The Eric Metaxas Show - Robert Royal

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Robert Royal, author of "Columbus and the Crisis of the West," helps set the record straight about Christopher Columbus, his voyage, the times he lived in, and the background of the man himself.

Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Please keep your arms of legs inside the car at all times. This is your final warning. Now here's your host, Mr. Thrill Ride himself. Eric Mataxis. Folks, it's the Eric Mataxis show. In a few minutes, we're going to be talking to an expert about Columbus, stuff that you have not heard. And an hour or two, we're talking to Pat Boone.

If today, however, is Wednesday, then that is not happening. On Wednesday, if today is Wednesday, in a couple of minutes, I'm talking to Senator Ted Cruz, who has a new book out, and then we're talking again to Anne, Anne McInney and Phelham McAleer, both of whom are Irish, just as my guest is now. Kristen Getty, welcome to the program, and you are very Irish. Eric, Texas. I am very Irish. I'm as Irish as they come, I think.

Yeah, I think so. And I'm sitting in Northern Ireland right now. And where are you now? I am in the north coast of Northern Ireland right now. You're kidding. I, for some reason, just assumed that you were in Nashville with your current husband. What's his name? Keith.

I know, Keith. He is still my husband. He is here with me. Yeah, we flew back a few weeks ago with the four girls and it's been fantastic. Oh, my goodness. I am just amazed that I can do a program with somebody who's in Northern Ireland right now. Well, I want to get right to it because you have a new album out, you meaning you and Keith, the Gettys.

It's an even song album, and it's hymns and lullabies at the close of day. And the big news to me is that it has displaced Frozen 2 as the number one kids album. I mean, that's unbelievable. Frozen 2 was on there for 3rd. 36 weeks. And you guys, you, my friends, displaced Frozen 2. On behalf of the world, let me thank you. So tell us about this wonderful, tell us about this wonderful album you've done. I know it's a toss-up as to whether the girls know the songs from Evensong Better or know the songs from Frozen 2. You know, but we knocked them off for one week. It was a cool thing.

But yeah, so this is an album that we did just this year. During lockdown, it was pretty crazy. and trying to navigate a creative process during a pandemic, but we managed to figure it out. And as you said, hymns and lullabies at the close of day. So even song is that old traditional idea, long practiced by the church and the more traditional liturgical church, of a little service at the end of the day, finds you where you are, leads you to the Lord,

and brings the calm and the peace that that would bring. So it's songs and prayers and liturgy traditionally. And these are songs just inspired by that, and particularly songs that we would have sung with our own kids at nighttime. And about a few years ago, we started teaching our kids a hymn a month as a way to teach them the faith as a way to give them comfort and peace before they went to sleep. And that's been a fun thing to do as a family and a very important and nourishing thing. We wanted to capture some of that in this album. So it's lullabyish.

It's hymish, but it's meant to be calming and to bring comfort. And of course, in a year such as this, I think it's a very much needed thing. You know what I just learned, Kristen, I just learned that in Ireland you pronounce calm, cam. I had never heard that before. You say calm. We say calm. Calm. But how do you say it?

Cam. It's unbelievable, really. I'd never heard that before. And you pronounce faith, fath. Faith and grace is another one. Faith, grace. The god of all grace. I always tease your husband.

I love the way you talk. But this is beautiful, even song, hymns and lullabies at the close of day. So what lullabies do you have? What hymns do you have? Well, we have some of the old classics, like Abide with me, one of the big British hymns that we sing over here. We have an old Irish one. I heard the voice of Jesus say, softly and tenderly, which is the old gospel classic that we had Vince Gill feature on.

He's duetting with us on it. He's doing with you. He's not playing guitar. He's singing with us, yeah. I was funny because I said to him, you know, you're going to be the only bloke singing on this album. And he goes, that's okay. I sign like a girl. I'll fit right in.

