Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / David Campanale: Persecuted By the Left, Punched by the Right || SLP671

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David Campanale: Persecuted By the Left, Punched by the Right || SLP671 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: So for Britain, I think we're in a moment of spiritual apocalypse.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: That God is exposing things.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: And my experience at the hands of the Liberal Democrats was just but a microcosm.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: The foundations of a nation are being tested.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: They've proved themselves to be less than liberal and less than democratic.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: This was a two-hour struggle session.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: People literally stood up and read out denunciations.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: People jabbed their finger.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: You're a liar, you're a liar.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost like I was led to the top of the temple, and you can know all these kingdoms of the world could be yours if you bow down to me.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like that.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: You can be the likely member of parliament if only you would surrender to Moloch.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: If you would worship the god of abortion, if you choose death rather than the way of life.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: I thought, well, I'm not going to second guess God here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Christians are no longer seen as offensive.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: We are seen as dangerous.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think actually, in some ways, Christians ought to be dangerous.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is Britain a Christian nation?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: More time is spent in prayer on the floor of the House of Commons every week than is spent in Prime Minister's Christian time.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Britain remains confessionally and constitutionally Christian.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So are you a Christian nationalist?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I went to the Tommy Robinson Unite the Kingdom march and I heard the words behind me.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: He's a lefty.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: I got thumped and then chased through the crowd.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: There is no Christian path to redemption or restoration in our land without the path of the true cross.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: That is not Christian nationalism.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's the way of laying down your life.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: David Campanale, you've been persecuted by the left and punched by the right.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can you catch us up on that first part of the story, Persecuted by the Left?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: The left like to imagine that they are above reproach and that the moral order tends in their direction and that they can do no wrong.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: But in my case, shortly after I was selected as a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats in a top target seat, Sutton and Team in West London, overwhelmingly voted for by the members on a 68% turnout, one of the highest for a Lib Dem selection anywhere in the country, the activists said, ah, but you didn't declare your Christian beliefs.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: If only the party members knew about your Christian past, they wouldn't have shady Christian past.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, all Christians are in some sense shady.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: So within days of my victory and becoming the candidate, the attacks online commenced.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what about you as a Christian activist, you've been active in doing this and that?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: And and I was summonsed to an interrogation at the home of Lord Taupe in front of 30 activists, supposedly to answer a few questions without a dozen with about a dozen people, clear the air and all of that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um Did you know that the did did you suspect that walking into that was going to be walking into something uh quite dangerous for your career?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um I did.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I asked the organizer of it, the leader of the council, uh Ruth Dombey, beforehand in a WhatsApp exchange, and I said, Well, look, you know, there's a risk here that that my faith is going to become the issue.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what are you going to do to moderate that?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: And it'll only be a conversation with about a dozen fifteen people.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And when I got there, it was like rows of people.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: And will the accused please take their chair in the bay window?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it wasn't no one actually said that, but they literally had a armchair in the bay window that I was led to.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: And they then followed a two-in-to-hour interrogation.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell And at the heart of that, I guess they're they're asking you about what about votes of conscience?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to vote with your Christian conscience rather than the way that Lib Dems would be expected to vote?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Ross Powell Well, the left kicks off in the way it likes to.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: It was what m um during Mao's cultural revolution in in communist China called struggle sessions.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: This was a two-hour struggle session.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: And people literally stood up and read out denunciations.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: People jabbed their finger.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're a liar.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're a liar.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you didn't put in your leaflets about your what they called your deep Christian beliefs.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, I didn't say I support Chelsea Football Club or other things that might be seen as offensive or risky.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: It just didn't seem relevant.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: But they drilled down and said, Well, you know, you said at the Hustings that you would oppose assisted suicide.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, yeah, I did.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the members chose me.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I don't want to live in a culture where older and vulnerable and disabled people feel that they've got to do themselves in.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: I will not vote for that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I pointed out, well, actually, the members, you know, you've got a democratic decision here.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: I've I won on the first preferences, I won on the second preferences.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I beat the other candidates.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is how democracy works.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: And they said, But will you follow your Christian conscience on the abortion question?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you didn't tell us that you have a pro-life past.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, again, you know, this is a matter of conscience.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: And under Liberal Democrat rules, you cannot mandate your MP to vote in a particular kind of way.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, a good member of Parliament will listen, and I promise to do that, and I would hear their points of view and I'd be open to persuasion.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: Abortion was not an issue I intended to campaign on, and they knew that.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: But nevertheless, you know, you cannot speculate what a vote would look like.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, you're asking me to speculate on what an amendment or a measure or a bill or a proposal, and uh and all I can say is that I will make that judgment informed by my Christianity.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: And they said, Well, we don't want that.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Now, look, I recognise that abortion is a sensitive question, and there are complex um arguments to be had on different sides, and I was not insensitive to that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: I realised that it's important, but it was not so important that it occurred to any of the 250 members or the activists during a five-week campaign where I had a all the candidates had websites and we gave our email addresses, phone numbers, you know, ring me up.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: I visited every single house.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: I was invited into very many of them for you know, hour-long conversation, sometimes longer, because this was a seat where the person that they chose could well end up being the MP.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, look, it's not so important to you that it occurred to any of you to ask the candidates where they stood.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: And their response was, we had no idea that somebody with such a fantastic CV, with a progressive, you know, campaigner on left-wing causes should also could also be a Christian and believe in what the church teaches.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said, well, I think how dare you believe in extending human rights to the unborn?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: How how dare you?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I they knew that I was committed to a fairer, more equal society.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I've campaigned through my career as a trade union leader for fairness, so equal pay for women in the workplace.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: I provided the advice as the leader of the National Union of Journalists in BBC News to the very first women news readers who were successful in their equal pay claims.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've represented colleagues who were being discriminated against because they wanted the Sabbath off.