church in secularization, which of course leads to religious
persecution. Now that's basically what we're seeing in America. But where do you see hope? Or let me
just say, where would you, where do you at Save the Persecuted Christians? Where do you
see possibility of progress? Where are you putting your efforts? Well, I think persecution challenges
the faithful. The people that I have gone to visit with in Nigeria, and I was recently down on the
on the border in Texas and El Paso.
You know, these people who have been tried by fire,
their faith is alive.
They know what they believe.
They hold on to that faith,
and they are the inspiration to me.
Here in the United States, we've grown soft,
we've grown comfortable.
We really are the Church of Comfort.
We are not a Church of Mission
because we don't have Jesus to give to others
if we don't have Him in our lives.
And right now what we have in our lives is busyness and riches and comfort and all of that.
So what's happening right now, what I believe the Lord is doing,
is allowing our faith here in the United States to be challenged so that we can grow in our strengths
so that those who do hold to biblical values will reembrace them and rise up in that way because you're being challenged.
I think that's true.
I say that almost every day at this point,
that this is basically kind of what's happening.
And then the question, of course, becomes how many are waking up or enough waking up?
How bad will it have to get?
How bad will it have to get?
And I think, you know, different people kind of taste this at different times.
I think there are a lot of people, if you've been thrown in prison because you were taking selfies at the Capitol, you know, you're activated.
You're like, okay, I get it.
I have nothing to lose now because I've been treated like a dog for doing nothing.
There are people around the world.
There are people in this country who have suffered and they've seen the evilness of the evil.
They're not deluded anymore.
The question is how many more will have to see it before they do anything about it.
I want to – there's so much to talk about.
I just want to remind my audience.
I'm speaking to D.D. Logason and Frank Gaffney, who are with Save the Persecuted Christians.
The website, which I recommend to you, is Save the Persecuted Christians.org.
That's Save the Persecuted Christians.org.
This is a vital issue, and we'll be right back.
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advisor with the SEC. Welcome back, folks. We're talking to D.D. Loggison and Frank
Gaffney, save the persecuted Christians.org.
And Frank, on the break just now, you mentioned that, you know, first of all, elections matter,
and who is the president of the United States matters crucially on this issue.
And you just mentioned, something I'd already forgotten, that when Trump was in the White House,
he took a very bold action with regard to Erdogan in Turkey.
Talk about that.
Well, I think the thing that's important to the context of this is that Donald Trump,
was so seized with what this fellow Recepaita Erdogan,
the president of Turkey, an Islamist, you know,
of a tradition that has persecuted Christians for hundreds of years,
thousands of years, I guess maybe almost,
at every opportunity, Donald Trump would challenge Erdogan
to release Pastor Andrew Brunson,
an American missionary living in Turkey,
there just to try to bring Jesus to the people of Turkey.
And he was being imprisoned.
He was being brutalized.
I think Erdogan couldn't believe
that this was that important to Donald Trump.
So he just kind of rolled with it.
But finally, he just said,
okay, I'll make a deal.
If you'll get a Hamas terrorist out of an Israeli prison,
a woman as it happens,
I will let Brunson go.
Trump said no problem.
He gets Bibi Netanyahu on the phone,
says, Bibi, I need a favor.
Would you let this gal out?
Bibi says, the Prime Minister of Israel,
I'll do it for you, Mr. President.
Boom.
He goes back to Erdogan.
Erdogan says,
I'm going to take Pastor Brunson out of prison
and we'll have him under house arrest,
but we'll continue the prosecution of him.
And Donald Trump said,
you've lied to me,
and he did what we've encouraged him
and his successor to do, which is to penalize people who are engaged in persecution of Christians.
What did he do? He put high tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the lira, the currency of Turkey,
went into the NOSC drive. And very shortly thereafter, Pastor Brunson was released. Now, that's a very
small example, but it's a proof of concept. Well, it also shows you the character of Donald's
Well, Trump, see, this is the kind of thing that drives me bananas,
is that the guts that he has, his willingness to do that,
to use American power for God's purposes, for what is right,
we have tremendous power in the United States,
and oftentimes we don't use it, whether we're talking about China or whatever.
Trump really understood that, understands that,
and it is wonderful to be reminded sitting here of something I'd forgotten
that he went to bat for what was right.
And as usual, when the United States of America, you go to bat, you win because you do have the cards.
You do have the power.
But we have a lot of leaders, quote unquote, who they don't seem to be willing to fight in that way.
Now, Frank, I didn't mention it, but you were in the Reagan administration.
Ronald Reagan was one of those leaders.
He was.
He actually believed in right.
and wrong and in truth and injustice,
and he was willing to go to bat
in a way that most, you know,
rhino Republicans,
most just dead floating fish Republicans
are not interested in fighting
in that way.
And so it's, it's,
I had the privilege of meeting Andrew Brunson.
It was a White House-related event,
and I had forgotten because it's a while ago now,
but the leadership of the United States of America.
So I say this because to my fellow Christians out there,
if you care about this issue, you don't need to be a Christian,
but if you care about the persecution of religious minorities,
how you vote, whether you vote, is a huge issue.
If you don't vote, shame on you.
Because people are suffering as a result of having folks in the White House
like the current president, there's just no doubt about it.
And I think that it's one of the reasons I wanted to have the two of you here to remind people
that this matters.
Who you vote for matters.
