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Keisha Russell: ‘Uncommon Courage’ - Defending Truth And Freedom · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Hi friends and welcome. Today's guest in her book, Uncommon Courage, writes,
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  a weak church creates a vulnerable nation. Amen. She also writes, our ability to resist
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  the culture's demands will determine the power of our influence. The more we give in,
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  the more our influence will diminish. We'll be right back with Kisha Russell on World View Matters.
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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity. No topic, off limits. And now, here's your host, David Firazo.
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  Hey friends, welcome and thanks for sharing the podcast audio video. We appreciate you guys so
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  much. God bless you for doing that. Another great book. It's called Uncommon Courage and the
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  subtitle, Defending Truth and Freedom while there's still time. The author, Kisha Tony Russell,
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  is a constitutional lawyer. She's with First Liberty Institute in Texas. That's a non-profit law firm
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  specializing in religious liberty litigation. Kisha is a side after speaker. She writes op-eds in
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  various national news outlets. She graduated from Emory University Law School or School of Law
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  and was a 2017 Emory University graduating woman of excellence. And prior to becoming a lawyer,
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  she was a special education teacher at an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia.
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  She grew up in Palm Beach County, Florida and currently lives in Dallas, Texas.
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  Kisha, welcome to World View Matters. So good to see you today.
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  It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
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  Thanks for your time. Well, Uncommon Courage, that's what the church needs. Great book for this time
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  that we're living in. Before we get to maybe some of your cases with First Liberty,
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  share why you decided to put this out now.
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  Well, I was compelled, inspired by my pastor and also by my clients, who obviously have
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  exercised a lot of uncommon courage during their persecution and their conflicts with the government.
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  And I've been at first Liberty for about eight years now. And one of the things I realized is that
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  there are a lot of people in the church that don't understand the rights that they have under
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  the Constitution. They don't understand the structure of the government. They don't understand,
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  you know, how our government was structured to prevent tyranny. And unfortunately,
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  if you don't have that knowledge and you don't have that information, then you can't protect yourself
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  when the time comes. So my goal really was just to inform and inspire believers and possibly,
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  you know, prick the unbelievers to give Christianity their attention and their chance to,
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  to, you know, just improve their lives, essentially.
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  So I know you've worked at a lot of cases. We'll get to maybe a few of those in a minute,
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  but one of the quotes I read before we've even started off just, I mean, we could,
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  you know, that's a, it's, we could stop right there and talk about this for an hour. A weak church
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  creates a vulnerable nation. The apathy and silence of the professing Christian church or the
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  Christian church in America has been so disappointing to you. I'm sure to me to a lot of
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  Bible-believing Christians who believe we should be salt and light. It's not just a concept.
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  We talk about, because it sounds fancy, but it really means we should be influencing our nation.
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  First of all, with the gospel and then for righteousness, go ahead and share a little bit more about that.
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  Yeah. So I feel the church is always supposed to be the moral compass of society. We're supposed
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  to be fixed in our foundation and unmovable despite the waves that come with the culture.
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  And unfortunately, many members of the church, many denominations have instead
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  bowed to the culture and have no longer, you know, they're no longer a moral compass. They're
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  essentially repeating all of the culture's beliefs. And so Michael really has to have the church
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  reclaim that spot. And if the church doesn't speak out against tyranny, oftentimes we don't know.
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  It's happening because if we look at history, we can look back at many of the
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  communist societies. We can look back at dictatorships. Even when we look at the most famous dictatorship,
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  obviously Nazi Germany, we see that it was the church that was persecuted first, right? Because
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  you want to destroy that true film out piece. And that's what we see happening in America as well.
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  And we also, I love pointing, whenever someone brings that up, Dietrich Bonhoffer, silence in the
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  face of evil is itself evil, not to speak as to speak, not to act as to act. And he was part of
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  one third, about a third of German pastors that resisted Hitler and what was going on there.