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was there available working alongside people on what might be seen as progressive causes.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was the director of Tier Fund, uh, one of Britain's biggest disaster relief and development charities for some years as a non-exec.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: And we campaigned on poverty, on international development, on tackling corruption internationally, and on climate change issues.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: I went in climate marches.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, these are seen as progressive left-wing causes.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it never occurred that having a fundamental regard for the most vulnerable, whether disabled people or the unborn or those who were perhaps dying in a late stage in life, that they at that moment of vulnerability needed to be defended and protected in that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: It never occurred that these might be fit within my framework as a center-left politician.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the upshot of all this is that you get deselected for that seat.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um lots of legal wranglings have happened.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh very recently uh the Liberal Democrats have admitted liability, they've admitted that they personally they discriminated against you on religious grounds.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: So the Equality Act 2010 provides protections for what are known as the protected characteristics.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're all familiar with that now, I think, uh including freedom of conscience or belief and religion.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: And um, what's extraordinary about this story, there are lots of things that are frankly weird.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Was that two top lawyers of the Liberal Democrats, Lord Marx KC, who's the party's legal affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, he represented me in a nine-hour hearing and he said, Look, colleagues, I'm a non-practicing Jew.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: There is no such thing as failing to disclose your beliefs.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: We are a liberal party.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: This is nonsense.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: That was the accusation.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Failing to disclose your religion your religion.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yes, it's uh that's very resonant, isn't it, for a for a non-practicing Jew to say that.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: And then and then Sir Simon Hughes, who has stood by me throughout all of this, former Minister for Justice, Anglican, former president of the Liberal Democrats, former deputy leader of the party, MP for 34 years.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and he, again, in these party panels, I went through 13 different panels and interrogations and processes lasting an extraordinary th over 30 hours of having to explain how it was possible to be a liberal democrat and a Christian.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it isn't possible, but I I tried to argue that it was possible.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um and he said, Look, you this will not stand up in court.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: And the party panels refused to listen to these warnings very, very early on, I should say, from Lord Marx, from Sir Simon.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: And as a result, they're gonna have to pay a huge bill.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And what is, you know, I'm I've been involved in Libem politics since I was 18, so going back a very, very long time into the early 80s.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you know, raising money in the centerground of politics, we don't have the unions behind us like Labour does, or big business and finance like the Conservatives do, or reform do.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: We rely on the donations of ordinary folk.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: And um to see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds being wasted on trying to defend the indefensible, it really makes me angry.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean obviously many of these sorts of cases um end up being settled out of court.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It seems important for you that uh a public declaration of liability is is made and that this this is a line in the sands that you know Christians have a place in politics.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is it important for you that this judgment is?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what's good is that the party realize I mean the the a very senior Lib Dem rang me up um late last year and he said, look, if this goes to trial, we're not gonna win this, we'll lose badly, so we're gonna throw our hand in.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: And they wrote in a joint uh consent order to the court with my solicitors, admitting liability for breaking the law on discrimination.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: And also importantly for breach of contract, because when you join an association, doesn't matter whether it's a sports club or you know, the Boy Scouts or any paying association, um, you enter into obligations uh and you have to be treated fairly and equally.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: And the Liberal Democrats said, actually, no, we didn't in your case.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: And sadly, not just in my case, the Liberal Democrats have a track record of breaking the Equality Act, which is ironic because the Equality Act was itself written and drafted by a Liberal Democrat lawyer, Lord Lester of Hern Hill KC.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they prove themselves to be uh less than liberal and less than democratic uh in in in this matter.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yet you, when we gave you the option of choosing a Speak Life Cup, uh you chose proud Lib Dem colours.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's the uh the sort of the golden and and the the orange and yellow.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do you feel now about that party?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it is this a party that you want to be associated with?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: So for the Christian, I think every challenge that you face, every setback that you experience, um, you know, you have to examine that is it about you?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Is it about them?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is there something else going on?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now Jesus did say in the Gospels in this world, you shall have face tribulation.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: So to face challenges and rebukes and difficulties and interrogations, I mean it it felt there was a smack of the book of Acts about some of these interrogations uh hold in front of the authorities, you know, uh explain yourself.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um the issue is in this redemptive moment, do the Liberal Democrats change?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: And in some way, I think that's almost a picture of the country.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not the only Christian to go through this.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: We there are brave women, nurses, midwives in the NHS.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: Up in Darlington, um, there are people who have been magistrates.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: We think of people who are in teaching positions even in church schools, who've lost their jobs being referred to prevent.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: It takes time to r to secure justice.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: The issue is when abusive organizations are found out, could be the Church of England, could be the Catholics, you know, institutions in the NHS, Boy Scouts, the Football Association, when abuse and illegality is discovered, uncovered, the tendency I think of actually especially liberal institutions, and knowing as well as I do the BBC, is to go into denial mode or to minimize.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, they would say that, or that's a disgruntled, you know, former employee, or that women newsreader is just not good enough, or you know, they've they they've they're vexatious.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: So they minimize, deny and cover up.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um but eventually they're found out.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is the choice facing Sir Ed Davies, the leader of the Liberal Democrats.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: Is he going to participate in covering things up, in denying the breaking of the law, uh to say to the party membership, oh, this was a little small matter many years ago, um, we're moving on.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um or do they change?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: And if the party changes, if it admits, not just to me, but importantly, I think to the members in Sutton Shim who voted for me, but who were lied to about what was going on, um, do they apologize to the Christians in the party who've, you know, many of whom have stood behind me in the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: And more importantly, and more widely, do they apologize to the body politic that they claim to be one thing when reality shows that they're something very different?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And if it was just my case that demands acknowledgement and dealing with, um, you know, you'd kind of say, well, one is a bit of an accident.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: But after Tim Farron was forced and made down to made to step down as leader of the party in back in 2017, when Robert Flellow, the um prominent Catholic parliamentarian who uh went from Labour to the Liberal Democrats, was selected in his old constituency in Stoke in 2019.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: Within 36 hours he was deselected and an internal party memo that was sent to his legal team under a process of disclosure.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: The document literally says you can be a member of the Liberal Democrats and hold these beliefs, but you cannot be a parliamentary candidate.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Now his legal team passed that document to me, and I was appalled because it shows that there is a what's known in the Equality Act as a as a provision criteria or practice that um where it's disproportionate can have the impact of uh illegally discriminating against somebody.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems that within the Liberal Democrats, Christians and also gender realist women, so there have been parliamentary candidates who've been deselected, one famous case, Natalie Byrd, also the 2019 general election.