Welcome back to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Information regarding the resources referenced on today's program can be found at www.knowingthetruth.org. Now here to continue with today's program is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Well, if you've been watching the news at all most recently, you know that there has been a lot of talk about religious liberty. The situation there in Kentucky with the clerk there in Kentucky, Kim Davis, I think is probably one of the most recent issues that we saw making headlines. And so a lot of folks have been talking about this subject of religious liberty. I think it's important when we talk about that subject that we understand a little bit about the history of it. And there's a brand new book that's out called The History of Religious Liberty. And in that book, Michael Ferris lays out for us, you know, how did we get to the place where we are now? What are the origins of religious liberty? And he looks at that, obviously, from a historical perspective. A lot of folks in our listening audience are familiar with Michael Farris, but let me just tell you that he's a constitutional lawyer as well as the founder of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. Me and my wife homeschooled way back in the day. The girls, my final, one of my daughters, I have three daughters, and my oldest daughter will be married here in just a couple of weeks. and so she's the last one to get married. Now I have eight grandchildren, so you can tell how long ago it was that we homeschooled. But we used homeschool legal defense way back then. They were a great asset to us when we were homeschooling in New York. It was during days where you didn't really tell anybody that you were homeschooling because the school system was pretty aggressive. They wanted to come into our home I remember specifically being on the phone with Homeschool Legal Defense while the representative from the local school system was at the door saying that they had the right to come into the home and we were being counseled by Homeschool Legal Defense. So I really appreciate their ministry. Well, he's the founder of Homeschool Legal Defense Association. He's also the founder of Patrick Henry College. He's also an ordained minister, as well as a pro-family activist on Capitol Hill. And he's recognized as one of the major influencers in educational circles. Michael, welcome to the Knowing the Truth radio program. Pastor Kevin, good to be with you. Thank you so much. Well, let me let you give a little synopsis of the book. Obviously, it deals with the history of religious liberty, as the title implies. But if you would give us a little bit of a synopsis of what you wrote in this book and why. The book begins with William Tyndale, the great Bible translator, uh... and it's really uh... he was the one that launched us because it was the battle for the right to publish the bible and to put it in the hands of the common people that was the thread that began the battle and really was the key turning point in the battle for religious liberty uh... so we go through that the period in england where we go back and forth between the various factions being in control and liberty being suppressed uh... and then uh... we we switch to the colonies american colonies and carry the story forward they really are the same story they're interrelated but it was a in america that we went from the uh... idea of toleration in england to liberty in in america but it wasn't right away it wasn't in the sixteen hundreds as people generally think we we had a period of uh... about a hundred and fifty years of toleration here and uh... the american colonies as well but it was in the uh... mid-1700s that the real battle for religious liberty started. And it was a result of the Great Awakening, the Great Awakening where people believed that you must be born again, and the authority of the Word of God, coupled with the principle that you must be born again, are the real intellectual foundations for religious liberty in this country. Now, that's what the history of religious liberty is. Now, fast forward all the way up to the current day. What's taking place now with that as our foundation and the foundation of how we looked at religious liberty in this country, not just going all the way back as you looked over in Europe and so forth, but in this country, what has taken place now here in America since? Well, I was the chairman of the group that wrote the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Congress. We saw the big brouhaha in Indiana this last year, where Indiana tried to adopt a state version of that same federal act. So I'm the guy who actually named the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Congress. And so 20 years ago, when we wrote the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in response to a bad Supreme Court decision, that really trashed the free exercise of religion um... people from the right and the left were completely united on the idea that religious freedom is for everybody that uh... we we wanted uh... robust view of religious freedom we and we passed a law of congress to protect that as a civil rights statute when the supreme court messed things up uh... but uh... in the intervening twenty years because of increased secularization and especially because of the advance of the homosexual rights movement, particularly in the homosexual marriage arena, that coalition of, across the board, left-right coalition that gave us Religious Freedom Restoration Act has completely disintegrated. The political left today no longer believes not only in religious freedom, but they don't believe in freedom of speech, they don't believe in freedom of association, They want to crush people that dissent. And so we've really gone back, frankly, to the era of, you know, no better than the era of William & Mary's Toleration Act, where if you didn't differ too much from the Church of England, you could