POLICY COUNSEL
NOVEMBER 2024 POLICY COUNSEL SPEECHES
Dr. Thomas F. Farr
President Emeritus | Religious Freedom Institute
Recipient | Edwin Meese III Award for Originalism and Religious Liberty
I am deeply honored to receive ADF’s Edwin Meese Award. Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with General Meese to discuss my own work on religious freedom. General Meese is a Barnabas – an encourager. I left that meeting affirmed in my own vocation to be a defender of religious freedom.
That is a vocation I had first embraced, of all places, at the US Department of State. I was a career diplomat assigned to the new Office of International Religious Freedom, created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
As you may know, the State Department has long been one of the most secular institutions in government (and that’s saying something). Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once wrote that our diplomats were trained to stay away from religion because it was nothing but trouble.
This seems a serious deficiency in the agency charged with advancing American values and interests in a world saturated by religion of one sort or another. State’s Office of International Religious Freedom was intended to help overcome that religion-avoidance syndrome, and in some ways it has. But under progressive leadership, our diplomacy has, I regret to say, reverted to type.
That reversion is but one symptom of a deeper problem that I want to address today.
For most of our history, the approach to religion established by America’s Founders – that is to say, a constitutional right to its free exercise – was viewed as an extraordinary gift to America, and by extension, to the world. But today, religion – especially traditional religion – is under attack in America, as is religious freedom itself.
The free exercise of religion has yielded extraordinary benefits to our country. For two centuries, it anchored a productive moral culture derived from traditional Judeo-Christian values. That culture was a source of unity and purpose that helped reconcile Americans even after grievous national crises from the Civil War to Vietnam.
Today, the Left is supplanting that traditional moral culture, including American views of religion, morality, virtue, and the religious freedom that has sustained it. New and radical moral norms have infiltrated most of our cultural institutions. This has triggered a veritable cultural revolution that threatens American exceptionalism in a way that deserves greater attention from conservatives.
The recent election results may defer this threat for a season, but no political change alone can defeat it. Politics in America follows culture.
At this moment in our history, conservative defense of religious freedom is critical.
So let’s begin with a look at how a progressive moral culture threatens American greatness, and then turn to the Founders’ gift as the way forward.
At the core of the Left’s objection to traditional religion is a false and dangerous anthropology – the idea that humans are radically autonomous beings whose actions are unrestrained by any objective truth, including accountability to a God of love and justice, to the natural law, or even to material reality.
This idea of radical human autonomy is not new. It draws on perennial Leftist intellectual trends, such as moral relativism, nihilism, materialism, and Marxism. Today’s version also reflects a reliance on self-validating emotion, and a rejection of reason and common sense. All of these trends have converged in recent years to capture most of our cultural institutions.
The destructive impact of the autonomy concept is perhaps best revealed in the idea of “gender fluidity” – the false and dangerous proposition that human beings, including children, may acquire a “gender identity” that is somehow incompatible with their sex by using therapeutic counseling, cross-hormone drugs, and surgeries that both mutilate the body, and render it permanently infertile.
Of course, there are genuine cases of gender dysphoria and human suffering, and we should address them with compassion and love. But the false idea of “gender fluidity” has been endorsed by the medical profession. Progressives have convinced much of Gen Z that changing their sex will both end their suffering and make them happy. This is a terrible lie, which we should also fight with compassion and love.
A belief in radical human autonomy fuels other elements of progressive policy. If humans are truly autonomous, free to choose with no concern for objective moral or material truths, sexual expression can be understood as solely about human pleasure, or marriage as a dissolvable contract to satisfy adult desires.
In this moral dystopia, women and girls, men and boys, are free to dispose of the unborn child if they believe her presence limits their freedom. This belief has induced millions of Americans simply to wish away the scientific truth that the unborn child is a human being, and to ignore the only just and humane conclusion – that the child in the womb warrants the same legal protections as the rest of us.
Much of the American public no longer believes that abortion is a tragic reality that should be safe, legal, and rare. The very act of abortion is now understood as a public good – good for women, good for men, and good for America.
Each of these products of radical human autonomy has become, an “inviolable human right” in the progressive moral universe. The Biden administration has formally and publicly rejected the very existence of inalienable rights as given by God, and as codified by our Founders.
Unfortunately, most progressive rights have also been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy provided the model in Casey by declaring for the Court: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Today that model of human autonomy is deeply embedded in our public schools, elite universities, the media, Big Tech, and large corporations. It is lodged in the sports and entertainment industries, our diplomacy, and even our military forces.