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um she would turn up at a party meeting with a t-shirt that said woman equals adult grown female.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: And she was sacked on the spot.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh she sued and won.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the party conceded her case.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the Liberal Democrats have an opportunity with these cases to um I think they need to pause, admit what they did publicly, apologize to the Christian community and others, and do what's what Tim Farron has called for, which is hold an investigation.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: And with an investigation, we'll see an independent one, an assessment of what's gone badly wrong, and there'll be an opportunity to in the Christian world we call it repent.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um and that's what I would like to see happen.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: And if they do that, obviously I'm, you know, I'm committed and will remain in.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: And if not, I'll weigh that out when that happens.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Tim Farron, who you've just mentioned, uh, said the difference between US politics and UK politics is in the US you have to pretend to have a faith.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the UK, you have to pretend not to have a faith.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: To get in.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that your experience as well?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: I look when I banged on the doors, I mean I fought the 2019 general election for the Liberal Democrats, so I took time out from the BBC and fought Kwasi Kwartang uh in the Speltham constituency along the River Thames.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: And um people would rock up uh to pick up their election leaflets and they say, Is it right if I deliver the parish magazine as well as I put my my my Lib Dem leaflets?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely fine.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um many of the councillors for Lib Dems on the council were church-going, practicing Christians, um, people I would meet, uh party supporters, uh and in the Sutton in Chim, and I I came second in the Carl Shortton and Wallington selection process, which is the adjacent connected seat, top target seat for the Liberal Democrats.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and people would invite me in, and I would notice things like, well, you've got a Bible on your bookshelf, you know, that's there for a reason or beyond the table.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: And we'd have a conversation about faith, and people would, you know, it became very clear that there were a disproportionate number of Christians who were members of this party.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's true also of other political parties.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'll never forget um very moving conversation.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was invited into the home of one couple, and he was in a wheelchair, he was disabled, he had an oxygen mask on, and his wife was there, and he he took the mask off and he said, We've been praying for you to come.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: And he was they were a retired Baptist missionary couple.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, they didn't mean me.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: They meant we've been praying for somebody who gets faith, who understands w our outlook as Christians.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um I found that very, very moving.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And um clearly there were people who holding on to the idea that there can be those who share that outlook, who believe and recognize that the foundation of liberty in our country is built.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: That foundation is the Bible and is the Christian story of our nation.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: And they don't want it to see it disappear in a wave of illiberal intolerance and progressive ideology that is trashing our civilization and causing so much damage.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell Yes.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the Bible at the heart of liberal ideals, um, William Gladstone, the great liberal prime minister of the nineteenth century, uh, what do you think he would make of your story and and what has become of the Liberal Democrats today?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Ross Powell Well, the Bishop of Winchester, when he heard my case, uh, quipped if William Gladstone was alive today, the Liberal Democrats would des probably deselect him as well.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Gladstone wrote a very important book in the 1890s called The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: And he refers in that to the councils of God.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um that it doesn't matter what agents he calls referred to agencies, what they do, but they he said were bounded to or pre-configured by God's councils.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: So what has happened to me and the Liberal Democrats, I believe were pre-configured and bounded by the councils of God.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: That in a sense it was a kind of test.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um through scripture we see evidence of of people being tested, of trials.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: People come through them, they change, or they fail and they disappear, or they're struck down dead.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I've got to say, I do wonder sometimes when I think Christians over give too much credit to the devil or imagine that he's more powerful than he really is.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: We just need to recognise he's defeated.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um the cross uh was not the end of the story, the resurrection followed it.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that sometimes when we see these oppressive forces coming at us, they are moments of revelation.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: What has happened to me is in the true sense of the meaning of the word, apocalyptic.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Now it was bad for me, but apocalypse meaning the gre means in the Greek, the unveiling of what is hidden it exposes the shadim, the spirits to use that Hebrew word that are at work.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I was touched or impressed by what Rowan Williams uh said at a lecture earlier this year at the Unheard Club, uh, which I intended, attended an interview he gave where he described this moment in politics as as a full of as demonic.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And when he was pressed on that, what do you mean?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: He said, well, he referred directly to the lack of truthfulness in public life, the lack of honesty.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: And what happened to me was the twisting of the party deselection rules.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, clearly, if a candidate isn't performing, if they're lazy or venal or they've punched a constituent, of course you remove them.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: But you have to follow a process.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the Lib Dems didn't, and that's what they've admitted to.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: The process says it's a failure of performance, not that you hold Christian beliefs.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: So this was a a moment of opportunity for the party, a moment for them to be tested, challenged, and we'll see if they're willing to change.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think our country is probably going through those trials and tests to see do you realize the foundation?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because the liberals were founded by Christians, by Bible believing um people with Bible uh beliefs.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not saying that that's necessarily where they're gonna.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Go back to, but they need to recognise that there are people such as myself and Tim Farron who are not going to give up our Christianity.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he gave that Theos lecture in 2019, uh, in which Tim Farron said that Christians are no longer seen as offensive, we are seen as dangerous.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I think actually, in some ways, Christians ought to be dangerous.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then I probably am dangerous to the vested interests, to the power of of of untrammeled capital, to those who want to keep the deep inequalities and unfairness in our culture.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: And uh they want to see that perpetuated.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm not one of those politicians.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: I want to shake things up.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you've you've mentioned about the the Christian origins of the Liberal Party.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we could also talk about uh the Tory Party at prayer as the as the Anglican sort of uh branch of things.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Labour Party, people sometimes talk about, you know, a fusion of Marx and Methodism.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are deeply Christian roots to the political parties, there are deeply Christian roots to Britain as a whole.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um is Britain a Christian nation?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I I think that Britain is covenantally Christian and confessionally Christian.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: We have a unique constitution um around the world in that it's it's not codified.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: You you you know you can't dig out a document in the library and say, right, I'm reading the the the English constitution or the British Constitution.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um there are only two other countries in the world without one.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: One is New Zealand, it's a Commonwealth country, and the other, interestingly, is Israel.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um now I I look around Britain and I say, well, it isn't particularly Christian when you see um you know a hundred thousand children in London living in poverty and living in bed and breakfast uh accommodation looking for for somewhere to sleep and a regular home.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it that doesn't strike me as uh a reflective of a nation that's Christian, uh or where you see um grooming gangs um that have been kind of covered up, it seems, this extraordinary scandal that is the details are still coming to light.