get away with some stuff, but not very much. And so that's really the era that we're living in. And toleration is utterly different than freedom. Toleration means, from kind of a personal perspective, I advocate that Christians should not use toleration as their standard. On a personal level, it's too low of a standard. Toleration means that we're going to put up with people we don't like, but there's a disdainful attitude, whereas as Christians, we're called to love people who are different than us. And so it's too low of a standard for personal relationships, and it's way too low of a standard as well for legal relationships. Toleration, Acts of William and Mary, said that if you differed from the Church of England in five particular ways, then you could be exempt from the compulsory attendance laws to attend the Church of England. And we're back to that. If your church doesn't, and Christian people differ on same-sex marriage, there are what amount to heresy prosecutions. And so we have gone full circle. We've gone away from liberty and gone toward toleration, and with toleration comes persecution and heresy trials. and we're back into the dark ages before liberty and it's just very distressing. You have a title of one of the chapters, Chapter 22, I think it is, in the book, but it speaks about free exercise of religion. I've been listening to the words of the President and others that have been talking about religious liberty, and a lot of times they use the term of freedom of worship rather than free exercise of religion. Now, to me, the difference between those two things is that he's basically saying, hey, whatever you want to do and say within the confines of the wall of your church or synagogue or so forth, you go ahead and do it. You say whatever you want. But you can't bring that out into actually living out your faith in society. Is that a fair way to look at those two things? It's very accurate. Your assessment is right on the money. both as to their intent and how antithetical that is to the concept of religious liberty. The premise of the free exercise of religion is in every area of life, whether you're the photographer in New Mexico or the baker in Oregon or the florist in Richland, Washington, or the couple who rents their farm out in New York for weddings, and you say, no, my religion says I can't participate in your same-sex wedding. If you want to go to someplace else, I can't stop you from that. But when you want me to participate in that, you're asking me to violate my religious beliefs. That's where free exercise comes in. Homeschooling is another example. Homeschooling isn't about freedom of worship. It's about the free exercise of religion. God requires me to give my children a Christian education myself. That's how I read the Word of God. and in the uh... you in virginia there's a religious exemption statute that they did and that's recognized as a constitutional right uh... in over the over the years and statutory right as well but but it's based on the fact that got out of the government cannot compel you to take action that violate your religious faith or the government cannot coerce you to uh... do actions that are contrary to your religious faith either you know brief They can't stop you from doing what you want to do if God says you must, and they can't force you to do what God says you may not do. And in the homosexual marriage, God says, I cannot participate in that. In the homeschooling, it says, God tells me I must participate in that. Either way, that's the free exercise of religion. It's not merely what you do in church on Sunday. I guess it was when you likened the homeschooling, and you tie it in here with the expression of religion, It was quite telling then that the president and this administration rejected the plea from that homeschooling family from Germany. They rejected their plea to come here because of persecution, but they've accepted the plea of others that have wanted to come here. What is your commentary on that? Well, of course, I was the lawyer for the German family, and so, you know, it's a very very personal case to me and uh... the hypocrisy uh... of the obama administration uh... on on the subject is pretty up and you know that that the good news is the family was given it basically an administrative exception when we got all done but that's not the same as winning it is a matter of religious freedom they they did not win on religious freedom grounds the obama administration basically said we're not going to mess with you at the end of the day uh... and and and and that that's no precedent and there are other families who want to come here now and we have to fight this fight all over again and we're you know we're gearing up to do just that uh... but you know that they're willing to have the muslims come here from syria they're willing to have uh... homosexuals who are persecuted in other countries come here but not christian homeschoolers uh... and it it tells you that uh... uh... you know the big flap about you know whether You know, somebody asked Donald Trump whether Obama was a Muslim or not. I don't really know what his personal faith is, one way or the other, and it really almost doesn't matter in this sense. What I can see and what I can tell, and I'm not judging his heart, is that his political actions give favoritism to Muslims, and his political actions punish Christians on a systematic basis. And so that bias is very obvious. And the free exercise of religion and the no establishment of religion says there has to be religious equality. Well, you're not seeing religious equality from the federal government right now. You're seeing favoritism, you're seeing persecution. And so both sides of the First Amendment, the establishment clause, which is no favoritism, and the free exercise clause means robust religious application in life, both of those are being undermined by the Obama administration. We see it in the military, chaplains being forced to curtail a