This model is far more than mere opinion. Its departure from reality has necessitated coercion:
- Blue state laws denying parents the knowledge that their child seeks a so-called “gender transition” or an abortion;
- Corporations requiring DEI training to ensure employees affirm the new rights, or risk their careers;
- Lawsuit after lawsuit against religious resisters like the Little Sisters of the Poor or the baker, Jack Phillips, because of their refusal to support abortion or same-sex marriage;
- The outrageous punishments proposed in the absurdly named “Equality Act.”
These and countless other coercive policies are designed to intimidate defenders of traditional morality into silence. Here, despite the march of progressive moral norms through our cultural institutions, the Left has not yet entirely succeeded. If we are to turn back this assault, we must reappropriate the Founders’ gift.
Let’s turn to what the Founders were actually doing with religion and religious freedom.
Most on the Left insist that the Founders’ political and moral legacy was to exclude religion from the public life of America. As this narrative has it, the Founders were highly influenced by the 18th Century Enlightenment’s enthronement of pure reason. As a result, they viewed religion as irrational superstition to be protected, if at all, in private worship.
Most of the Founders were indeed well acquainted with classical philosophers of rationality, such as Aristotle and Cicero, as well as the Enlightenment opponents of religion such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot.
And yet, the Founders’ writings cited the Bible more than any of these sources. Their familiarity with the Bible led them to position religion, which they understood as both faith and reason, at the center of the new republic.
The historical evidence shows that the Founders’ provision of a constitutional right for all citizens to the free exercise of religion included public exercise, as well as private worship. They were coercing no one. To the contrary, they were employing religious freedom to achieve a public good.
Some, like Jefferson, rejected most religion but still believed it necessary to the success of the new republic. Others, such as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington emphasized biblical faith and reason together, the primary source of the virtue and morality vital to their experiment in self-government.
John Adams made the striking statement that “the doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect one another….”
Further, Adams wrote, the Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” In his second farewell address, George Washington insisted that “all of the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
In sum, the Founders’ wisdom was broad and deep. At its heart was a high view of Judeo-Christian religion that encompassed both faith and reason. The result was unprecedented in history, and it has until recently remained so.
No other nation before or since had provided a constitutional right of free exercise of religion to all its citizens. No other nation had understood free exercise as a natural right given by God to every human being, and therefore protected from state control. No other nation had employed public free exercise to build trust and unity among fiercely independent citizens who have highly antagonistic religious and political opinions.
Here are a few examples of the contributions of free exercise to our nation. Please note how progressives today disparage most of these contributions.
- Free exercise has strengthened our constitutional system of limited government by acknowledging a divine authority greater than government. Today, the Left acknowledges no authority greater than government.
- Free exercise has helped us reject the lie that we are merely material beings who should live for ourselves, seeking personal gratification because that is all there is. Today that lie is conveyed to our children by our progressive education system.
- Free exercise has generated the most productive faith-based civil society in history, empowering thousands of religious institutions that provide care for the poor, the sick, the orphan, the aged, and the dying. Progressives sue the morally orthodox among these groups, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, over and over again.
- Free exercise has sanctioned what the great jurist Michael McConnell has called “religious arguing” for public policies. Religious arguments have driven the most consequential reform movements in our history, namely, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and the right to life. Today, the Left often claims that religious arguments for public policies are unconstitutional and bigoted.
- Free exercise has encouraged the survival of traditional views of marriage and family. Today, progressives consider such views as hateful toward same-sex couples. Many progressives actually value childless couples as ways to control population growth and mitigate climate change, even as plummeting birth rates endanger our nation.
- Free exercise has enabled the survival of traditional liberal education amid progressive education that abandons both faith and reason. It has encouraged Christian students to stand with their Jewish peers in fighting the growing scourge of anti-Semitism in America.
- Free exercise has strengthened our health care system and our military by defending the rights of morally traditional medical and military professionals. Progressives often seek to ruin the careers of both.
Let me stress again that the Founders’ model of religious freedom was not one of religious or political coercion. It was grounded in Judeo-Christian principles, but it did not and does not bind anyone. It does not coerce or punish. It encourages the religious to view their adversaries as endowed with the divine image and worthy of respect. Allowing for human frailty and corruptibility, the Founders’ model has worked well.
It has worked because the free exercise of religion produced a public moral culture grounded in a unifying anthropology and a belief in objective truth. Every human being has dignity given by God. Every person has a purpose greater than fulfilling his desires. He exists for something, for someone, greater than himself. And he warrants a government that will protect his freedom to be faithful to that vision.
This moral culture has almost vanished in America, replaced by a toxic waste dump of self-regard and its inevitable progeny of coercion. It has also yielded unhappiness and despair. A recent article in The Atlantic by Christine Emba examined why America’s young adults aren’t having children. She asked whether the cause was finances, climate change, war, or political instability.