Ever the funny guy. His voice is beautiful. He sings verse too on that. And then we have some lovely harmonies on it too. And a Shoken Farewell, beautiful violin piece right in the middle. And our good friend Deborah Clemmy played. You'll remember Deborah. I know Deborah Clemmy. She is wonderful. Wonderful in every way. And she played in this. And then we have a few new lullabies that we've written for the girls in the last few years, Hushabai Baby, consider the stars. And a few new collaborations. And actually, another, the old song, his eyes on the sparrow, which we duetted with a Heather Headley on. You know Heather Headley. She was the lead. She was Aida and Broadway, and she was Nala and the Lion King. Wow. So Tony Award Broadway singer. She signed with us at Carnegie Hall a few years ago. I think

you might have been there. She did a holy night. And she's an amazing singer. So she just had a baby this year. So I tried to find a few other moms who had kids in the last couple of years. He were all in native lullabies to help get their kids to sleep, you know. But of course, we all need lullabies, whatever age we are. You may not believe this, but I have written a lullaby. I wrote the lyrics to a lullaby. It became a children's book called It's Time to Sleep My Love. And I got the daughter of James Taylor and Carly Simon, who sounds like both of her parents. She wrote a song to go with my lyrics. So I can say that I have a lullaby with my name on it. And I think lullaby, just the idea of lullabies is so beautiful, so beautiful. So I'm amazed that you and Keith have written some

lullabies and I'm dying to hear them. Yeah. And also to hear these classic him. So if people want to get this album, we're living in strange times. I don't even know what an album is anymore. Do I go down to power records and get a vinyl album? No, I don't. How do I get these lullabies? Most people are in the streaming world. And so it's on all major digital platform, Spotify, Apple Pandora. If you want to get that, you can go to gettymuseit.com to get the stuff as well and other and sheet music and things if you want to go that extra mile in terms of the resources the songs are playing them yourself and um yeah those are the main places that you get music that they'll be there well you and keith have done so many different

kinds of of music of course you're most famous for for writing modern day hymns most people would know in christ alone and it's a funny thing when when uh our mutual friend was wanting to introduce us. He said, oh, they've done in Christ alone. And I thought, in Christ alone, you mean someone who's alive today did that? You did such a good job of writing something, and Keith did, of something that seems so classic that it's always been around, which is what's very special about what the two of you do. What to, you know, the idea that you're in Northern Ireland right now, you've done this. Now this is out. It's beating frozen. on the billboard charts.

I can't tell you how happy that makes me that you knock them out for a week. But Evensong is the title. What are you all working on now and when do you think you're coming back to the states or state, as you would put it? The state. So we can't wait.

We love our home in America. Can't wait to get back. We needed this much needed time with our family right now. We hope to come back in the new year. That's the plan right now. And we're working towards Sing Global next year. September.

We just finished the, the global conference we did on congregational singing in August. We have the next one coming. We've just got a minute, but tell my audience about that in case they missed that, because I've talked about that with Keith. But tell us what that is. Well, the heart of the sing conference, usually it's a physical event in Nashville, but of course this year we were prevented from tonight.

We hope we'll be able to meet again next year. But we're on a five-year journey of really exploring congregational singing. We looked at the Psalms, looked at the Life of Christ. This past year we looked at singing through the scriptures. And then this next year is going to be singing through the evening. ages, looking at hymnody through the last centuries and how they have transformed individuals and families and churches all over the world and in many wonderful ways. We're writing into that, writing new material. We'll have John Lennox. We'll be back with us next year. I know you love my

good old Uncle John. I can't believe, I just can't believe that he's your uncle. It's so funny to me because he's such a character, such a super genius. And when Keith told me that he was the one that introduced you to Keith. I just laughed and I'll be laughing about that for the rest of my life. I know. People know him as a great scientist, apologist, Bible teacher, but we know him as a matchmaker. I know. He's principally known as a matchmaker. They don't give out Nobel Prizes for that, but they should. Well, okay, so even song is out. It's pretty new, isn't it? Yeah, it just came out. Actually, we released it around the wake of Sing Global this year and did a special concert for it. We recorded many of the songs. And it's beautiful barn in Tennessee. So there is like a visual part to this too.