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  And not enough. And I kind of see a parallel in America, but that's maybe that's for another
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  podcast, Keisha, over to first Liberty.org. Let's talk about a few cases. Whenever I see
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  10 commandments, like there's one, there's monument to return to Kentucky State Capitol, Texas
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  Senate passes bill requiring the display of the 10 commandments in public schools. I'm going,
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  wow, you're younger, a lot younger than me. I'm old enough to remember when they were taken out
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  of public school when they, and even in the early 1960s, they took out prayer and voluntary
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  prayer, by the way, and the Bible and then that led to the Christian worldview. And the schools
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  had to be filled with something. You had to replace that with something. Talk about a few of the cases
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  and are there more victories now that you're seeing where these are some very encouraging headlines
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  trying to get the biblical morality back into a state capital or to a public school.
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  So I think what you're seeing as conserved is waking up to, I think we made a mistake,
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  you know, decades prior by pretty much giving over the public schools to liberals. And because we
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  want to put our children in private schools, it makes a lot of sense because of what was going on
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  in the public schools. But unfortunately, we know that 90% of students are in public schools. And
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  so if you give over all of those schools to the liberals, you're going to have a lot of students
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  being indoctrinated into those beliefs. And so in order to accomplish that, you have to remove
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  religion, right? Because religion is going to cause us to ask questions about some of the sort of,
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  you know, the liberal doctrine communist to give you points, the Marxist attitudes that we're
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  seeing happening in public schools. And if you show students the truth, they're going to push back.
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  And so you have to get rid of those things. We know that the Ten Commandments having that in
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  schools is not a violation of the establishment clause. Well, how do we know that? Well,
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  because we know that it's sitting above the Supreme Court right now.
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  And that's not true at all. So, you know, when we look at this space, particularly the public
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  education space, we see a very huge intentional attempt to read the public schools of any
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  mention of religion at all. And that includes any mention of religion that is tied to our establishment
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  as a country, which means we're not comprehensively educating our students because if we don't teach
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  them about the Ten Commandments, if we don't teach them about the establishment of our country,
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  they're really not going to understand why things are why we govern the way we do. So, for example,
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  we know that the forefathers took the Bible's warning about man's being vulnerable to being
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  power hungry, right? And that's the reason why we split, well, that coupled with the American
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  Revolution and the things we learned from being under the British. But if you look at that,
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  we know that it's that viewpoint, the viewpoint that man is corrupt that caused us to create
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  different branches of government and to split power between the branches and the state and
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  the federal government. And if you don't understand that, that core belief, then you don't understand
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  why we split power. And that's, to me, very important, right? That's just one of many things I've
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  mentioned in the book. But it's an important principle. And for not teaching students that,
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  then they're vulnerable to becoming indoctrinated to a viewpoint that, well, maybe one person's fine.
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  Maybe it's okay if the judiciary legislates from the bench, you know, things like that.
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  And I think we're gaining ground right now, certainly, with a lot of states, Texas, I think,
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  is leading the charge right now with trying to ensure that we get back that public education system.
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  And we start infusing those Christian principles back into that system.
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  You said you're seeing a little bit more, you know, conservatives waking up, you know,
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  Christians were the sleepy church. Maybe some of them are starting to understand the times a little
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  bit more. Do you sense that people have more awareness and urgency? Because I love the subtidal
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  of your book, defending truth and freedom while there's still time. So do you sense more people
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  are waking up and people have a sense of urgency? I think so. I like to be optimistic about that.
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  You know, a lot of people ask me, what do you mean, like, while they're still time? Well, if you
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  look at history, many people have warned us that a republic is something you have to keep, right?
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  You have to push for it. You have to defend it. You have to protect it. Freedom in a country is
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  not guaranteed. And in fact, it's very rare, right? Globally, historically, what we have is rare
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  and unique, which is why so many people want to come here. And I think more Americans need to
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  understand that it's not a given, you know, we shouldn't take it for granted because it can be taken
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  from us. And while I think, you know, the election may have demonstrated that there are some
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  principles and ideology that the country is not aligned with right now that I think is at least
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  somewhat encouraging, but we still have a lot of work to do. And four years is not that long.
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  Yes, we need to make sure that when we're in a situation where we have another national election,
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  that the population is able to adequately vet any of the candidates to end the
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  church is able to choose candidates that align with biblical policies.