She concluded that none of these problems explained the choice to be childless. What did explain it was: “uncertainty … about the value of life and a reason for being. Many in the current generation of young adults don’t seem totally convinced of their own purpose, or the purpose of humanity at large, let alone that of a child.”
This is perhaps the most devastating aspect of the radical moral culture now infecting our institutions and young adults – our future leaders, namely the belief that there is no purpose to life, to believing in God, to being a mother or a father, or to being a citizen in a nation they have been taught is hateful, racist, and theocratic.
This is a counsel of despair. Is it any wonder that so many of our youth are reporting deep unhappiness, loneliness, and isolation, turning to drugs, and committing suicides of despair? Is it any wonder that the right they hold most sacred is the right to eliminate the child in the womb, or that so many believe they can end their suffering by trying to change their sex?
The progressive assault on our culture and on religious freedom is not simply the result of citizens with different values. All Americans are entitled to their views. But they are not entitled to silence others. That is not democracy. Rather, it is the solvent of democracy. Far from bringing us together, it is cleaving us into two warring cultures.
Conservatism provides a remedy that is unavailable to contemporary progressives. Historically, conservatism has been a movement grounded in reality, one that assumes the existence of objective, knowable, transcendent and material truths. To be sure, true conservatives vigorously debate these truths and how they can be employed to help our nation. But progressives create their own truths and debate how to use them in gaining and retaining cultural and political power.
For the sake of our nation, we must not allow that to continue.
Many conservatives are engaging in this fight. But too few are engaged in the project of restoring the Founders’ vision for the free exercise of religion as the critical counterweight to progressive moral ideology.
As a conservative who has made recommendations on religious freedom policy for recent incoming administrations, I will end by exhorting you to fight the mounting dangers to this blessed land from the opponents of traditional religion and its sacred protector, religious freedom American-style.
Your love for America is in your DNA, and you work hard for its flourishing and its success. You are indispensable to this multi-generational battle.
Again, thank you to ADF for honoring me with this award. May God bless you all.
Pastor Lucas Miles
Pastor | Nfluence Church
I really believe that one of the greatest issues facing our nation today is illegal immigration. But I’m not talking about what’s happening at the southern border. I’m talking about the illegal and mostly undocumented, at least until Megan’s book, infiltration of the four walls of the American church, our nation’s Bible colleges, and Christian Orthodoxy. It’s been taking place in our country where strange and foreign ideas are being allowed through the porous doctrinal walls of American Christianity and introducing concepts that are not only unrecognizable to the Scriptures, but they’re foreign to the Gospel itself. And I believe that it is a mandate on our lives to do something about it.
I want to share with you a little bit about myself. As Bob said, I am Pastor to a church called Nfluence Church in South Bend, Indiana. In 2012, I made a very outlandish statement that I thought we might need to keep our eyes on Mayor Pete Buttigieg because I think he’s going to run for president. And I was laughed at, and I was told, “That will never happen.” And I went toe-to-toe in my city against Mayor Pete.
I preached a series called, “What Does the Bible Say About?” It’s a very dangerous thing when a preacher starts preaching what the Bible says. It’s very frightening. It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but it’s very frightening when it does. And I did this series called, “What Does the Bible Say About?” And then each week we filled in a different topic, and we had eight different weeks that we went through, and over an eight-week period of time, I preached my church down 50%. If you’d like to invite me in, please just let me know. I literally watched as half my people left, people that I thought were with us, people that I thought were ideologically aligned, people that I thought were Biblically sound, from staff members to elders to everyday parishioners, I watched them walk out the door.
We talked about issues of socialism versus free market. We talked about open borders versus national sovereignty. We talked about the issue of the sanctity of life. We talked about marriage, sexuality, gender, and all these things. And each week, there was a new offense, and somebody left. And honestly, it really wasn’t as much over the national conversation as much as there was a lot of offense locally. Although I’m in the Great Hoosier State, which is a supermajority red state, I live in one of the few very blue counties. South Bend, Indiana has had a democratic mayor for over 60 years. And much of that, as our dear friend Coach Lou Holtz has said, we have a university there that’s Catholic in name only. And there’s been major, major impact and influence in that area.
I’ve been pastor at the same church for 20 years, that my wife and I started, and we’re still there today. We watched all around us as churches that we’d known for years began to kind of drift, leftward, and wade, you know, outside of the bounds of Christian doctrine and Christian orthodoxy. And I started asking the question, what’s going on here? What’s happening? And that led me on a search to really understand this thing that we call today Progressive Christianity or the Christian Left or what I call in my book Woke Jesus.