robust Christian faith and not pray in the name of Jesus, and, you know, other kind of restrictions upon the free exercise of religion of military pastors and chaplains. So, you know, we are at war on a religious freedom basis, and the question is, are Christians going to stand up, or are we just going to roll over on this one? Often with these cases like with Kim Davis and other ones, people defending what was done by the judge and incarcerating her and so forth, they say, well, hey, there's a separation of church and state. And you get a person like that just saying, I don't want to do something because it's against my religious beliefs. Where does that end? Somebody could say, well, I don't want to issue you a driver's license because my particular religion is against driving and I don't want you to have... And they say, well, you know, they give these type of examples and they say, if you give in to one person like this, you're going to have to give in to everybody else. And who's to say what's a legitimate religion and what's not? What's your answers to those? Well, they make the separation of church and state argument. Not only in the Kim Davis case, where she's a government official, but they also make the same argument against the photographer and the florist and others. And those really are different cases. Now, I'll talk about the Kim Davis thing in a second, but for basic constitutional law, what everybody needs to understand is that private people can never violate the Constitution. A pastor can be as political as he wants in his pulpit, And that doesn't violate the Constitution. It may violate the IRS code in some respects, but it will never violate the Constitution. It never violates the separation of church and state, because, I mean, even accepting that paraphrase of the Establishment Clause, it does not violate the First Amendment whatsoever for private people to act. And so we need to set all those kinds of cases aside. Now, when you're dealing with a government official, like Kim Davis is a local government official, and as a local government official, she is required to obey the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Kentucky. But the problem is, in her case, is that the Supreme Court's underlying order is essentially lawless in character, because everybody who's talked about this at all has said something like this. the supreme court legalized same-sex marriage which tells you that this just that very sentence tells you that the supreme court after the illegally because the supreme court can't legalize anything uh... all legislative authority is vested in either congress at the federal level or the legislatures at the state level and article one section one of the constitution says all legislative authority is vested in congress and so you know if you were to say it historically accurately and constitutionally accurately, what we have to say is this, that when the Congress and the state legislatures wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in 1868, they had the understanding that the meaning of those words that they were adopting was to legalize same-sex marriage, and just nobody discovered that for 150 years. To say it's historically accurate that Congress in 1868 and legislators in 1868 legalized same-sex marriage is to demonstrate how silly of an assertion it is, of course that's not true. Of course that's not what happened. Equal protection did not mean that then, and it doesn't mean it today either, because a properly drawn constitutional amendment is constant in its meaning. It doesn't change over time as to its core meaning. And so that's why the case is complicated. But even if you're a government official, you still have personal rights, and there's limits on that. And so these people who wanted to get married in her county, they are going to have the right to get a marriage license according to this bogus Supreme Court decision. But that doesn't mean they should be able to force Kim to participate. and so uh... so you can draw that line correctly and it will be waiting to accomplish that without jailing cam without doing that and uh... i think that that the court was heavy-handed in their that regard and that same judge federal judge was on the other side on the wrong side of my opinion in a uh... a prior case involving homosexuality in public schools where they ordered people he ordered people to participate in retraining uh... of psychological retraining, because they had taken opposition to same-sex issues. And he was reversed by the Sixth Circuit on that particular issue. And so this judge, I think, went to be as harsh as he could, where there was a way to accomplish and protect the rights of both people. And that's what's being lost here, is that we're not interested anymore in protecting the rights of the Christians. and the homosexuals. You know, it used to be, we think, you know, the majority is protected and the minority is protected. According to, if you listen to the opinion polls, according to the major media, they say, well, the majority now supports same-sex marriage. Well, I don't believe that, but let's assume it to be true. Well, where's the right of the minority here? Where's the right of the Baker and the photographer and the Kim Davises to be the minority and have our rights protected as well? And we're just losing that whole idea of protecting the rights of people who dissent from the current politically correct regime. What was startling to me in the SCOTUS decision, and speaking with a lawyer, especially one who's just written a book about history, I think you would appreciate this as well. But I just couldn't believe the tremendous amount of precedent that had to be overcome in order to come to that decision. In fact, in the oral arguments, it seems like those in the majority, the ultimate majority decision, they express the same thing. How could we possibly overcome, you know, what has been from the beginning of time universally across the globe, certainly