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you look around the deep injustices, the exploitation of the most vulnerable, and the abuse of women and children, and uh I say, well, that's not particularly Christian.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the question is more are we politically, constitutionally, do we recognise Christ?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: And what we have is Christ is is recognized not just in the coronation of the monarch, where by means of covenant the king renews a promise to serve the people and to serve God.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: Parliament is covenantal in its orientation as well.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I made a film about this some years ago now for BBC One in the Everyman series, which I helped produce, um, that looked at the Christian foundation of politics, and I've been interested in this ever since.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And more time is spent in prayer on the flower floor of the House of Commons every week than is spent in Prime Minister's question time.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: This is a order, uh a political order that is orientated towards recognition that that that wisdom comes from heaven.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um so, in that sense, Britain remains confessionally and constitutionally Christian.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the i I see it almost like Ezekiel's dry bones.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um that our constitution is the dry bones of Ezekiel, and what's required is for the breath of God to bring life to it, and that the the magic within, to use the C.S.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Lewis phrase, the the the enchanted aspect of our constitution rests on the inside those bones.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: We have the formularies that recognize Christ.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we just need the breath of God to bring it back to life again.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So Ezekiel's talking about a nation that is Israel that's in covenant with God.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what would you say to somebody who says, Look, in the New Testament, the nation that is in covenant with God is the church.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So 1 Peter 2, uh, you are a holy nation, a people belonging to God.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he is picking up, Peter is picking up the language from Exodus 19, that just as the Lord's people have been delivered out of Egypt, they're brought to Mount Sinai, they are in covenant.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then Peter says to this multinational kind of throng of of they're refugees, basically, um, in what we would call modern-day Turkey, and he says, No, you guys, you're in covenants.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: You you are the holy nation.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems like Israel according to the flesh is in covenant with God.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Israel according to the spirit is this multinational, multi-ethnic body, this polis called the church.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is Britain really in covenant with God?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that idea of of the holy nation really kind of is the rebuke to the ethnonats, um, because that is the a new ethnos.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: We are neither Greek nor Jewish.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, neither male nor female, um, neither slave nor free.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um so in the in the new covenant, we enter into the blessings that uh that transcend those human divides.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: But that said, you're a bloke, I'm a bloke, and we know what a woman is.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um there are those identities remain.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the idea of a nation with boundaries, well, you know, I have a passport, in fact, I have two, because I'm a citizen of the Italian Republic as well.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: We have those because we cross borders.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So the issue is: are there certain spheres of the political order which are outside of God's providence?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And the answer to that is no.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: So the work of the cross in bringing redemption and transformation extends beyond borders.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I agree with people like Oliver O'Donovan, who in his book The Desire of the Nations, he explains that it's possible that cities and towns and peoples and communities that they too can receive salvation, not in the eternal sense of going to heaven, but in the sense of receiving shalom.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: God's entering into the blessings are made possible by the new covenant sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I would say, and it's evidenced that uh nations decided when that they would to enter into the blessings of God, to enter into the inheritance of the new covenant, that they would make covenant with Christ.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean for those?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, what does that mean for those inside the church and outside the church?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I am a Christian and I believe in Jesus and I go to church.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a Christian and I'm in a Christian nation.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um my neighbor is not a Christian, doesn't go to church, and they're in a Christian nation.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do we both experience whatever whatever this covenantal reality is?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if we're both in that same covenantal reality, what what difference does it make?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're working it out.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the thing is, what I'm describing to you isn't a new concept, it's what we have.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is the reality that we have.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but we have a dormant constitution in the in its sort of spiritual sense.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's and I think that there's a we're seeing interesting signs that people are saying we need to renew what it means to be British.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I would argue that a liberal, generous, inclusive understanding of that is based on this story of covenant.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um and that actually we can welcome the stranger because, as we've been saying, the ethnos is abolished in Christ.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you could become a citizen of Britain under Christ recognized constitutionally as king of the nation.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's an odd concept, but it is what we have.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: It is the whole any any glance through the king's coronation ceremony of just a few years ago when Charles became king.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: He in fact there were new covenantal promises written in by the Church of England for the king to make.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: And yet we know that our monarch wants to extend that sense of inclusion to citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: The point being is that this in Christ that we come together.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: The closer our nation is to Christ, I think that the barriers of division will fall away.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell The liberal secularist will say to you how however attached you are to this as a Christian nation, you will be exclusive.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: You you will be illiberal, they'll say.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: You will be more illiberal than a secularist.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a secular account of welcoming everybody, diversity is our strength.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: The secular liberal seems to be able to draw on a greater universalism than your very Christian.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You say it's a liberal vision.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your secular liberal friends say, no, this sounds far too it it it sounds sounds religiously supremacist.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: How can you call that a liberal ideal?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well again, the facts always defeat this argument.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting opposite one of the facts.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm an immigrant from an immigrant family.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um although born in Britain.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: And my my father's Italian, and when I was born I was under Italian law an Italian citizen.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: So it's notable that that citizens of the Commonwealth and further afield, um significant numbers of Muslims, interestingly, want to come to Britain because they see it as a beacon of inclusion.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: And our argument is that that that is only possible because of our Christian foundation, that we we that every person is made in the image of God and we do not discriminate on grounds uh uh uh that we're familiar with, including your race and and and your religion.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: And your religion.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think the liberal secularist is making a terrible mistake if they think that removing Christianity is going to mean that it's possible for us all to get get on well with it together.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because actually what they're doing is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, the reason that people want to come to Britain will have been removed.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um the very grounds of it of it of liberal inclusion will have which is right at the heart of the gospel, the arms of Christ upon the cross, dying uh for the whole world, not just one race or one particular bit of it.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell So are you a liberal Christian nationalist?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Ross Powell I just don't like that word Christian nationalist.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: And by the way, I never use the word liberal.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a social democrat, um, flying under libdemicolours.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um it was a merger of two parties.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um I've always been in the SDP.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um there are problems with liberalism.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I associate that with Thatcherism and right-wing governments.