If you wanted to find that on YouTube and also if you join the sing community online, you can see more of that. Okay. All right. We're out of time. Dear Kristen, so wonderful, especially the idea that you're in Northern Ireland, so wonderful to connect with you. Give my love to Keith and to be continued. Congratulations on Even Song. Folks, get a copy, listen to it. I think you already know it's great. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. Hey, guess what? It's Columbus Day. And you know, on Columbus Day, if it's possible, I like to talk about Columbus. Today, it is very possible. I have, as my guest, Dr. Robert Royal, he has written a book called Columbus and the Crisis of the West. Robert Royal, welcome to the program. Great to be with you, Eric. I got very excited reading a book. about this. So I'll try not to talk and just to let you tell us. What is this book about? You, Robert

Royal, have written a number of books, but this one is called Columbus in the Crisis of the West. First of all, what's your assessment of Columbus at this point? He has been denigrated tremendously in the last few decades. What do you say to those who've spoken against him so strongly? Yeah. Well, this is the second book I've done about him. And in 1992, for the 500th anniversary of the first voyages of Columbus, I tried to balance what was already an imbalance picture of him. I don't entirely defend him in this book. I try to tell the truth, the way the truth ought to be told about him. There are things that he did that we wouldn't want to defend today, but he lived in his own time.

And it was a very difficult set of circumstances of two cultures coming together the way they did when he sailed across the Atlantic. But look, in 1992, I was able to actually give a lecture at Princeton University. We threw 150 people about Columbus. We discussed various points. Some people disagreed with me on certain points. They agreed with me on others. And we went back and forth and I walked out of there unmolested. Today, that would be utterly impossible because we've had now several generations,

at least two and maybe even three, of people who've, I think it's not too strong a word to say, been indoctrinated by the kind of Howard Z's. in Marxist people's history of the United States to view. And so when you see those young people stomping on those statutes of Christopher Columbus, which were a little bit idealized, let's concede that. But where he was idealized in the past, he's now demonized. I don't blame these kids. I mean, they don't know anything about him.

What they do know is they've been taught that he was a genocidal monster. I hear that from parents all the time. A kid comes home from school. Columbus is a genocidal monster. Well, no serious historian thinks that Columbus attempted or actually committed genocide. That simply is not part of a historical record. The other thing we often hear is that it was worse than Hitler. Well, Hitler killed 40 million people, did attempt a genocide against the Jews,

killed 6 million European Jews. And really, he's worse than that. And that's the kind of thing that is ridiculous as it may seem. That seems to be what most people who have been through public education, lately come out with. And so it's not a surprise that now he's become a kind of a flashpoint. You and I might say that he's almost become a symbol of our, you know, the deep roots of our Western and Christian religious background. And the people who think that all they're doing is protesting slavery or mistreatment of indigenous peoples are really playing into the hands

of people who would like to destroy something that is very precious. And if we, we get rid of that, what we will get instead could be quite monstrous. What we'll get genocide is what we'll get, because that's where that kind of anarchy leads. Well, tell us then the title of your new book is Columbus and the Crisis of the West. So how do you frame things in this new book? Okay, as I said, I mean, I'm not trying to defend him

or defend everything. Well, no, first of all, Robert, if you don't mind, do defend him where he needs defending. In other words, I think the case that Ken, be made, should be made, that he was not a genocidal maniac, at least so that we have some perspective. So do give us a little bit of perspective on the situation. This was an unprecedented thing that happened. For someone to sail across the Atlantic, several other people had tried to do it and never came back. Columbus, just, if we want to talk in terms of maritime history,

was able to discern that the southern winds in the Atlantic would take you west and the northern winds would take you back east. And so this was already, you know, an intuition about the nature of exploration that no one else had thought of. He gets to the Caribbean and he sees that his compasses look weird. He realizes there's some kind of magnetic variation. He gets to the mainland of Venezuela and he realizes that the earth bulges it, which in fact it does.

Without, you know, modern technological instruments, he's able to see this. Now, excuse me, I didn't realize that he'd ever made it to what is today, Venezuela. He was exploring the coast down there near the Orinoco River in the fourth voyage. But I would add this. There are multiple motives in what he's doing. Obviously, he does intend to make a profit on this. What he initially intends to do is to go and establish a trading post in the Indies. He doesn't get to the Indies because the Indies are much fun.

And I think he probably knew that. But he encounters this new people, and he immediately gets involved in, you know, the warfare and politics of the Caribbean. And he does pretty well that first trip that he's there. He becomes very friendly with these people. And later voyages, of course, he gets bogged down in conflicts between the Spaniards and the Indians. But one of the major things he's trying to do also is to evangelize, because he believes that Christianity brings something to the new peoples that they, they wouldn't have on their own. And actually, he believed in kind of late medieval fashion that Christ would not come again

until the gospel was preached to all nations. Now, modern people tend to poo-poo this and say, you know, what did it bring to the indigenous peoples? Well, Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican novelist, who was no friend of America or Christianity, once said, you know, we have a certain perspective now that we think the Indians were weak and the Europeans were strong and came in and destroyed this paradigm. But take the Aztec culture. I mean, that's Mexico.