And I want to give you a couple examples of what I’m talking about here. So first off, there was a TikTok influencer, and they made the comment that Jesus was most… by the way, this is not a TikTok influencer that’s a self-proclaimed pagan. This is a Christian TikToker who happens to also be gay. And they made the statement that they believe that Jesus also must be gay because He calls John his beloved and get this, He wore a tunic, which is a lot like a dress. That was his reasoning.
This one is a bit more offensive: There was a Cambridge doctorate student in theology that is part of their dissertation and then they also offered this as their sermon at chapel. They introduced the idea that the death of Christ, the crucifixion, was the climax of human history. And I think that if we the include the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, I think that we could probably all agree and get on board with that. Except for they went on to say that it was actually the intersectionality of the cross, that Jesus at that moment that God made him embody both male and female on the cross. And that moment was the was the climax of human history because it demonstrated God’s favor and love towards the Trans community. That is a doctoral candidate at one of the leading theological institutions. They said that because Jesus was pierced in his midsection and he himself being born a male, that at that time he had a wound in the middle of his body, that bled, and his male also genitalia and that made him therefore both genders. It’s heretical, it’s disgusting, it’s vile, but it is what has been infiltrating this church, I believe, for well over 100 years. And many of us as we complain about a senile man who’s had an open southern border, we have pastors that are asleep at the helm, letting just about anything into the institution.
Or we could talk about a Christian university president who has been fearful of an image of Jesus painted on one of his buildings. And he has made the statement that he’s concerned that it could be an image of alienation for some of his students of color. Picture of Jesus at a Christian university.
See, as frightening and really as heretical as these ideas are, I believe that they really just serve as examples to the state of the church today and really the state of Christianity. But I think it’s important to recognize that the crisis that we have in the church today, and I am optimistic about it, it is not the first time that we have faced something like this. You know, we have a thing in history called the Council of Nicaea, and this took place in 325 where bishops were gathered from all over really the known empire at that time and brought together to solve an issue related to this idea of “who is Jesus.” And there were certain teachings at this time, and this really served to be the first ecumenical council. It was called by Constantine, of course, and he brought together 318 bishops. And although Constantine wasn’t a Pastor himself, by any means, and historians will debate on whether or not he was even saved, but he saw the division in the church over this issue of what was called the Aryan controversy. Really, what do we make of this man Jesus? Was he God in the flesh or was he somehow lesser than and subordinate to the Father? He saw this issue as being the thing that was dividing the nation and preventing the church from actually gathering in unity. See, the central question was Jesus, what they called of the “same substance,” homo usia. Or, as Arius argued, was he subordinate? Was he created by God and less than?
And see, although this council happened roughly 1700 years ago, I believe that the implications of this and the process with which they went through are still very relevant for us today. See, in the same spirit of Arianism, I believe that a new false doctrine has really risen up that’s attempting to downgrade Jesus’ divinity. I say it this way. The Left knows that in order to be able to promote their ideas, they have to have some sort of kind of moral coat hanger to hang them on. And they needed the church to sign off on this. All the things that Megan shared were part of the process in getting this to happen in recent years. And they recognized that they need the church basically to act as a propaganda center for these Left ideas. Of course, they did this through money and infiltration in all the ways. But I believe that they were looking for a particular type of “messiah,” not the biblical Christ. No, he wouldn’t do.
They needed a woke Jesus who would bow the knee to the Marxist BLM, who would be double-masked and triple-vaxed, and who would ultimately bow his knee to the State as God. And they found that Jesus, they found that gospel, in the Christian Left, in the woke church. And I believe that is exactly what we are seeing today.
Why does that matter? It matters for a couple reasons. First off, it matters because when you ask the question, do you believe in Jesus? We almost need to ask today, well, what Jesus are you referring to? Are you referring to the black Christ of Kohn’s liberation theology? Are you referring to the social justice warrior of liberation theology? Are you referring to the Jesus of the He Gets Us campaign? Or are you referring to the biblical Christ?
Jesus warned that there’s going to be many that come in his name and say, you know, there’s a Christ, there’s a Messiah, here he is. And I think for a long time we’ve been worried about kind of a quote-unquote “antichrist” and that’s not a theological statement that there won’t be one eventually. But we’ve been worried about that, and we have failed to see the pictures of Jesus or the iterations, kind of this multi-verse approach to who Jesus is, that have been flashed in front of our eyes each and every single Sunday in our churches and also flashed in front of our seminary students at Bible College.