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um I associate liberalism with the free market financialization of the economy that has exploited the most vulnerable and has transferred the wealth of the people of Britain that we've generated and offshore in tax havens overseas or into the pockets of of wealthy elites.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm I'm I'm a left critic of that form of market liberalism, market fundamentalism.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I I'm not sure.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: See, the very word nationalism, we imagine it's been around for ages.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: It hasn't been.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's relatively new.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was knocking around in the 19th century.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, it uh historians observe that it came into existence to describe, certainly in Britain at least, the whole idea that a nation uh could enter into, could make a choice for God.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: That um I hesitate to use the phrase chosen nation because there's only one and that's Israel.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um so so these are nations that are choosing Christ, not that Christ has chosen them.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: So we are a nation, Britain, who has chosen Christ.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I think every generation needs to continue to choose Christ, needs to renew the spiritual foundation.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: And that essentially is what the coronation oath is for, and that's essentially what happens in Westminster every day in Parliament, when uh both the Lords and the Commons kneel before God and ask for for wisdom.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: They're saying, look, we can't do this thing on our own.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: We need to lean upon God for his wisdom and intervention.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like the conversation is very different on either side of the Atlantic, because um the the uh the American founding seemed to be quite explicitly um well, it's it's certainly they certainly didn't want a national church.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the the language is quite secularized in terms of yes, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but this is uh you know the Constitution is not in the name of the triune God, and you know, the Lord Jesus Christ is is not sort of uh woven into the the fabric of the the written US const constitution in the way that the name of the Lord Jesus is woven into the unwritten Constitution of Britain in lots of different ways.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think as a rough rule of thumb, um Britain is a Christian nation, and America is tends to be a nation of Christians, and yet not founded in the same way as Britain.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or would you say that they too are in covenant with God?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: So observers are would are beginning to make that argument.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the very first pilgrims, when they landed in America, again dedicated the nation uh by means of covenant.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: They were influenced by um when Britain didn't have a king, we had a Commonwealth, and under the leadership of Cromwell, the revolutionary parliament introduced what a law called the Solemn League and Covenant, in which um, by means of oaths and declarations, um the people of Britain were asked to swear to a covenant to recognize Christ, as Parliament itself did.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the Solemn League of Covenant was taken on these ships by the first uh founders of America, um, and they believed that America was a city of a hill, a city on a hill as the New Testament describes.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, Ronald Reagan uh calling America that great shining city on a hill, um seems to be saying in in that, okay, we we are this covenant nation that's that's very New Testament in in terms of you are the light of the world, you are a city on a hill.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um but Old Testament in the sense that if you look at Ezekiel, the threat is that God will pass you under what's called the rod of the covenant, right.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_03: That you'll be counted, you'll be tested, and you'll be thwacked if you step out of line.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: So for Britain, I think we're in a moment of spiritual apocalypse, that God is exposing things.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: And my experience at the hands of the Liberal Democrats was just but a microcosm of something that's going on more widely.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: That the foundations of the nation are being tested, that institutions are being challenged.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: I can't think of any of the great institutions of states, including the royal family themselves, that haven't been tested and challenged and provoked.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: And God's asking them, you need to get back into the right relationship with me.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: These are moments where remorse is needed, contrition is required, um, national confession and repentance.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you think of on the eve of Dunkirk, the when Britain was facing the calamity that of the third of a million uh men on the beaches, that only the uh the Navy reckoned they get told Churchill they reckon they could get thirty thousand off.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when um Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, was close personal friends with the King.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they agreed together that they would ask in cabinet for a national day of prayer and repentance.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so the whole Commonwealth prayed.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you can go on to Pathe, and you can see the King and his daughters Margaret and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret enter with Churchill and his cabinet and Churchill's wife Clementine.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: You see them processing into Westminster Abbey for a day of prayer and humiliation, of repentance.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we know that that that Churchill returned to the Commons mm barely a week later to declare a miracle, a the miracle of Dunkirk.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so that kind of uh covenantal picture seems to be evidenced even in contemporary generations.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, counter-proposal.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there there's that paradigm.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Another paradigm is that the only covenanted nation in that sense is the multi-ethnic body called the church.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Other other nations might be recognized at some level by the Lords, um, but that really the work of politics, the work of the great polis, the great city of God, is to do the work of the church, which is the work of making disciples of all nations.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that is both um, you know, the great commission in Matthew 28 is both a kind of a critique and an affirmation of nations, you know, um make disciples of all nations, bring bringing them into this great polis.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but nations exist, you know, and we're we're we're happy to see that there are nations that exist.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: But surely the great work that Christ has sent us into the world to do is to make those disciples from among the nations, rather than to get nations into relationship with God, we should be getting people into relationship with God.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And laws have never saved anybody, politics has never saved anybody.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're very grateful for the Dunkirk miracle, and that happened at that military and political level.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but really the relationship that God wants us to have is the relationship of the soul to God, and that should be the mission of the church.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God for politics and all that, but but really, David, as as a Christian, as a believer, isn't there isn't the calling of the New Testament on your life to be the missionary that you are into the nation and and and into the political realms as such as they are, but to see individuals, to see persons in that right relationship with God rather than nations?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: The answer is both.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think there is a Protestant problem here of individualism.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the let's just use that word you picked up of messenger or or or i it it it means herald or apostle.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: And in the New Testament it had a deeply political meaning.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the only heralds they had knocking around, because they didn't have the internet, they didn't have newspapers, were people authorized by the rulers to announce things in marketplaces and in town centres.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um and they were heralding a political message.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, this is from the king.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: This what I'm about to say matters, and people would stand up and listen.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that sense of those who first proclaimed the gospel did so as with that same meaning of the word herald.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: It had a there's a new king on the block, and his name's Jesus.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: He may be the lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the world, and this is a new model of kingship.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: It is the servant king.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um but nevertheless he has a claim on you and the town and the nation.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: So the very first evangelists to Britain, um, those of the king in the Celtic Church and those who followed them from Rome sent by Pope Gregory the Great, so we think of Augustine of Canterbury, they addressed kings.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: And the very and they wanted to bring kings over, convince them of the gospel, because they wanted their nation, their nations, to acknowledge that Christ was the king overall.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that is as I'm just making an observation of historical fact.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: This is what has happened in Britain, it's what happened in Eastern Europe, in Western Europe through time.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: That these are nations that were founded, um, not out of the sense that um they were doing God a favour, but out of the sense that they were absolutely needing to do themselves a favour.