from the beginning of the United States as the accepted method of a man and a woman coming together in marriage. How could we possibly overcome that? And yet, even having stated those types of things, they then just completely disregarded that and voted this way. Your thoughts? Well, the Supreme Court is lawless. They were lawless in Roe v. Wade in the exact same way. They do not follow the original media constitution and they do not limit their role to the role of judges they've become lawmakers and as the dissenters sad uh... in in the to fix marriage case uh... this is an exercise of will not of judgment and when what that means shorthand for words that were debated in the federalist papers and so on and what that means is They're making political decisions that are supposed to be made by elected officials, not by judges. And the founders of this country made it very clear that when anybody purports to exercise will, political judgment, other than our elected officials, it's an act of tyranny. And so, you know, the Supreme Court made a political decision. This isn't about law. This isn't about interpreting the Constitution. It's no more appropriate than Roe v. Wade. They are supposedly interpreting the Constitution, yet when you read the final paragraph or so of Roe v. Wade, it says, well, in the first trimester, these are the rules. In the second trimester, these are the rules. Here are the rules for the third trimester. I don't see how you interpret the phrase. No person shall be denied liberty without due process of law." And you can interpret those words to find trimesters of pregnancy. That's pretty clever interpretation, which is to say, it's not interpretation at all. They're acting like legislators. Legislators can write rules for, you know, varying rules for different trimesters. Judges can't. And yet they did so. And so the lawless nature of the Supreme Court is pandemic. And, you know, it's why I've gotten involved in a different project other than, you know, this book is one thing, but in my political life, I'm helping to lead a project called the Convention of States. And four states have already completely approved this project. I need 34 to do it, but 10 other states approved it in a single house this year. And that will carry on over till eight of those states to next year. But we're going to try to get this completely through in the next two to three years. uh... and to rein in the abuse of power by the federal government and particularly the supreme court and we need to have some checks and balances on the supreme court if they're going to behave like legislators we need to take to clip their wings and to Stop the process of this total abuse of power that goes on unchecked. I was going to ask you what should people be doing them? But I think you just told us there as you were telling us about your new project and also it seemed to be that you were saying that the problem is systemic. It's not just a certain person that's in office or, you know, just some bad laws that have been passed. But there's a real systemic problem right now in the United States, even with the judicial branch. And so that's a huge issue. Let me just, we only have one more minute in the broadcast. I'll give you a second to respond to my statement there about it being systemic, but also, is there anybody currently running that you think will have ceased things the way that you do and would be able to do anything about it? Well, you're right, it is systemic, and Washington, D.C. is addicted to power, including the Supreme Court. The two candidates that are running for president that have both endorsed the The Convention of States idea, for the very reasons I've articulated, are Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal. Others, you know, most of them don't know anything about it, and they're, you know, to my mind, they're not, most of them aren't qualified to be running for president, but there's a few that are qualified, but Huckabee and Jindal have specifically endorsed this idea. Unfortunately, those two candidates are not doing very well according to the latest polls, so we'll have to see how that works out. I've heard Bobby Jindal speak and also Mike Huckabee as well. Both of them were very interesting, and especially I enjoyed hearing Bobby Jindal speak. I thought that he would make a great candidate, so we'll have to see how that plays out. Mike, thank you so much for your work there with HSLDA. Thank you so much for writing this book and for speaking about these issues and this new project. Where can we check out about that new project? Let's make sure we get that website. It's conventionofstates.com. Conventionofstates.com. Okay. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Appreciate you. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Okay, that was Mike Farris. Mike, his book we've been talking about is History of Religious Liberty. It's History of Religious Liberty. It's published by Masters Books. You can go out to their website in order to find out how you can get a copy of it. Very interesting what he was saying there about the Constitution of the States. and you heard him give that website so you know where you can go to find out more information about that. Let me tell you friends, well it's no secret to you, our religious liberty is under serious attack during this day and we have to know and understand what the issues are and then speak out against them and vote for those candidates that are going to really make a difference. Remember this, Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. You're listening to Knowing the Truth. To keep this ministry strong and coming your way, you can make a financial gift at knowingthetruth.org by clicking on the donate button. You've been listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. For more information about the church and radio ministry, visit us on the web at knowingthetruth.org. 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