If you look at the Christian institutions in this nation and you go back in time, there used to be some very prestigious universities, places like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton that were started as theological training centers. Notre Dame, even the University of Michigan had a great program. It was very clergy friendly. And over time, they lost their way. Now our second wave colleges, the Biolas, the Wheatons, Azusa Pacifics, they’re in the fight of their life. When you have progressive professors, they’re going to raise up progressive pastors that are then going to go into pulpits around the country and develop and cultivate progressive parishioners. And we wonder why the Christian vote is so split when it should be so black and white when you open up the scriptures.
I believe that what we need is really another Council of Nicaea. And what did they accomplish there? They didn’t leave there agreeing on everything, but they did leave there in agreement on one thing. It took some time for it to work through, but they came to agreement on who Jesus was. That he was of the same substance of the father.
This is one of the things that we’re working on doing at TPUSA Faith. I told Charlie when he called me the week of the 4th of July to accept this job. I didn’t apply for it. I wasn’t looking for it. I thought he was calling me to vet another candidate, so he could hear what I thought about him. I asked how can I help, and he says, “I think you’re the guy, and I felt like the Lord kind of led me to you and I think you’re supposed to do this.” That caught me off guard. I asked if I could pray about it for a week. I came back to him, and I said, “Charlie, here’s the deal. I said I think you’re Constantine.” He goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’m not questioning your faith. I know you love the Lord. You’re not a pastor, but you understand the importance of pastors coming together and circling the wagons around the truth of the gospel and really coming to a position of unity on who this man Jesus is, that he is, in fact, King of kings, Lord of lords.”
If we stand on that issue, what I call primary doctrine, we can debate over secondary issues. But if we circle the wagon on that, we’re going to find a renewed unity and revival in this country like we haven’t seen in a very, very long time. And so, I’m making it my mission. At TPUSA Faith, we are making it our mission to eradicate wokeism in the American pulpit once and for all and to do what I call rebuild the crumbled walls of the American church and find a unity over primary doctrine. Secondary differences are welcome, but we need to unify around the primary truths of the gospel.
I believe that if we do, we will push back evil and heresy in a very, very much needed way and stop this infiltration of the porous walls of the American church.
The Honorable Tony Perkins
President | Family Research Council
Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, I should stop while I’m ahead. I tried to find a little extra hair gel and look like Vivek, but I couldn’t find any. So, this is what you get, you get the B team. As Tom was trying to call everybody to attention, I was remembering back to what I don’t miss about being president of CNP. What a job of trying to corral such energy! I do want to correct you, Tom, on one thing, and that is the Left is not having meetings like this tonight. They’re having therapy sessions.
I was actually thinking about Ronald Reagan yesterday and his quip that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” You heard that? Well, I think the nine most frightening words to the left these days might just be, “I’m not from Washington and I’m here to cut.” You know, nothing sends shivers down the spines of the Left faster than the thought of trimming bureaucracy, cutting taxes, and heaven forbid, eliminating their woke policies. But it’s coming.
You know, what took place on November the 5th in America offers hope to all of those who love this country and what it stands for. Not because it solved all of our problems, but because it kept this experiment, the American experiment, alive. A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the National Archives with a member of Congress. We viewed some of the nation’s founding documents, papers that are not on public display. Now, it wasn’t like National Treasure, that Hollywood movie. But it was pretty meaningful for a student of history.
And one of the documents that we examined was the Senate markup of the Bill of Rights that was sent over from the House with 17 amendments. The Senate reduced it. It ended up with 10. I think that’s the first time the Senate has ever cut anything. But another document that we looked at was George Washington’s handwritten inaugural address. I actually held it. He delivered it on April the 30th, 1789. Though brief, it was just 10 minutes, his speech, but his words were profound.
Washington declared in part the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. This sacred fire of liberty has been entrusted to us. From Washington’s time till today, that trust remains our responsibility. And when I look around this room, and I see the seasoned warriors who have fought to keep that flame burning, I’m reminded that this great experiment, now nearing 250 years, is not guaranteed to continue.
You remember Ronald Reagan famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.” You know, Reagan’s words remind us that leadership and courage are required in every generation. I mean, how many of you saw the recent movie of our 40th president? Wasn’t that a great movie? What a stirring reminder of the power of ideas, determination, and moral courage. I also was touched by the relationship between Nancy and the President. There’s something to be said about the marriage relationship and the commitment found in that relationship, and she truly was his helpmate. Some of you in CNP served in his administration. It was a time of peace because we were strong. And Reagan understood that leadership grounded in moral clarity can shift the trajectory of history. And he did it.
