Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Walker Wildmon: The Uphill Battle To Bring The Bible Back Into Education

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Walker Wildmon: The Uphill Battle To Bring The Bible Back Into Education · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

0:03
Welcome to Worldview Matters.
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Discussing controversial issues.
0:07
Discerning current events.
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Defending biblical Christianity.
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No topic.
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Off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
0:20
Friends, family in Christ, brothers and sisters, and fellow culture warriors, you're in for a treat this hour.
0:27
I've got Walker Wildman with us.
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He serves as the CEO and member of the board of directors for AFA Action.
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It's the 501c4 governmental affairs affiliate of the American Family Association.
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I love this organization.
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He's also vice president of the American Family Association.
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He's been quoted by CNN, Fox News, other major news outlets.
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Walker graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in political science.
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He and his wife, Lexi, are happily married with five children.
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And he comes to us from Mississippi today.
1:02
Brother, good to see you.
1:03
Thanks for your time today.
1:05
Yeah, glad to be on the program, first time appearance, and hopefully we'll have a good time and educate the audience.
1:10
We will.
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And you guys have been at this battle for many, many decades, starting with your grandfather, Don, your father, Tim.
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I love the work you do.
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I told you that before we got on the podcast.
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And now you're taking up that mantle and doing your part.
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So I want to give the website before we move on, afa.net, AFA, American Family Association.
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You can also go to their Facebook page, American Family Association.
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And is there a separate site for American or AFA action?
1:43
Yeah, afaaction.net is that URL.
1:46
So our two main organizations here are American Family Association, afa.net is that URL.
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And then afaaction.net, as you mentioned, is the government affairs affiliate of AFA, afaaction.net.
1:58
Okay, Walker.
1:59
So before we jump into this, and we're going to talk about what Texas is doing, you know, your organization, you know, my books and things that I've written about and talk about on this podcast go back to the 60s and what happened in the public schools with Texas.
2:14
Just removing God, removing the biblical worldview, God, the Bible, voluntary prayer.
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Eventually, the Ten Commandments went down, and now there's this battle.
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Everything else is allowed except for biblical Christianity.
2:26
We're in an ABC culture, anything but Christ.
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But let's talk about what's at the top of your Facebook page.
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Three words, inform, equip, inform.
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activate, activate.
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Isn't, I appreciate you guys doing this.
2:40
I'm all about that too, but isn't this the job of the church?
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Go ahead and share your thoughts.
2:47
Yeah, so a couple things here.
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Number one, the church is made up of believers all around the country, all around the world.
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So in essence, those who have faith in Jesus Christ for salvation and believe in the teachings of God's word, we are the church.
3:02
And so what we do, how we act, and the things that we teach and how we live are reflective of the church, and that is the church.
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From a government perspective, I know this is something that many Christians get wrong—
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is they say, well, we ought not be involved in politics.
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That's a dirty business.
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I don't want to have anything to do with it.
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I'm just going to mind my own business.
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Well, the fact of the matter is somebody is going to be in charge of government.
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Somebody has to run the country.
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Somebody has to be the mayor and the city council, et cetera.
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And so that's just a very kind of practical reason why Christians ought to be involved in government is because we ought to want to be salt and light.
3:42
But more importantly, from a biblical perspective,
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Government is one of the three institutions.
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We have the family, we have the church, we have government, civil government.
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Government's one of the three institutions that God himself created and ordained.
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And so this notion that government is secular, that Christian involvement in civics is optional from a biblical obedience perspective—
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That's a falsehood, outright falsehood.
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So we really don't have a choice on whether we want to be involved in government or not in politics.
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We're commanded to.
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And in this country, unlike many other nations throughout human history, we actually have the option to pick our leaders.
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which is really unheard of throughout human history, to have a nation that has survived this long, that is structured this way to where you and I get to pick our leaders.
4:35
So it's somewhat special, somewhat underappreciated.
4:40
And so that's my three-minute spiel on why Christians ought to be involved in politics and government.
4:46
Exactly.
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I mean, we've been duped, deceived maybe by the enemy, but duped to believe that moral and biblical issues are quote unquote political issues.
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I mean, just a simple example, pre-born human lives in mother's wombs.
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Is that political when you're talking about human life and destroying human life through abortion?
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And it's absolutely not.
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But, man, we've swallowed that pill.