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um pagan kings wanted the gods on their side, and here was a new cod who the only one who um was risen from the dead, declaring himself to be king of kings and lord of lords.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that claim came through to nations, but also had to be responded to by individuals.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm very skeptical of um political messaging that thinks that the uh it's a good news moss message to people who are struggling that if you just pull yourself up by the boots, by your bootstraps, and live a more ethical and moral life, that somehow that the world will, by osmosis, get better.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because that puts God out of the picture.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um you can't do that.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: That is that isn't Christianity.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's the heresy of Pelagianism.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are two responses you could make to okay, other nations had their gods, and their God was bigger than that god, and so that's why that nation beat that the other nation.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay, that's the way the pagans do things, and they are in some kind of you know arrangement with God, but probably not as as uh as as symbiotic as as the covenant relationship.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the way pagans do politics and religion is to be kind of joined at the hip in that sort of way.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are two ways that the Christian can say, we don't do it that way.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: One way is to say, well, you were in cov you know, you you were you had a a covenant relationship with that God.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: We we have a covenant relationship with this God, and his name is Jesus.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Another way to respond to that is to say, you're joined at the hip to your gods, we're doing something else.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where we we arrange ourselves such that there's the city of God and the city of man, and and the city of God is actually where all the action is in terms of the church that is then, you know, the king comes and bows in the snow to the Pope because um it's it's the work of the church that is really the the work of God in the world.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Politics is downstream of that.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Politics catches up with that.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the real way that we're different from the pagans.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we're attached to a different God, but that the God that we have wants us to do politics completely differently.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's absolutely right.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: And you're important to underline the prophetic role of the church, which those first evangelists effectively did.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: The very first prophetic act was this gospel commands you to repent, you know, and and that includes you as the king.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: If you look at the the reason why, I mean, I I've looked into this, the the the very first evidence I can find in the literature to the Lord's spiritual is in the written declaration made in 838 at the great ecclesiastical council at Kingston upon Thames, the place where kings were later, the Saxon kings were went on to be crowned.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that was King Egbert meeting um Archbishop Sealnoth and Egbert's son as well.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: And the church.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Said, Well, if you recognize us, um, we will speak prophetically to you as members of the King's Witan, uh, and we will recognize your descendants.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And the king in return uh recognized the role of the church to speak truth to power.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he specifically in the declaration referred to my spiritual lords.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that that is the beginning of the church-state relationship.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's one that r the where the state has to humble itself before Christ, and Christ is the words of Christ are mediated through the council and the rebuke of the church.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: So our bishops are failing in their role in the church in the House of Lords.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: There are 24 of them entitled to sit there if they if they dumb down or soft pedal on on the on the rebuke that needs to be given to power, beginning with are you keeping your covenantal oaths?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do you are you recognizing the the kingship of Christ and his claims?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and fundamentally I would agree with the other journalist and politician who's inspired me, Abraham Kuyper, the former Prime Minister of Holland, in his Grand Rapids lectures on Calvin, he he made that famous declaration that there's nothing in the sphere of the world that w where Christ does not say that is mine.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: And there's nothing in Britain, no institution, no individual, no community where Christ is not saying, come to me.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and and yes, if if the um if the emphasis is church, you need to be proclaiming to the powers.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be proclaiming to the political powers uh of of the day, and you need to have a gospel that unmasks spiritual powers and political powers for what they are.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that's a very important message.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And when I was going through the the interrogations, the struggle sessions with the Liberal Democrats, part of me thought this is spiritual.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the the waves of anger.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: And um at the deselection meeting in the first EGM of the Sutton Liberal Democrats in November the 1st, 2022, I was accompanied by Sir Simon Hughes, who stood by me.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the hostility was amazing.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: They were starting shouting out at him, What are you doing here?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Sit down.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: He'd sort of turn white.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I looked upon them and I kind of I was astonished.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um I thought that this is unusual.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: This was, you know, these words were were were really angry uh towards us as Christians uh wanting to hold on to the right of conscience.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, the words of of um that other David, uh the shepherd boy up against the Philistines, uh, when he spoke to his brothers before taking on Goliath, he he said, Who are these uncircumcised liberal democrats?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: Who are these uncircumcised liberal democrats that they think they can defy the army of the living God?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: I heard the chariots, the chariots, there are thousands, as as the psalmist wrote, there are thousands and thousands and thousands.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um when you're in that spiritual moment of struggle, uh yes, you do feel on your own.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: And as a politician, I'm answering it soberly, with thought, with no ma anger or malice on my part, with genuine desire to understand what is what is happening here.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: The members have just voted for me.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: Why is there a deselection where the rules haven't don't allow a deselection on grounds of your Christian conviction?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: And it felt spiritual.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um this felt that this was a a dynamic um at work here.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I felt sorry because in due course, I'm not saying that I would never necessarily see vindication, although I I have.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um many people don't.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the vindication, I don't feel any kind of um I feel great sadness about what has happened.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: But see it as a wonderful moment for change, for an admission of wrongdoing.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what our nation needs to do.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's what Europe needs to do to get back within the bounds and the councils of God.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: So why not do that from the right of politics then?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this time last year, Danny Krueger gets up and he was still a conservative MP at the time and speaks to a largely empty uh House of Commons.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a very memorable speech of uh the the the Christian foundations and origins of the nation.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was a it was a kind of a speaking truth to power kind of moment.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um within about a month or so, he had gone to reform.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and perhaps he and his Christian convictions uh sit uh more comfortably in a party like Reform, certainly than than the Conservatives, as was his judgment.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um is David Campanali going to uh move towards the right of politics because you know because certain parties on the right might be more amenable to your views uh as you've as you've described them than those on the left have proved themselves to be.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm both a politician and a journalist.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: And as a journalist, I'm curious.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I've gone to where the right are to listen to what they have to say.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: I thought Danny made a remarkable and commendable speech.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was, as you say, uh in many ways prophetic, viewed millions of times now online.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I wouldn't I've gone out to listen to the right.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: I see Ethnonats, I see Angry People.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: I went uh for Premier Christian radio to the Tommy Robinson Unite the Kingdom march.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: September last year, was it something like that?