He says, we have to understand the astonishment that tens and hundreds of thousands of indigenous people felt. When they were taught by Christianity, they were being asked to worship a God who had sacrificed himself for men, rather than men sacrificing themselves to the gods. And at the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyages, Leo the 13th, Pope Leo the 13th said that he carried out this unprecedented voyage, which brought Christianity to new parts of the world and freed indigenous peoples from darkness and evil rights. I think that as harsh as it is to hear that these days, among us who would like to at least value what the indigenous contribution has been to human history,

it's true. It's just simply true. Robert, first of all, we have to forgive me, but I was going to say the whole idea of when we talk about, indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples are as different from one another as people are from one another. Some of the indigenous peoples were bloodthirsty, demon-worshipping monsters, and others were Pacific agrarian types, or at least, you know, you get so many different kinds of indigenous people. But if we're talking about the Aztec Empire, they practiced human sacrifice. I mean, let's not pretend that every indigenous person is the Indian, you know, from the ad who's rowing through the polluted waters and there's a tear falls down his face from 50 years ago. So we have to be

clear that this is very complicated. And so when we try to make it sound like the indigenous people were peaceful and wonderful and Columbus's people were evil monsters, I mean, it's at least more complicated than that. One of the facts that I like to point out to people is the chief Seattle who gave his name to the troubled city in the state of Washington right now, was a indigenous chief who practiced, did practice genocide, he wiped out another tribe, and he had eight slaves. And it was very common, even in the tribes we think were not as troubling. The Pacific Northwest tribes were historically known for practicing slavery, for example. You're absolutely right about this, just in the same way that we don't automatically assume every European is good or evil, that we are different people.

Columbus is not Cortez. Cortez is not, God forbid, Pizarro, who actually was, I think, a genocidal maniac. And so there are differences that ought to be recognized there as well. On this indigenous question, I think one of the most troubling developments is the way that indigenous People's Day is now being promoted. in a lot of places as a replacement for Columbus Day. Now, I have no quarrel with honoring indigenous cultures if we know what we're honoring, as you right now, they're quite different. But why do we have to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day?

I mean, presumably what we're trying to do is to be more inclusive to honor things that weren't honored in the past. And instead, what we're doing is we're being exclusive and trying to cancel Columbus and Columbus Day in the name of who knows what. Well, I mean, I think that's the case I want you to make is that when we talk about Columbus today, the case needs to be made. Why should he be honored? What did he do?

What you talked about, you know, it's like Neil Armstrong going to the moon, except more so. It's as if Neil Armstrong had designed the rocket and figured out how to get there. I mean, what he did simply on the level of world exploration is staggered. monumental, unprecedented, that at the very least needs to be acknowledged. But when we come back from the break, I want you to tell us more about what there was about Columbus that we ought to honor on Columbus Day. Folks, I'm talking to Robert Royal. The book is Columbus and the crisis of the West. We'll be right back.

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Folks, I'm talking to Robert Royal. He has a new book out called Columbus and the Crisis of the West. Robert, I was just asking you, tell us more about what it is about Columbus that is worthy of honoring on Columbus Day because most of us either have forgotten or we've only heard the Howard Zin version of things. look in terms of the sheer physical courage it took to do what he actually did i'll tell you an experience i had 1992 the vatican one of the vatican museums was having a a Columbus display to commemorate the 500th anniversary and the way it worked is you you kind of walked through this corridor and there was a curtain in front of you and you parted the curtain and you stepped out onto the replica of the Santa Maria, which was the largest of the three ships. And let me tell you, that was, I won't say it was just like a rowboat,

but it wasn't a whole lot bigger than a small craft. And, you know, in those days, you didn't have your GPS, you didn't have your satellite phone, you couldn't call through the helicopters, you got to make it happen. Once you sail outside of land and his men started to get nervous that they were going farther than anyone had ever done, you have to make it happen. And he was able to actually do that by skill, by kind of just native intuition.