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I know I'm preaching to the choir walker, but I want to mention before we move on, I love your mission at AFA Action.
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I just want to just read a little bit of that.
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It's really good.
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And, again, the church has to go right along with this or should be.
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But we've got a lot of work to do just in waking up the body of Christ in America.
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The mission of AFA Action to inform and mobilize individuals to strengthen the biblical foundations of America by persuading individuals with the true gospel, challenging the lost to repent, promoting societal values that are consistent with Scripture,
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restraining evil, which a lot of churches punt on, and exposing the works of darkness, motivating people to stand on cultural and moral issues, and encouraging Christians to bear witness to the world, the love of Jesus Christ.
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So we need more warriors, more people to get involved.
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Let me take this opportunity to allow you to speak to those who are weary, battle weary.
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Maybe they have been active, but they see most of their maybe friends or brothers and sisters in Christ maybe are not.
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They're living that American dream, you know, leisure, comfort.
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They don't want to engage.
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They don't want to face the battles and the evil that's out there permeating our culture.
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Speak to the battle weary believers right now, Walker.
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Yeah, the fact that we as Christians face difficulty and challenges and trials in life really should come to no surprise.
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Anyone who reads the Scripture, you read a chapter or two of the Scripture, you understand that we live in a fallen world.
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And so this expectation of normalcy and peace and comfort and prosperity is really an anomaly when you look throughout human history.
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The periods of peace and prosperity exist.
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and no conflict is few and far between.
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And so we live in this fallen world, and we're here to be salt and light.
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And so I want to kind of push back against this notion that we've got it harder than anybody else has ever had it in world history.
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We've actually got it better than most people have had it.
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throughout human history, just from a quality of living standpoint, from a human flourishing perspective, from a wealth perspective.
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I mean, we're all living like kings around here.
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You know, not everybody used to have, you know, 3,000 square foot houses with, you know, vacations throughout the year.
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And so we're kind of living it up in America, even though people may not feel that way.
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But we have to look like let's look throughout the last, you know, six to seven thousand years of human history.
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What has it been like for people?
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And it's often been war.
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It's been famine.
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It's been poverty.
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It's been trial, tribulation, et cetera.
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And so we live in a rather prosperous nation, the highest quality of living standard that's ever existed.
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So we've got a lot to be thankful for.
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But as Christians, we have to be ever diligent to be salt and light and to be obedient to God's word every day, every minute, and every hour.
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And so that's my challenge and my encouragement for the viewing audience here, that God has called us to be salt and light, and we can't flip that switch on and off.
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It's a 24-7, 365 mentality that we must have.
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Amen.
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Didn't Jesus say something about letting your light shine?
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I think we've lost those concepts in the church.
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I haven't heard a lot of sermons in the last, I don't know, decade or more on being salt and light, but we need to get back to that concept.
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because we have lost a lot of ground.
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I think it's Ephesians 4.27 that says, do not give the enemy a foothold.
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And yet, if you go back, even before the 1960s, when everything happened in education, we surrendered a lot of ground.
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We meaning churches, the church in America, Bible-believing Christians.
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And I know there's a remnant that are working very hard, and they've been at this.
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And so I'm thankful for that.
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But we need to get more believers.
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We need to recruit believers.
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Because the enemy is recruiting, and we've got to make disciples and recruit more believers to get in the game, get off the bench into the game.
9:19
So, Walker, we wanted to talk about what's going on in Texas in education.
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One of our friends of the podcast is Alex Newman.
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He does amazing work.
9:27
And I want to just mention, in Texas, they're acknowledging the historical reality—
9:33
with New State Booklist instituting Bible passages, you responded to that by saying this, quote, Speak to us a little bit more about that, please.
9:58
Yeah, this is another one of those lies that's been percolating for 50-plus years, but this lie that, well, the government ought to not be involved in religion, and Christianity has no place in government, and government and the church ought to be two separate things, and there should be no overlap, no integration.
10:15
And if you do, it's a violation of the Constitution.
10:18
And what's funny is the secularists quote Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson is kind of their golden calf, if you will,
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Didn't Jefferson say, you know, one of the founding fathers, that we should have a separation of church and state?
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And the fact of the matter is, Jefferson was more religious than most Christians today.
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Jefferson frequently read the Bible.
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Now, I'm not saying he was a, you know, fully born-again believer.
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But the notion that Thomas Jefferson was a secularist is just a flat-out falsehood.