Well, the comparison between the two administrations, this one and the past previous one with Trump,
President Trump came in and immediately elevated the protection and promotion of religious freedom
as a national security priority.
And then he went to the UN, first time ever.
And then he went to the UN two years in a row.
And he spoke about the importance of religious freedom and sovereignty.
So he was a huge supporter of this night and day.
He had a number of different beliefs come into the White House,
but he had Christian pastors surrounding him and praying for him.
He wore his faith.
Now we have President Biden who purports to be a Catholic.
I myself am a Catholic.
I don't think he's a Catholic.
He's promoting abortion and a gay lifestyle and all of these things that are completely against the faith that I grew up with.
You know what he's called?
Just so people are clear on the terminology.
It's originally Greek word.
It's hypocrite.
Yes.
He's a hypocrite.
No, but I mean, the point is we have to be really clear.
He's a hypocrite.
When someone like Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi says, I'm a Catholic, any faithful Catholic knows.
they're full of baloney. You cannot be a Catholic and espouse the murder of the unborn
and everything else that they espouse. I mean, Biden was the one who pushed Barack Obama
to have same-sex marriage at the top of the docket for things to get done. That was Joe Biden.
Yes, he's the champion for all of this. So the idea that people get away with even, or that he would
get away or others would get away with saying, Joe Biden's a Catholic, Joe Biden is a hypocrite
and he's a disgrace to the Catholic faith.
I mean, we have to be clear about that.
This is not something that is really debatable.
If somebody says, I don't believe the way you believe, that's fine,
but then don't claim to believe it.
And Joe Biden, I guess, to get votes and the Rust Belt has claimed, you know,
to be some kind of a Catholic, but it's a joke, and his values don't reflect that.
He's taking a sledgehammer to the Christians in the United States with policies that,
in the military and in the federal government itself, you know, forcing people to get the vaccination,
if it's against their religious belief, not giving any kind of waiver for those religious beliefs to hold back on that.
All of these things.
And Merrick Garland coming out and telling parents who'd gone to their school board meetings saying that they didn't want pornography in their libraries,
calling them domestic extremists, this is a sledgehammer.
I want to talk more about that specific.
specifically. We're talking to the folks with Save the Persecuted Christians.org. Don't go away.
D.D.Logason and Frank Gaffney are my guests. There would Save the Persecuted Christians, which you can find at Save the Persecuted Christians.org.
Didi, you were just talking about how Biden, I hesitate to call him President Biden because he was not elected, but President Biden or Biden or whatever you want to call him, has been very active in promoting policy.
that are genuinely anti-Christian, anti-biblical,
and yet he dares to call himself some kind of Catholic Christian.
And we have many in the Democratic Party that,
I don't know if they are a secularist or anti-Christian,
but they applaud this.
But then we have many Republicans who don't seem to call him on it.
They don't seem to want to take an opinion.
taking, they don't seem to want to stick their neck set on this either.
Well, and that is the, that's that lack of faith.
That's that lack of understanding of what your principles are.
I think here in the United States, because we've pulled back from a real practice of our faith,
so many Christians have, that you lose focus on what those principles are that you cling to
and that you will argue.
We've also been told as Christians in the United States and conservative,
that your voice is no longer welcome in the public square.
You are censored, you are shoved out,
so while people may be speaking,
the vast majority of Americans are not hearing this.
They're hearing that, oh, by gosh,
the LGBTQ community is really suffering.
And we should just abide by the fact that they have these...
They're suffering so badly that they only got a month to celebrate.
Just a month.
Just a month. Come on.
But they're allowed to parade naked men and women
through our towns and call it a family friendly affair?
So whom do we blame?
I mean, again, people are allowing this.
I put the blame squarely at the foot of the church.
That the churches ought to be incredibly vocal against this.
But we have a lot of really gutless, confused, feminized men of God.
They are not heroically leading in this.
They are not protecting the weak.
They're not protecting the young women that are.
being forced to, you know, change in locker rooms with men.
So ultimately, none of these things could be happening.
We can complain about those who are pushing this.
But we live in America.
It's a very specific Marxist strategy, Eric.
It's a very specific Marxist strategy to other.
And what you're seeing are the consequences of othering
that has been going on in the United States for some time.
Christians in America have done.
been cast in a light of negativity, that our beliefs are hurtful to others. All of these things
have been pushing us, marginalizing us, pushing us out of the public square. And in response,
the group that's being othered says, oh gosh, I better be nicer. I better, I better, you know,
maybe adjust my attitudes, change my beliefs and be flexible. But what you find is that that
that then gives them an open door to put the stuff into law,
to put policies in place,
what they're doing in the military right now.
And what it does is that it brings everybody to that place,
even in Nazi Germany, where you had the Jews,
were othered, harshly othered.
Well, now Christians in America are prime for the same kind of persecution,
and people call me crazy for saying this.
But it's building, and we're allowing it.
because we're policing our own thoughts.
Especially because, as you said earlier,
there's an accommodation
that you're not going to resist this
or you're not going to stand with the other
that enables more and more traction to be gained
by these diabolical forces.
So the question is, folks,
are you waking up and you being part of the solution
or are you one of those dead fish
floating down the stream?
Ultimately, you have to choose.
You can't have it both ways.
We are living at a time of choosing.
We've got plenty more with D.D. Logason and Frank Gaffney,
Save the Persecuted Christians.org.