You might ask, well, why is this experiment in self-government at risk? We just won the election. We prevented the Marxists from taking over the government. Well, the greatest threat to our nation is not external. It’s internal. It’s not the bureaucracy, the divisive politics, or even the deep state as dangerous as those things are. It’s a lack of courage and moral clarity to face these challenges.
An indelible memory of mine arriving at Marine Corps boot camp when Ronald Reagan, by the way, was commander-in-chief illustrates this point. It was about 2 a.m. in the morning at MCRD in San Diego and there’s about 70 of us packed onto an old school bus three to a seat. There were some of us that had spent too much time at the bar and their heads were hanging out the window on the way in. MCRD was very close to the airport, but they took us through these winding roads that made it feel like it was an attorney in terms of a ride. But when we arrived, the drill instructors jumped in, their heads through the windows, creating an atmosphere of shock and awe. And I’ll never forget the first guy off the bus. When his feet hit the ground, he bolted for the gate and vanished into the night. Never saw him again. He didn’t even make it to the haircut. No doubt he had bragged about becoming a Marine, but when the shoe leather hit the pavement, he lacked the courage.
That memory reminds me of a deeper truth. Courage is what sustains liberty. Yet today, many shrink back in silence, afraid of the consequences of speaking the truth. I mean, think about it. We live in a time when acknowledging the biological difference between a boy and a girl is considered controversial. How can we expect moral courage if we capitulate to such confusion? You know, science and technology have put the miracle of life on display for the entire world to see, but cultural winds have temporarily shifted and we’ve sought political shelter.
In the Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote this. He said, “We make men without chest, and we expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor, and we’re shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gildings be fruitful.” Thankfully, we see examples of true moral courage. Just as the founding fathers acted with courage to secure liberty, individuals today remind us that courage remains the foundation of our freedom.
Consider Vanessa Sivadge, a young nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital and a former intern at FRC. She was fired after exposing the hospital’s Medicaid fraud to fund transgender surgeries for minors in violation of Texas law. Another example is Ethan Haim. He was a young surgeon who blew the whistle at the same hospital. Instead of receiving applause for exposing criminal behavior, he was met with four felony charges from the Biden administration. Despite the personal cost, they chose principle over personal comfort. That courage reminds us that moral fortitude is not only possible, but essential, if we’re to keep the flame of liberty burning.
So where does such courage come from? Well, its source is found in a transcendent cause, rooted in transcendent truth. George Washington, he understood this when he wrote his farewell address to the nation in 1796. He said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim to be a patriot who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.” And then Washington went on to caution that morality cannot be sustained without religion.
The height of America’s greatness will be determined by the depth of its moral foundation. Conservatism, untethered from morality, which is not true Conservatism, may take a different route, but ultimately lead to the same destructive destination as the so-called progressive policies of the left. It’ll just get there slower.
In his book of 1776, David McCullough recounts a pivotal moment in history. It was on December the 31st, 1776. George Washington made a dramatic appeal to his veteran troops in the Continental Army to stay with him. The great majority of them were from New England, and they had served with him the longest. And they had no illusions about what was being asked of them. And so, he asked if they would stay and those who were willing to step forward. The drums rolled, but no one moved. Minutes passed and he wheeled his horse about, and he spoke again, and this is what he said. “My brave fellows, your country is at stake. Your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.” And again, the drums rolled, and the men stepped forward. Nathaniel Green writing later said this, “God Almighty inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”
Friends, today your commitment is still needed, not to pick up a rifle, but to display and to instill moral courage in the next generation. Teach them by example the transcendent truth and the transcendent cause for which we stand. Speak boldly when truth is attacked by the woke mob or assaulted by political expediency. Stand courageously in defense of the most vulnerable among us and let our commitment to this fundamental right to life know no geographical boundaries.
Let us not simply honor those who fought for liberty. Let us be the ones who ensure it survives for the next generation. Speak boldly, act justly, and stand courageously. Today, we can keep that flame of sacred liberty alive if we will stand together. So, thank you for your commitment to our country. Thank you for your commitment to that transcendent cause. Thank you for being one of the caretakers of the sacred flame of liberty, and may God grant us the courage to keep this great experiment alive for the next generation.
Megan Basham
Author | Shepherds for Sale
Thank you so much for having me. I’m obviously really excited to be here in this moment of victory, of a huge win. I think we’re all feeling this energy, that big change is on the horizon. But that said, I’m always kind of the deliverer of bad news, and I’m not really any different today. That’s a journalist’s job.
I am here with the journalist’s message of don’t get comfortable because victory is not yet secure. We know that the secular left is licking their wounds right now, but we also know that they’re not going to slink away and let the restoration of goodness and truth continue without a fight. We know that the coalition that the MAGA movement has put together is tenuous. We need it to last beyond four years so that we can seize this opportunity to undo, frankly, generations of damage. Because of this, we know that Christians, if I can be so bold, are the people with the clearest vision for what America should be. So, we need to set that direction. We need to be the most politically engaged. And on that front, we do have a few alarm bells.