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Thomas Jefferson had a lot of reverence for the Scriptures and frequently read the Bible and cited the Scripture in his speeches and in his writings.
11:00
So that's always funny to hear Jefferson as the atheist model.
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But nonetheless, look, America is a Christian nation, and this isn't even disputed amongst historians, secular historians.
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America is a Christian nation.
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So without the Bible and Christianity, there is no America, at least no America as we know it.
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And so this notion that the Ten Commandments and teachings of the Scripture—
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ought to be excluded from our education program and our education system is just a fallacy.
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You can't teach American history without including the Bible.
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So that's what Texas is addressing here, is they're getting the Bible back into America's classrooms.
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And ever since we booted God in the Scripture from our schools back in the 50s and 60s,
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We have had a near straight line up.
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If you were to be looking at a chart, we've had a near straight line up in anxiety, depression and other serious spiritual and mental issues amongst our young people in America's school systems.
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And so we've got to get God back in our schools.
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There is no true education
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without acknowledgement of the God of the Bible and without acknowledgement of the Holy Scriptures.
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You can't truly be fully—yeah, you can study the sciences, you can study math, you can work on your reading.
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Sure, I understand that, but you can't be fully knowledgeable—
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on things without acknowledging our Creator God and His created order and including the Scripture.
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So Texas made a brilliant move here to get the Ten Commandments and the Scripture back in the classroom.
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It's been upheld by the court system, so other states are going to look at doing this as well.
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I hope and pray they do.
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Where's Mississippi at?
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Because I know you are more conservative than Texas.
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I mean, Texas, I'm concerned about what's happening there in many ways, but I'm glad they're doing this when it comes to education.
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Where's Mississippi at, Walker?
13:01
Yeah.
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Yeah, so we have In God We Trust posters in all classrooms via statute.
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That's what my grandfather worked on decades ago, and that's actually mandated by statute.
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Every single classroom has to have an In God We Trust national motto poster in the classroom displayed within view on the wall.
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Um, we have, we do have, um, districts that teach the Bible as history.
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I know, I know some of them that do that, but we don't have anything like Texas just did here in statute.
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And that's what makes this special is Texas is integrating the Bible together.
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into the curriculum, which is essential.
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And so Mississippi has some work to do on this.
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We actually just got out of a meeting with lawmakers on this, getting the Bible back into America's classrooms, teaching it as part of your moral instruction time.
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And
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The thing is, is that I understand some people, their instinct, their reaction to this is, well, do I really want the school teaching the Bible?
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And that's a valid concern.
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I completely understand kind of the flinch reaction here.
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But let's look at it like this.
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The Bible is already teaching religion.
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They're just teaching false religions.
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So the religion of Darwinism, the religion of evolution, the religion of sexual deviancy and the homosexual agenda, all of these things are being taught in America's classrooms.
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And these are in some ways—
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Secular religions, they are somewhat, you know, belief systems that people lean on, on how they live their daily lives, even though they're false religions.
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So our school systems are already teaching religion.
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you know, somewhat moral frameworks.
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They're just immoral frameworks.
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And so, but as you mentioned early on, Christianity is the only belief system that's been explicitly excluded from America's school systems.
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So it's completely lopsided and we got to get the Bible back in schools.
15:06
So help us connect a few dots here as far as things have been flipped compared to what it was like in the 50s, 40s, 50s, 60s, perhaps when the battle was going on with the courts.
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So now when we're trying to get back to where we should have been all along, where we shouldn't have given up that ground, I think not enough pastors spoke up, not enough Christians were engaged.
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Obviously, we can look at all the reasons how it happened.
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But it just got flipped.
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So how do you respond to people who say, we don't want the Bible or we don't want God?
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Because I think part of your answer, you already gave part of the answer.
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They're teaching everything else.
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I mean, they're teaching...
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kids in the government-run school system how to be social justice activists when they graduate and then go to academia, higher education, they get worse and radicalized and away from God.
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So how do you respond to people that say, well, we don't want God, when all these other belief systems and religions, people don't make those connections that that's what they are being taught.
16:10
Yeah.
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Well, let me address the historical context first, and then we can talk the biblical mandate second.
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But first off, the Bible is central to American history, and we are a Christian nation, like it or not.
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And so it's actually surprising and somewhat shocking that we've gone this long excluding the Bible from America's education system.