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  Amen. And you say four years. I'm thinking midterms, right? We do not have as much time as we
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  think we have. You know, people, I know this is off topic a little bit. People use the word
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  reprieve a lot. I don't like that word. I understand the sentiment. I understand what people are
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  saying. They're saying, thank God, the Marxists and communists were voted out. And we elected someone,
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  you know, Donald Trump. And look at his administration. There's a lot of believers. Some,
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  solid men and women of God in there. So thank God. But we've got so much work to do because we
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  gave so much ground. We lost so much ground. I didn't give your website. It is Keisha. TonyRussell.com.
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  Keisha, Tony, T-O-N-I, Russell.com. And the book, Uncom and Courage right there.
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  You worked in the education system. You're a former educator. I come from a family of teachers. My
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  mom, dad, sisters, uncle, a cousin. And they would not recognize the system today if they were
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  in it and understood what the mother ship, the U.S. Department of Education and the NEA,
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  the unions were passing down. And the leaders, oh my goodness. But what do you think about the
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  U.S. Department of Education? I know the Trump administration talks about dismantling. I'm not
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  sure that that's the right word. I know they use that for effect. But what are your thoughts on
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  that restructuring or because it is a problem? Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, it is a problem because of
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  the principles, because of the way it's been used by the Democrats to coerce school districts
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  and to adopting these ideologies that have been very detrimental, I think, to education. But I don't
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  necessarily agree with a lot of conservatives that we just need to completely dismantle things that
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  we don't like. I think it's possible to restructure these institutions to actually serve the public
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  the way we thought they were supposed to. Now, you know, the Department of Education has been around
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  for many decades and I don't think it's really accomplished much. So I understand why the president
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  is saying we don't need this department anymore. But I don't necessarily agree that because it's
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  been used the wrong way before that we can't find a way to use it the proper way. And to restructure
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  it and also to encourage the American people teach them that, and I think that's part of what the
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  administration is doing now, showing the American people how they should be treated and how they
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  should be governed. And I think we could do that with the Department of Education, just like we
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  can do it with some of the other agencies. Just when you hear things, how our test scores in the
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  public schools, the government schools are declining year after year after year. And their answer,
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  the unions, they're more money, give us more money. And that hasn't helped. And what they've been
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  pointing out recently is we pay the most per student out of any nation. And we're at the bottom
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  of the list on some of these like reading and math and other things. This is going by fast. We've
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  got to take a brief pause. We're with Keisha Russell and the book friends. Uncommon courage.
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  We'll be right back on World View Matters.
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  Hey friends, if you're listening, watching, thank you also for sharing. But remember to subscribe
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  and follow us. And we've got a pretty new YouTube channel within the last couple of months.
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  World View Matters, David Fiorazo. And if you want to find episodes with your favorite guest or
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  look and find out if we've interviewed somebody, go in the search bar and type their name in at
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  worldviewmatters.tv, worldviewmatters.tv. Our guest, Keisha Russell in the book. Uncommon courage
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  just came out. There's a quote I want to share and then get you to talk more about that at the very
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  end of one of the chapters, chapter six. Keisha, it's on page 137. It says, we know that the
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  culture will never fully adopt a biblical point of view. But as Christians, we must keep our
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  consciences so that we can always advocate for God's perspective on every issue. Please elaborate
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  on that. Yeah, that is the church's job. We are God's ambassadors here in the culture on earth.
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  And that's what he's asked us to do. And so that includes politics. I don't necessarily
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  understand Christians that think that we're not supposed to advocate for godly principles. I think
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  that's very unbiblical point of view. And I think it's very clear when you read the word that
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  God expects us to advocate for his standards. A lot of people mention that scripture from Paul
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  that talks about us having to be subservient to the government and making sure real bay and those
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  things, but Paul himself never meant for us to do that if it countered what God has asked us to do.
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  So if you look at Acts and what happened with Paul, every time he was asked to stop preaching the
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  gospel, he did not obey that command. And he even advocated for himself when he was being arrested
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  and saying, do you realize what you're doing to a Roman citizen? So he did use the law to advocate
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  for himself. Christians should do the same. And I think ultimately the more you read the Bible,
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  the more you realize that God has asked us to engage in the culture and in the government.
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  And frankly, in any other institution that conflicts with our ability to carry the gospel forward
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  as God has asked us to do. Amen. One of the most basic rights to protect is the right to life.
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  And I know you've had a lot of cases on that. I'm glad that you mentioned Margaret Sanger
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  in your book, what an evil woman a hundred years ago. That's, yeah, it's a hundred years ago.