I want to take a look at Christian voter trends. George Barna did some analysis on turnout differences between 2020 and 2024, and what he found was concerning. Catholics up 3%, well done Catholics. Pentecostals stayed the same, that’s pretty good. But if we look at the evangelical church attenders overall, they were down six points. Theologically defined born again, meaning doctrinally sound, also down six points. Self-identified Christians overall, down eight points.
Now these are small movements, of course, but they’re even more concerning when you consider that this was an election that saw other natural conservatives highly mobilized. And you look at how opinion is moving within evangelicalism on issues like immigration, moving towards open borders, like climate change, moving towards anti-human cap and trade policies, like Marxist critical race ideology. There, what we know, is that progressives backed by hard-left secular money from people like, yes, George Soros, the Clinton Foundation, the Tides Foundation, all of the usual suspects have made inroads into the church with astroturf campaigns and front groups.
If you know Kelly Kullberg and her work, this won’t be new information to you. If you have read my book Shepherds for Sale you will know how many ministries that, well, pretend to be ministries are actually one of these front groups that are bankrolled by these left-wing power brokers. Ultimately, what I’m saying is that a lot of foxes are in the vineyard, and they’ve been there for a while. And it’s not just evangelical vineyards. They’re also in Catholic vineyards. They’re also in Latter-day Saint vineyards.
In fact, a curious thing happened in Utah this cycle. Every state, except Deep Blue Washington, became more red. That one wasn’t surprising. But Utah had the smallest increase of turnout for Trump of any state in the country. In fact, 18 of the state’s 29 counties saw a worse Trump margin than in 2020. Now some well-informed Latter-day Saint friends tell me that this is because many of the left-wing efforts that I report on in my book are happening in their faith as well.
Because we have a very brief amount of time here, I just want to go over one slice of an example. This year, an election year, large trusted evangelical churches all over the country began using a Bible study called the After Party that ostensibly teaches Christians how to reframe their thinking about politics. It was developed by New York Times columnist David French who many will know endorsed Harris over Trump, Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Russell Moore, a confirmed never-Trumper, and Democrat Duke Divinity professor Curtis Chang, who you will see right there with The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta. It’s not a coincidence that all three of these men have been regularly featured on CNN and other media outlets advancing the scare campaign of Christian nationalism. What we know is that that just means believers making use of the same constitutional remedies that secularists do: freely speaking, freely associating, and electing candidates who promise to enact policies that align with our values. But it wasn’t just churches using the After Party. The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities lobbied its 185 member schools, including Baylor, Biola, Wheaton, and many others, to use this program in chapel services, discipleship groups, theology and pastoral classes, and in student book clubs. Now, among its other subtle progressive talking points, this curriculum teaches that conservative Christians engaged in politics are sinfully grasping for power. And they teach that the desire for power is inherently misaligned with Christian principle. That’s kind of ironic, given who the men behind it are.
So, who funds the After Party? Not Christians. Its support came exclusively from hard left secular foundations like the Hewlett Foundation, the second largest funder of Planned Parenthood in the country. Its umbrella organization is Redeeming Babel. So that’s just one grant that the After Party received from the Hewlett Foundation and another foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. French and company claim that their curriculum isn’t focused on elections. But in an interview with Veggie Tale’s creator, Phil Vischer, French gave the game away. He admitted that its actual purpose was to quote, “Take on MAGA.”
One of the guest speakers for the After Party events was Ray Ortland. Now, for those who aren’t aware, Ortland is a celebrated intellectual in conservative evangelical circles. For many years, he pastored a mega-church in the Presbyterian Church in America, second largest Presbyterian denomination in the country, certainly much more conservative than its cousin, the PCUSA. Ortland is known as a pastor to other pastors. He’s also a church planter and a council member of the influential evangelical outlet, The Gospel Coalition, which was founded by Tim Keller. He, too, has taught that Christians are too involved in politics. Yet, shortly before the election, he posted this on social media.
This is not the Reverend Jesse Jackson that we’re talking about. It’s not Al Sharpton. And Ortland wasn’t an outlier in unabashedly endorsing Harris as a Christian leader. So did Claude Alexander, the board chair of Christianity Today and board member of Intervarsity. He was a key spokesman of Evangelicals for Harris, and he sits at the helm of Billy Graham’s magazine. Not surprising then that Christianity Today ran this essay right before the election, encouraging Christians not to vote. Now, these are just a couple of examples of leaders widely honored around established Christian institutions. They’re using their influence to teach Christians that there’s something spiritually compromising in working for the common good in this political sphere.