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It's rather appalling, actually.
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And so it really should be the accepted norm that the Bible is taught in America's school systems.
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The fact that people dispute that is somewhat very concerning if you understand true American history.
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You cannot exclude the Bible and Christianity from America's education system and expect it to be prosperous and whole just because of the sheer historical context
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of how central and pivotal Christianity and the Bible was and is to America's history, America's laws, the common law, etc.
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So that's the historical case for why the Bible ought to be in schools.
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And this kind of reflexive reaction to say, oh, we don't need that in the schools.
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Well, I would say, you know, tell me why.
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What are your concerns?
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And ultimately, it either gets down to people who are not educated properly and don't understand American history, or they just outright hate Christianity.
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They hate the Bible, and they don't want it in the schools, and they're fine with all the other garbage.
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It usually leads down to those two things.
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That's the historical argument, which in and of itself stands up on two legs perfectly fine.
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But from a Christian perspective, as I mentioned earlier, there's no true education model that is wholly beneficial that excludes Creator God from it and excludes the moral teachings of the Scripture from the education model.
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At some point, you hit a point in the education process where...
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where the students are looking around in science class going, wow, how did that sun get there?
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And the professor goes, oh, evolution, or we don't know, but we can't talk about the Bible in created order and natural order because that's, quote, Christian.
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So you just can't really have a complete educational picture and model when you exclude the fundamental fact
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The only reason we are here is because of Creator God.
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And for years, we have been trying to lead an education system in America without the Bible, Christianity, and a biblical worldview, and we have utterly failed America's young people.
18:49
We have, and history, unfortunately, has been rewritten, and many of the textbooks don't teach true history anymore.
18:58
But let's talk about something you said, you know, evolution is not taught as theory often, unfortunately.
19:04
It's taught as the thing to believe, maybe fact, but the thing to believe, because they don't allow biblical creation, like there's a God, there's a designer, there's a creator.
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Yeah.
19:14
Now, did the Scopes trial play into that in Tennessee in 1925?
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What led up to the 60s where the Bible was pulled out?
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Because there had to be a battle and there had to be progress that the left, atheists and seculars made leading up to these Supreme Court decisions, pulling God and the Bible and voluntary prayer out of government-run schools.
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Can you give us some insight on that?
19:40
Yeah, I'm not an expert on the case law.
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I've done a couple interviews on that Scopes trial, but my understanding is that there's two audiences here that lobby for these positions, and I'm talking the position of excluding the Scripture from schools and the Bible.
19:56
Your first audience are those that don't have a proper understanding of American history and American law, and they think that some of our founders were—
20:07
agnostics and very anti-Scripture and we don't need Christianity in our government so they think well I'm just doing what some of the founding fathers did or what the concerns they raised those are positions I have
20:20
The problem with that is it's just not true.
20:24
As I mentioned, some of the least religious founding fathers, if you place them in America in 2026, they would be some of the most religious, meaning Christian, people from their words and their deeds and their writings than many people who identify as Christians today.
20:41
Yeah.
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And so that's the first thing is a true misunderstanding of American history, American law, and the views of America's founding fathers.
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And then, as I mentioned, you just have some parties that are just outright hostile to Scripture.
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These are unbelievers.
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These are pagans.
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These are people who are hostile to Christianity.
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And they just want it out of the classrooms because they don't want anybody to be exposed to Christianity.
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But the fact of the matter is,
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is that it's a travesty that we've excluded the Bible and Christianity for so long, for the decades, out of America's classrooms.
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It's really a travesty for the students that they haven't been able to be taught.
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Just the rich nature of the Scripture.
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And the last thing I'll say on this before we move on is the notion that—
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when our founders wrote about religion, that they were talking about even false religions, for example, Islam, or, you know, fill in the blank, Hinduism, and all these other false religions.
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The fact that our founding fathers, the notion that our founding fathers wanted to, like, include those false religions
22:04
into the historical and the law and the tradition of America is just flat out not true.
22:12
When our founding fathers, and I'm talking 95 plus percent of them in their writings, when they wrote about religion with a capital R in their writings and their speeches,
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They were talking about Christianity, okay?
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That was the common 99-plus percent, according to some writings from the 1600s and 1700s.
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99% of the populace was, like, fully on board with Christianity.
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There was just different denominations.
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And so when they used the word religion with a capital R, religion.