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  She got planned parenthood going and they went into the inner cities. The abortion clinics are
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  always in inner cities where they're minorities and she was a racist, eugenicist, atheist. But
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  a couple sentences before you mentioned Sanger, I did not realize in 1883, Francis Galton
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  was the half cousin of Charles Darwin and he coined the term eugenics. Wow. That was, for me,
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  I had to stop there and go, oh my goodness. So share a little bit more about why you decided to put
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  in this chapter, chapter six on the golden rule part two. Yeah, so I think people need to understand
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  what the golden rule means. What God is asking for us when he says to treat people the way we want
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  to be treated. What he's really getting at their supremacy in some ways, right? And when people
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  understand the concept of supremacy, most people understand that racism is wrong, but they don't
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  understand why it's wrong. And so when we look at things like eugenics and we realize that the
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  the underlying principle there is supremacy, the underlying premise is believing that some people
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  are more valuable than others, which is what Margaret Singer believed. Then that's where racism
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  comes from, but that's also where abortion comes from. When a baby gets in the way of your
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  convenience and you don't want to, you know, have it, that's, that's a supremacy point of view.
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  And unfortunately, we in America especially have taught our students, our population,
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  that anything that gets in the way of your desires is a problem, but that's actually not the case.
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  And it's certainly not a biblical world view. Right, right. We're supposed to live our best
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  life now. It's if it's inconvenient, then that's not my best life. It's just how warped is that,
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  but that is really, it's nothing new under the sun, Old Testament. There's child sacrifice
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  in the Old Testament. And we just didn't think it would get as far as it got in America where
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  how much? 700 million dollars a year of our taxpayer dollars are going to plan parenthood.
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  But let's, let's move on from that because that gets me so upset just when I talk about this issue.
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  What do you see as the underlying causes of the radical cultural shifts shifts that we've
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  seen in the US? And more importantly, how can we Bible believing Christians respond?
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  Well, I think primarily, you know, a lot of Christians have watched these things happen without
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  saying anything, without standing in front of them. So like we mentioned in the public education
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  system, well, instead of trying to reform the public education system, I'm just going to take my
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  kids out and focus on private school, which is I understand why you want your own children to go
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  to private school. But I think that ultimately, if we abandon this system, then the liberals are
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  going to take that over and we're going to start seeing a lot of changes. And so this idea,
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  when we think about where things have come with abortion, for example, with certain states saying
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  you can have an abortion all the way up in Tober. These kinds of things were in the making of
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  a very long time ago, decades ago, right? And I think even when you look at the sort of sexual
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  revolution and things going on in that space, that started probably in the 90s, 80s and some people
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  will say in the 60s. But certainly, you know, the infiltration into academia and media started in
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  the 90s. And really, we didn't say anything about it. We meaning Christians. And so where what we're
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  seeing right now is the fruit of all of those seeds that were planted. And many of the small
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  fruits we saw before, including, you know, Obergefell and things like that, a lot of Christians were
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  sleep during that time. And because it didn't affect their personal lives, they said nothing. And
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  now we're in a situation where, you know, the conflict has gotten so strong, there's so much power
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  on the other side. And now we're having to kind of dig out of a hole.
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  So speaking up, obviously, exposing deeds of darkness as the Bible talks about. But speaking up
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  is something that obviously we should be doing. And a lot of people haven't. I'm thinking what you
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  said about the sexual revolution. Romans 1 spells this out. And my goodness, because it talks
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  about the sexual revolution starting with it mentions lesbianism and homosexuality. And God gave
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  them over. And I'm thinking, wow, that doesn't because it had to start earlier than the 60s when we saw
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  like the love and the Woodstock movement. And then the homosexual revolution took off. The
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  ground had to be paid for that. So seeds were planted years ago. But I just came to my mind that
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  did not just happen all of a sudden where they just decided that the Supreme Court decided in 2015
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  to say, all right, we're going to strike down all the marriage or the bands on same sex marriage.