How long was this Santa Maria? Because I don't remember this now. I don't know myself. I don't think it's more than, say, 40, 50 feet. Oh, you're kidding. Oh, my gosh. We've got to look that up. I know that they were small.

But you're quite right. To sail across the unknown, into the unknown. And then when your sailors start freaking out to say, we're going to keep a going. And that alone is, I guess we do forget, we forget what it must have taken. And the idea that he was willing to push and push and push, that's one thing. Okay. And look, I think on the sort of moral cultural side of this, if I can put it that way, Vasco da Gama, great explorer too, went down the coast of Africa around the Cape of Good Hope

and actually did get to the Indies where Columbus was hoping to get to. There's a reason why, although that was a great thing as well and required great seamanship, there's a reason why we don't honor him quite the same way that we do Columbus. And that's because he was actually doing something that wasn't as unprecedented in the sense that all three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia are connected by land. People had actually gone to China, Marco Polo. Right. on this example. People had been able to go all the way to China and to Japan and whatnot, and they

knew about each other. Columbus did something different. Friends of mine, you mentioned the Armstrong going to the moon, friends of mine often say that they were impressed when we had those first pictures from space of the earth hanging there as a ball. It's all, you know, it's all one earth and we're all on that one earth. But where did that idea first get started? I mean, it was really the point at which Columbus crosses the Atlantic and now two whole continents that had not been in contact with that other landmass are now part of the same world. So look, at the time of the 500th anniversary, there was a great debate about what to call it. He couldn't call it discovery anymore because indigenous peoples, they didn't need to be

discovered. They knew where they were. They were in the new world. And that part, of course, is true. So people talked about in Spanish, el enqueengrinto, the encounter. That's partly true. But Columbus introduced the old world landmands. to the new world. And even as important, and maybe even more important, the new world land masses

to the rest of the world. So it opened up a world to the indigenous peoples, what we call indigenous peoples, as much as it opened up Europe to the rest of the world. Well, and it's not as though any of these indigenous people were sailing caravils in the other direction. So, you know, we have to be honest that it was only Columbus that was doing any exploring. Now, you know, we just looked it up and it's the Santa Maria, which was certainly the largest of the three ships, was 70 feet long. That is incredibly tiny. When you imagine going across the ocean in these three ships, it's just a staggering thing. So I had, I had forgotten about what you call the physical courage of the man. Now, a lot of people, you know, to play devil's advocate, would say,

the indigenous people didn't want to be discovered. They didn't want to be connected to the other land masses because the other land masses were fixing to oppress them. That there has to be some truth to that. I don't think that that's true. I think that when you don't know a people that you're dealing with and suddenly they show up, I think there was, you can see in the historical record

that there was a certain mutual curiosity that kind of emerges at that point. And look, within the Americas, just to separate this off for a second. There were all sorts of networks, networks of trade, networks of politics and culture and mutual influences and whatnot. And we know this in a very graphic way because the diseases that spread throughout the Americas, the scholars who look at that, and, you know, probably several million people died

because of these diseases, the scholars will tell you that 85% of the indigenous people who died, never saw a white man because it was transmitted through trade and other contexts, cultural contexts that they had. I mean, I often say to people, look, if you want to blame him for that, I don't know how we blame Columbus for the fact that European diseases or Spaniards or the English or whoever it is. But if the Chinese had decided to cross the Pacific and landed a say in Peru someplace, the same thing would have happened.

Yeah. I mean, we're in the midst of the Wuhan virus and we know what it's like. how viruses can be split spread globally. And that would have happened. That tragedy was, it was clearly unintentional. And you're quite right to point that out. We have to say this before we go to another break, that if people get upset, people get angry that Columbus brought smallpox and other diseases,

we have to be very clear. They had no idea that they were doing that. And to act as though they did and didn't care is ridiculous. We're going to be right back. I'm talking to the author of a brand new book. It is called Columbus and the Crisis of the West. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big deal about. But I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain like neck, shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week quick start, they lose money. In fact, they don't even break even until about four to five months after if you keep ordering

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Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Dr. Robert Royal. He's written a book about Columbus. The title is Columbus and the Crisis of the West. We're learning all kinds of things. It's so valuable, Robert. Thank you for helping. us remember what maybe some of us learned in school but forgot. What else do we need to know about Columbus? You said that he really did very much want to evangelize the native people.