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I um wanted to listen to what people carrying crosses and people with penance with Bible verses on, Jesus the way, the truth, and the life, they said, people carrying Christian icons.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I asked the same of each of them, um, how are you going to explain your presence here to your black or Asian brother and sister in Christian church tomorrow morning?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: Not because I wanted to trip them up, but because I was genuinely interested.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: And there were some very diverse and interesting answers to that.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: People who were cultural Christians, people who were clearly church-going, committed Christians, and others who were not Christian at all.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yet carrying a cross or carrying placards.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, you know, what are you gonna say to your fellow Christians at church?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm not gonna be at church tomorrow.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_03: He said, Well, but you are a Christian.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Well, no, not really.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_03: I said, but you're carrying this pennant.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, because I think it's true.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I at that that at the end of that march in Whitehall, there were nasty, intolerant, um, bigoted, fascistic um speeches from from right-wing nationalists.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought that those didn't actually reflect the sort of voices I was hearing.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I heard the uh my heart sank when I heard the words behind me.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: He's a lefty.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um and this these guys swearing and clearly drunk were saying, put that microphone away.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm here for Premier Christian radio.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: I said, put that effing Christian microphone away.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I got thumped and then they chased through the crowd until I yeah, I put it away because I I wanted to get through on the other side.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: But David, do you think as you're asking people, you know, how would you explain your presence here to black and brown people in church tomorrow?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think they were antagonized because they thought you were accusing them of racism?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And why can't they just march?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, why everybody else gets to march.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't they march it's not necessarily a whites only it wasn't a whites-only march, it wasn't a racist thing.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Weren't you bringing race into a question that probably wasn't in their thinking?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what antagonized them?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: Aaron Powell No, I'm afraid it was a bit more mundane than that.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was probably they all turned up in sort of their England and Milwaukee shirt shirts.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: We they'd come from Blackfriars and they were pretty tanked up with their cans of lager.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: And they probably thought I was posh because it was you know how I dressed.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I also had a TUC bag.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was a delegate for the union at the TUC conference, and on the side of it was written, Britain deserves a pay rise.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now I had my recording equipment in that and my bottle of water, and so when I got thumped, it was probably you know, it wasn't a great spiritual insight that said he's a lefty.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: It was probably how I conducted myself.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's not a race thing, but maybe it's a class thing.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I do think that that Britain has a class issue.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not con- It's not a controversial thing to say.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there therefore and and I have noticed that that some of the distaste that people have had for Unite the Kingdom and that sort of thing, it certainly can come across as quite classist.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly can come across as here are the elites who are sneering.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, just look at that round-robin letter from church leaders that was badly misjudged attacking them, which I thought was class-based.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, you're right.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um I was impressed on that march that people were if they were doing any swearing, it was, you know, Keir Starmer's you know, expletive.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't sh you know saying that about their black or Asian uh fellow citizens.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the Prime Minister's shoulders are broad enough to prefer that they were shouting political slogans at him rather than at at fellow citizens.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a political uh march, um anger spilling out, but also desire, I think, of people wanting to find some hope or expression coming back in their direction from Christianity and the church.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not going to write off those on the right, but but politically, we see in the Conservative Party and Reform those who seem very close to the interests of financial capital, of the billionaires.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell So earlier in the conversation, when we were asked when I asked the question, um, is Britain a Christian nation, the first thing you went to was poverty and inequality.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um as a as a marker of just uh how Christian or how unchristian we are.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: So so issues around poverty and inequality are important to you.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you also spoke approvingly of the gender-critical feminists and and some of their some of their um gender realism.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're so calticulturalist Christians, aren't we?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: You just can't put this in a box.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, you want to be pro-life and anti-euthanasia.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um what does this say about what our expectations should be for politics?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh I I I think this age is an age of w I think we do need a third way.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the the idea of the third way um has come under massive criticism at the moment.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think there's never been a more important time to refuse the binaries that are being offered to us.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Re- refuse the package deal.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's, you know, okay, you you go libdem, and so therefore, quiet quiet on Christian issues, quiet on Christian conscience, quiet on um gender critical ideas, or go towards the right and just go with the flow.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're forced to go with the flow on you know free market capitalism and let it let her rip.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I think the third way that people sort of associate with Tem Keller in in in New York, I think, at its best, is is seeking to say we refuse the binary, we refuse the package deals that the world is offering to us, and therefore we will always be pilgrims in this land, not not quite at home, anywhere.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is that your view as well?