I could give you many, many more examples. There’s Andy Stanley in his book on politics and faith that was just released in 2022 titled Not In It to Win It, Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church. These church leaders confuse Christians about their civic duty with trite slogans like “Not Red Elephant or Blue Donkey but Slain Lamb,” “Follow a savior, not a side,” and “The gospel is neither right nor left.” All of these slogans that the After Party and these other groups use sound spiritual at first glance but considered in the light of scripture we see that it’s not just bad political theology, though it is that, it’s quite literally destroying the lives of the most vulnerable in our society and destroying our children and grandchildren’s future prospects. Because while politics will not save us eternally and we should never let it supplant are allegiance to Christ, it does matter here temporally. And the policies of the Left and Right are not morally equivalent.
Unfortunately, these shepherds for sale, these hired hands, are influencing other pastors. Just to give you one example, this is Matt Chandler. He’s a Dallas area megachurch pastor and head of the massive Acts 29 church planting network. This was what he said in a sermon on October 6th, this October 6th, about the Republican Party’s longstanding opposition to abortion:
“In 1972, go read their charter. Not a single word about God or abortion in there. They were losing elections. They developed a strategy in the 70s to co-opt us and make us their people. They know we’re easily manipulated. We are easily worked into a frenzy. We can be controlled by them. They can, and that’s what they did. And they are not for us. They do not all believe what we believe. This is a strategy. So, I feel used by it. When they talk about us and to us, I feel like, get my name out of your mouth. You do not represent me.”
So, he’s talking about the moral majority. He’s talking about the CNP. He’s talking about groups like this. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what was wrong with what he just said. I don’t need to point out that Republicans didn’t have sanctity of life as part of their platform until the 1970s, because Roe hadn’t happened before then. A generation of Christians labored and strategized and lobbied to get both of America’s political parties to take up the cause of the unborn. And we should rejoice that they were able to get one of them to hear them. These were faithful brothers and sisters following scripture’s command to rescue those being led away to death and we shouldn’t denigrate their legacy. We should be emulating it.
Studies show the conservative evangelicals are actually not doing that. They’re not emulating that legacy. We are far less politically engaged than progressives by every measure. Imagine the change we could see in this country if that weren’t the case. The work of politics is to use the leverage you have as a constituency to get legislators to pursue your preferred policies. There’s nothing dirty or sneaky or idolatrous in that. It’s what politics is. For the sake of our nation, we need to ensure that churches have a better theology of politics so that ordinary Christians aren’t taken in by these infiltration and astroturf campaigns, by these trite slogans.
Political power itself is neither good nor evil. It’s like money. It’s neutral. It’s only evil if you acquire it in evil ways or use it to do evil things. The Bible does not condemn the pursuit or use of political power for righteousness, just the opposite as we see in the accounts of King Josiah, of Queen Esther, of John the Baptist, and of many others. But it does condemn those who squander the opportunities they have been given to do good. When we have church leaders who are not just encouraging Christians to stay out of politics but are actually using their influence to teach that it’s acceptable to vote for candidates who are most opposed to biblical morality, they are teaching Christians to be poor stewards of the political power they’ve been given. Because in the United States, it is ultimately we the people who rule and we the people who need to answer for our policies.
Biblically sound political theology recognizes that politics is a separate category from evangelism. There’s nothing in scripture that encourages us to embrace bad rule and bad laws in order to win people to Christ. But you wouldn’t know it if you listen to a lot of the sermons and interviews from these pastors that I’ve reviewed. Biblically sound political theology teaches that when you use your power righteously, it will sometimes make people unhappy. They might even call you a Christian Nationalist. But that is not a sign that you are acting outside of God’s will, far from it. Ask Haman how he felt about Queen Esther’s use of her political power.
We have a unique moment to seize a passing opportunity, and it’s bigger than what happened on November 5th. Some of the most influential people in Western culture are beginning to realize and vocalize that the Western ideals of free speech, private property and self-government itself cannot survive without the influence of Christianity. Richard Dawkins, Elon Musk, and historian Tom Holland aren’t Christians, but they’re now acknowledging this. They all see what needs to happen, here in this temporal time, doesn’t happen without Christians working to restore America as a Christian nation.
Proverbs tells us that a righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. God saw fit to entrust this country with the incredible blessing of self-rule, and we have almost squandered that inheritance. But in God’s incredible mercy, we have been given another chance to pass it on. So, let’s not shy away from using our political power to do so. Thanks so much.