I know only because of my research on Martin Luther that, you know, when you're talking about roughly 1500, the concept of religious liberty did not exist. It was just not something that was understood. Often conversions were forced. Conversions are forced in the world of Islam unto this day. But it was in the mind of Columbus, nonetheless, to bring the freedom of Christ to people who were used to, as you said, sacrificing each other rather than worshiping a God who sacrificed himself for them. Yeah, I think that religious element really has to be properly understood. And one of the ways that I try to indicate that this isn't just a cover as, you know, modern, more materialistic people might think. We know that when he writes back to Ferdinand and Isabella, when troubles are starting in Hispaniola, Hispaniola is the island that has Haiti and the Dominican Republic today. He says to them, I need you to send 60 missionaries to me, not to convert the indigenous. as people, but to help me convert the Spaniards who I'm having so much trouble with.

So we know that there was both a religious and a moral imperative that he felt that is in the documentation. This isn't something that somebody later makes up about whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. We also know, for example, that he, in his successive wills as he got near the end of his life, would always include a little money for the liberation of the Holy Land. I mean, the record was in the St. George's Bank in Genoa, Columbus was Genoese. And so he was planning on leaving a legacy, not huge, but a real legacy, to help whatever Christian efforts would be made to open up the Holy Land, open up Jerusalem in particular so that Christian pilgrims could go there again.

Now, you know, we in the 20th century live in pluralistic societies and we try as much as possible to get along with one another. So we wouldn't talk about our religious differences in maybe the same terms that they did back then. But it's very clear that what he was doing with that, and he was, if I want to put it in a vulgar way, he put his money where his mouth is. That he left a legacy that would only have an effect after his own lifetime to seek to expand Christianity even in the Mediterranean. So that's an important part of this story. And it's one that I think most people know nothing at all about. It also is the case that the Spaniards, there's a thing that called the black legend that in English-speaking countries

we often blacken the history of the Spaniards more than we do, say, the British or the French or whoever else was exploring at the time. But the Spaniards actually stopped exploration and sat down and had their theologians and philosophers think about what they could do. And the Spanish monarchs passed laws saying, you know, you could not enslave indigenous peoples, you could not take their land from them. Bartolovina de las Casas, the defender of the Indians, a famous priest, was able to influence laws in Spain that were, of course, poorly applied, and would have such great distances. He was able to get the Vatican to write an encyclical, saying that the natives should be converted not by force, but by the example of a holy life. So what started to happen there is the development of what we would today call international law.

If you read a history of international law, those things are actually there. And look, recognize who actually finally puts an end to slavery? It's Christians. It's later mostly British Christians, Methodists, Quakers, et cetera, who stopped the slave trade and then eventually stop slavery. And where Christianity is an influence today's slavery does not exist. where it does not exist, of course. The scholars say there's still something like 40 million slaves in the world. Well, yes, in many Muslim countries.

Well, it's extraordinary you point this out because there's so much here that we don't know. We just got a few minutes left. The title is Columbus and the Crisis of the West. Focus for a moment, if you would, on the crisis of the West part of the title. Well, look, we're seeing this in other. context too. You know, the criticism now of Washington and Jefferson and even Lincoln, even Lincoln is not pure enough for the woke culture that we're dealing with right now. And when we go back and we look at these figures, they're not going to be postmodernists,

they're not going to be feminist, they're not going to be into LGBTQ theory. And so if that's going to be the standard that we look back at our own history, no one in history is going to be able to stand. Now, in the case of Washington and Jefferson, there's slave owners, and I think that that is a very serious charge against them. We don't honor them for that, though. What we honor them for is the fact that they helped create a system under which we're all living right now that helped us to overcome some of the wrong paths the Western civilization went down. Columbus was, I believe, nowhere in that sort of moral category. I think he was just in greater difficulties

and had no intention of propagating slavery or anything of that sort. But if we talk about the crisis of the West, what we're doing actually is we're taking certain elements of our culture, largely derived from the Bible. It's Genesis that says, All Men, that we're all made in the image

and likeness of God. There's no other culture that thinks that. That's Genesis. And it slowly trickles down around the world and even eventually the Christian world is able to embody it in concrete ways. If we lose that, if we lose the most fundamental truths that come out of our own culture, I think what we're doing is we're taking part of our culture to destroy another part, and it's almost a suicidal impulse.