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  So where do you see this going, Keisha? And I'm sure you write a little bit about that in the book
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  to give us a little bit of hope. Because as you said, you're seeing some people wake up,
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  you're seeing more people maybe getting engaged. And we hope there's a lot more. But your book,
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  obviously, uncommon courage. It's not common, unfortunately. And I wish it were. But it is
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  uncommon to stand up for the truth, to speak, to represent Jesus. You said we're an ambassadors.
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  Where do you see this going in America? Well, I have a lot of hope because I do feel like the
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  church is getting stronger. And we're starting to see sort of an appropriate division, meaning those
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  who are truly Bible believing Christians and those who are Christians by title, but don't really
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  subscribe to anything that will call. And I think that's important for the church to be able to
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  differentiate what's going on here. And I think that also causes the public to do the same, right?
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  Because for so long, you could be a Christian, but still live like the world. And I think that time
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  is coming to a close. At least to the extent that, you know, I think the church is just becoming
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  a lot more strict in their beliefs. And, you know, I think that's important certainly. I also think
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  that, you know, more Christians are starting to wake up to how important their votes are.
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  And I think beginning to cherish that right, but also the responsibility that God has given us
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  to vote in a way that is going to advance his kingdom and not the world's kingdom. And that,
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  I think, is more apparent to people as we look at, you know, the polling, the exit polling,
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  as it related to why a lot of people who said they would never vote for Donald Trump decided to
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  do that in November. And a lot of that was because of the social issues that were happening that
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  they did not agree with. And I think that it's important that that was on display to the entire
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  country that it is possible to go way too far in the culture. And a lot of Christians, I think,
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  at this point need to take the advantage of this time because we have the ears of the public now.
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  And a lot of them are willing to listen. And they're willing to, particularly a lot of the young
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  people, you know, Donald Trump won. What was the young vote by 30 points? Was it? And so I think,
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  yeah, so I think that is hopeful. That is telling us that the young people are starting to say,
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  oh, something does not smell right there. And that's good. You know, that means that the people
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  are awake enough. And I think we need to just start taking advantage of that. Use that microphone.
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  I talk about it in my book that when they start using media to our advantage,
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  using social media to our advantage, using YouTube to our advantage, using all of these mechanisms
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  in order to get the truth to people. Because we've seen in the past where there was a lot of
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  canceling, there was a lot of prohibitions on speaking the truth. And so while we have the
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  ability to do it, we need to do it. And yet with the mass, the majority under kind of, you know,
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  swaying toward the right a little bit more toward the biblical worldview, what do you see the left
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  doing? Doubling down. What do you see? It's like, oh, my goodness. I'm saying, keep doing it. Keep
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  doing it. You're going to lose more of supporters. But there's other questions I wanted to ask you,
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  Keisha, but I love this quote. The call to follow Christ is a call to be in conflict with the culture
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  or the world. You write that excellent big amen to that. So in the last minute and a half or two
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  minutes here, what advice do you give readers at the end of your book? Not to give it all away,
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  but just what advice can you give us? So I just said that everyone has an area of influence.
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  And that is immune. You have to be on social media. You don't have to have your own TV show.
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  But if you are, stay at home, mom, with your kids, your kids, your area of influence. Whoever
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  you're going to church with, that's your area of influence. Whoever you're going to work and
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  think that's your area of influence. And everyone has one. And God expects us to be his ambassadors
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  everywhere. And so you don't have to be some big, powerful person in the media in order to
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  impact people. Because we know we win hearts to Christ. One person at a time, we win it through a
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  relationship with them and them seeing us living a certain way and them wanting to live that way
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  and them wanting to experience what it is to be saved by Christ. And ultimately understanding
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  just the simplicity of the gospel and being able to communicate that clearly to people when we see
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  that they need it. Amen, sister. I want to give the website again. So and all you need to do
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  friends is click on book, uncommon courage. Well, there's still time. It's kisha tony russell.com
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  Tony is T O N I kisha tony russell.com. It's on Amazon and other places as well. We're just so
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  thankful for voices like yours and what year the work that you're doing. We need more of you.
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  We need more of these conversations to get out to the church to wake more people up.
• 27:16
  And I'm preaching to the choir here. But thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
• 27:21
  Thank you for having me. All right, friends. Check out the book. We appreciate you
• 27:25
  sharing the podcast, getting us out there. It's growing. Thank you. God's doing it. Praise him.
• 27:31
  But you're helping. So God bless you. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.