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is for the Christian, you've got to every time be prepared to lay your life down and not make the compromises.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um As Kate Forbes, who herself is an inspiration, the former Deputy First Minister of Scotland, the compromise is never worth it when it comes to matters of conscience.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I was I it was almost like I was led to the top of the temple, and you can all these kingdoms of the world could be yours if you know you bow down to me.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like that.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you can be the candidate here, you can be the likely member of parliament if only you would surrender to Moloch, if you would worship the god of abortion, um, if you agree that choice matters more than anything else rather than life, if you choose with us to choose death rather than the way of life and the way and so I I thought, well, I'm not gonna second guess God here.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_03: I know one thing for sure.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um he said, come follow me and not to look back over your shoulder, put your hand to the plow, get on with it, don't complain.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I'm not a winger.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um kitchen's hot.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: I knew it before I entered it.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: I've lived in this world for 40 years.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: I got elected 40 years ago.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I know what politics is like.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the prize isn't worth it because if you compromise yourself just for the sake of power, when you get there, you lack any authority, you're under the control of of of of people who um who will always grab to if they think you're weak on that, they'll come for something else.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got to be you've got to stand firm, even it means going laying down your career.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I felt sense God's vocation from when I was a teenager when I came to Christ in my early teens.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the call was surrender yourself to me and be holy unto the Lord and all that that meant, be holy and be ready and and and serve me.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because uh David was a man who served God in his generation, and I am that man uh who seeks to serve, um, not to aggrandise or not e not to impose, but using the democratic process to argue persuasively for the for the blessings of living in a world that um, as Tom Holland says, we're living, you know, we're the the world around us doesn't it's like the fish in water doesn't know what we're swimming through, the the blessings of what we're living and enjoying in this world shaped by Christian civilization.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm about the business of renewal, but doing it in a way that uh we know from scripture releases God's power to transform us.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that is the way of the cross.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um yes, the book of Revelation says that the nations will come before before the, you know, every individual will come before the throne of God for judgment, and that Jesus is King of kings and lords of lords, and the nations are being made his footstool.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: And every tongue will confess and every knee will bow and declare that Jesus Christ is Lord.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: But through the Book of Revelation is the idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God who was slain from before the foundation of the world.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_03: There is no Christian path to redemption or restoration in our land without the path of the true cross.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: That is not Christian nationalism, it's the way of laying down your life, of of declaring your conviction, the power of a different way, which is the path of suffering.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that if by this mustard seed being falling to the ground, maybe not me, but you know, I hope it could yet be me, but others will say, Well, some new growth will come out of this.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the question I ask myself every day, politically, and it's an odd one, but it's one certainly for the Christian politician, is what do we have to do as individuals and as a nation for God to do what he says in Scripture that he wants to do?
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the model for that is the restoration and the rediscovery of the Book of the Law, of the Book of the Covenant by King Josiah.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it says that they read out the book of the law and that together the king swore again to the part to the covenant and all the people with him, and then they smashed the altars to the idols.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're in a civilizational moment where, and I agree with Danny Kruger on this, that there needs to be a reckoning and a dealing with the things that stand against human flourishing.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: We need to expose the shadim, the spirits behind them that are at work.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: But trust that that you don't do this necessarily by law, but you do it by inviting God's co-working.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's that wonderful promise of Messiah that we read at every Advent from the Book of I of uh in chapter six of Isaiah, where it says, and the promising of the coming king that the government will be on his shoulder.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: So for the Christian politician, it isn't that and this is perhaps the mistake we've got of Westminster government.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: No matter how big government gets, we still can't solve the problems.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: And we think the answer is more taxes, more government, uh, more interventions.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: And when actually God's way is if you come into the blessings of the covenant of Leviticus set out in Deuteronomy, come into the blessings of the covenant, then you will step outside of the curses.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: But that is the way to renewal.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's inviting Christ once again to we begin by recognizing confessionally that the government is on his shoulder and we ask him for help, you know, is an act of national repentance as Maurice Glassman, the Labour uh peer, um, writing in the magazine The Spectator last December, he called for an act of national repentance and said that the church should lead it.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what government should do.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: It should say to the Church of England and the Catholics, lead us in acts of national reckoning and repentance, and we will go about the business of smashing the altars and dealing with the idols and putting the person central, their dignity, the most vulnerable in our communities once again.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but doing it in the way that Scripture suggests that we should do it.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's finish with uh a personal question.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's been a very intense last few years.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um we've had an intense conversation.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: We've had an intense just this morning.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um So you have been through a furnace of affliction.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it uh you have um in your own description lived through uh some apoc apocalyptic moments.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is it that personally grounds you?
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um how are you able to uh to get through the kind of testing that you've gone through?
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm already dead.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: The Christian is dead to the world and they've been made alive in Christ.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: So if we if we engage in every sphere of public service as politicians with the attitude that we're already dead, and Whiticomb, David Amos, uh dead but already dead, but now alive and living in Christ in glory.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_03: I knew both of them as servants who put conscience first.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that I'm inspired by people like that.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm buoyed up by my family, um, my wife and two sons, and my immediate family.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm being Italian, you can imagine that we're pretty close.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um my brothers and and and all their nephews and nieces have rallied around.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um ironically, they they were all Lib Dem activists too, and I'm the last one who's still in membership.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: They've all kind of given up on the party.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: But um it's that sense that um God is walking alongside us, you know, going through the the the valley of death, of the shadow of death.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_03: But you know what, there's a table prepared, a banquet prepared for me.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I've accepted God's staff, um, which is with me, I've accept accepted his correction, which is really needed because there's so many areas that that God needs to work on in my life uh and that he's dealing with.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I'm looking forward to the banquet, uh especially the court hearing um in front of a circuit judge, perhaps sometime later this year, if required, where the a court will settle the damages um that the party uh will have to pay.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: Through the valley, there is always a a feast at the other end.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_03: But uh not always, but uh thankfully in Christ.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, in Christ and in eternity, there always is.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so David Campanale, thank you so much.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.