It's a suicidal impulse holding us to a standard of perfection that I think will eat itself up. I have to say we're just about out of time, but it's funny you bring this up because I just gave a speech the other day in Texas talking about William Wilberforce. I wrote a book about William Wilberforce, and I said that it is without any question the Bible that tells us that racism is wrong, that slavery is wrong. And if you ask an agnostic or an atheist, do you think slavery is wrong? Do you think racism is wrong? They'll go, yes, yes, yes. And then you say, well, why? They aren't sure why. They don't have the grounding. It comes from the Bible, and it was really, in large part, Wilberforce's legacy to drag these biblical ideas into the center of European

culture where they have lived ever since. And that really is a big part of what you're getting at in your book. I'm sorry, we're out of time, but I'm just so glad that we've had this time. Dr. Robert Royal, thank you. Thank you for your book, Columbus and the crisis of the West. God bless you. Thank you, Eric. Great to be with you. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. Guess what? Yes, I'm going to ask you a question now. the answer is either yes or no, and I want you to be honest with me. I try to be honest with you, folks. Oh, I fail. I know I fail, but I try. Here's my question to you. We're doing a campaign with the Alliance defending freedom. We're begging every one of you to give something, anything,

a small amount, a non-small amount either will do. And the question is, have you done that? Yes or no? go. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, yes or no? Those are the two? Okay, yes or no. Those are the two. Okay. It's multiple choice.

A, yes, B, no. Now, if the answer is B, and I want you to be honest, now you have something to do today. And I say this very sincerely, when we say we want you to give any amount, it means we want you to give any amount. So if you've got $5 burning a hole in your pocket, $20, $100, it doesn't matter. we want everyone to participate because when they come for you or your friend or your teacher

or the guy down the street who runs a bakery or someone else and they start giving him grief, you can say, well, I gave to the lines defending freedom and maybe my friend or whoever can contact the lines defending freedom because this is what they do.

They defend people who are being wrongly attacked. They defend them in the court of law for free. So, you know, if you, somebody comes into your store and says, I know, I know that you're very pro-Jewish, but I've got a cake that I'd like you to bake. And it is, it's for the PLO. We're raising money for the PLO. By the way, I hate Jews. Oh, well, you're going to be able to say, I can't do that. It goes against my conscience. I can't bake a Jew-hating cake. I hope you don't mind. We're in America and I don't have to bake your vile cake.

Somebody else could come in and say, I want you to create a cake for me that has demonic images on it because it's Halloween and I really love demonic sick images, ghoulish stuff. And you could say to them, well, you know, I'm a Christian and I feel uncomfortable with that. And there are other bakers down the street or across town. I'm sure they'd be willing to do that for you. but you know what, I don't want to do that. In America, you can say that. In America, you can say all kinds of things. People can disagree.

It is our right to say things. It is our right to disagree. But it is not our right to force people to agree with us. That's what's happening around America. And I want to tell you, folks, if we don't step up now, as in now, giving to the Alliance Defending Freedom now, something, you're going to have yourself to blame when this stuff gets uglier and uglier. Now is the time to fight back.

I write about it in my Bonhofer book. If you've read that book, you know that the German Christians didn't speak up at first. They were very shy, very polite, very sweet. And then their rights were taken away and they couldn't speak up. I say this to you from the bottom of my heart. This is the right thing to do. So I'm saying, please give to the lines defending freedom. The one way you can give is you can just go to our website, metaxis talk.com at metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner for ADF. If you'd rather pick up a phone, I'd love for you to do that. And again, any amount, folks, we don't care. We're going to enter you in a grand prize drawing to win a ton of stuff, signed books, including my new 10th anniversary, Bonhoeffer edition. Oh, that's handsome. And we're going to enter you no matter how much you give. So you can call this phone number.

right now, I hope you will. Please, we need you to help. We need everybody to do something. The number is 855-5-447-53-33-33. That's 855-5-47-53-33. I'll say it again. 855-5-47-53-33. We really need your help. America needs your help, your fellow Americans need your help. Doesn't matter where you stand politically. This is the right thing to do, and any amount would be swell. So if you answered no to that question, please do that. God bless you.