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They're talking Christianity, and they're having debates amongst the denominations.
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And what our founding fathers didn't want to happen is different colonies and different states and territories picking different denominations.
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And then you've got, you know, one territory that's a Catholic, one territory that's Episcopalian, fill in the blank.
23:04
So that was the debate amongst our founding fathers was, you know, let's not pick denominations here.
23:09
It wasn't about, hey, let's let Islam be taught in America's schools.
23:14
That's right.
23:14
Exactly.
23:15
I hope more people understand what you just said and shared there.
23:18
So important to remember, especially with what's being allowed now, mindfulness, which is a form of Buddhism, yoga, meditation, Hinduism, things like that, Islam, the five pillars and everything else.
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This is not what our founding fathers would approve of.
23:34
So let's talk a little bit more about that.
23:37
um well first of all we're running out of time it's going by way too fast today over on your website is there something that you want to highlight walker i wanted to give you the opportunity if you wanted to point out point to anything you've got the kaylee bush story you've got opportunities for people to take action helping disabled kids and seniors by stopping taxpayer funded abortion is there something that you can point to you want to highlight right now
24:00
Yeah, what we're working on both at AFA and AFA Action is educating voters on the midterms.
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This midterm is a very big deal.
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I know people talk about this is the most important election in my lifetime.
24:10
Look, they're all important.
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Whether you're voting for mayor or Congress or president, the fact of the matter is they're all important.
24:16
So we ought to have vigor and...
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education going on every single election cycle.
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But President Trump, I know people have some negative things they want to say about him or things that they don't think Congress is doing right.
24:30
And I understand some of those concerns.
24:32
But the fact of the matter is, this is the most pro-Christian
24:37
administration that we've had in a long, long time.
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You know, the Pentagon is having monthly Bible readings and worship services from Christians.
24:51
And there's prayer in the White House.
24:53
There's a restoration of religious freedom going on.
24:56
There is just a lot of positive things happening that are kind of under the surface of the...
25:03
that's going on right now.
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And so I want folks to be engaged this election cycle.
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And we can't sit on the sidelines and let the Marxist and the socialist, you know, take over Congress.
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So folks ought to be engaged, they ought to be educated, and they ought to vote, not only in the primary season, but also in November.
25:20
I think our great-grandparents would probably have said, that would never happen in America.
25:26
Electing a Democrat socialist or a socialist or a Marxist or someone who's a Muslim and wants Sharia law, that could never happen in our country.
25:33
Well, friends, we have to wake up more believers in Christ because it's happening under our noses, so under our watch.
25:41
So, Walker, really quick, Texas is starting, at least in the fourth grade,
25:46
to try to share the gospel, get one Bible passage per year.
25:50
That's mandatory.
25:52
I wish it was more than that, but I guess we've got to be happy with a little incremental progress.
25:57
How else would you encourage people to get involved at the local level?
26:01
Because we're talking the importance of school boards and these city council meetings and things like that.
26:06
So in the last minute and a half, just share what your thoughts are on people getting involved state by state.
26:12
Yeah.
26:12
Yeah, this is on us.
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We're the citizens.
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We're the voters.
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We live in this wonderful country where we can elect our leaders at very low, very local levels and then as high up as the federal level.
26:23
And so ultimately, anytime we complain about school boards or school officials or they're teaching this or they're teaching that the voters and the parents in that district.
26:33
They need to wake up, show up to the school board meetings, run for office.
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You can only do so much complaining in this country before ultimately the finger points right back at you as the citizen, as the voter.
26:46
Amen, friends.
26:47
Take our responsibility, not lightly, but...
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A lot of work to do, but God is sovereign.
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And, you know, pray for favor.
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Pray for more states to get involved and more people.
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Elections have consequences.
26:59
Let's get more true Bible-believing Christians, not just professing Christians or conservatives.
27:05
And I know we could do a whole podcast on that probably.
27:07
Walker Wildman, CEO, American Family Association, American Family Action.
27:13
Thank you so much for your time today and all the work you guys do.
27:16
Appreciate it very much.
27:18
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
27:20
Thanks, Walker.
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Lord willing, we'll do it again.
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Friends, thank you for watching, listening and sharing the podcast.
27:25
Please keep us in prayer and Lord willing, we'll continue to do the work.
27:29
God bless you.
27:30
And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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We'll see you next time.