Welcome to WallBuilders, the intersection of faith and the culture. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective and you can learn more WallBuilders.com . Go to WallBuilders.com , today. You can get some great tools for your family to start learning these things, for you to dive deep and understand the foundations that made America the greatest nation in history and how we can restore it. I'm Rick Green here with David and
Tim Barton. Our friend Phil King will be joining us a little later in the program. He's a state senator in Texas. We're going to be talking about a 10 commandments bill he has for public education. David and Tim its, man, a lot has changed since the summer of love. Well, that's if you love the Constitution. Last summer was the summer of love. So many good decisions, including that Coach
Kennedy case. Of course we've talked about the Bruen case for guns, the Dobbs case to overturn Roe v. Wade on abortion, the West Virginia EPA case on regulation. I mean, there were
so many good things. But WallBuilders has been working on this religious liberty issues since you started it all those years ago, David, you write about a lot of these cases in Original Intent that created this legal mumbo jumbo, just these complicated tests that the judges came up with out of thin air for whether or not you could live out your faith. And thank you, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch and the rest that had been systematically
dismantling that. It looks like things like what we're going to talk about later on the 10 commandments, we've got a lot more freedom today than we had a year ago.
Yeah, it took the court 24 years to actually move from introducing the concept that we didn't need as much religion in public, to actually giving a test that took it all out. And so in '47, the court said, you know, we just... we need a wall of separation that's a little higher and different from what Jefferson meant. And so over 24 years, they chipped away at it. They took out prayer, they took out Bible reading, took out a lot of stuff out of out of public schools.
And then in '71, they said, Look, we're just we're going to give you a new test. And the way you can tell if something religious is constitutional, is if the primary purpose that religious activity is secular. And guess what, I don't think I know of a single religious activity whose primary purpose is secular. And so since '71, we've gone through really [the] better part of 50 years of losing every case, about 7,300
cases. But it only took the court four years to get it right, and really roll that back at least the announcement of it. And so if you go back to 2019, our friend Kelly Shackleford, First Liberty that had that Bladensburg cross case, and that Bladensburg cross was a war memorial cross after World War One, there was a couple dozen guys killed in the County in Maryland, and the mothers erected this cross to the memory
of their children. And the lower court said, you know, you can't say the primary purpose of a cross is secular, so that cross has got to go, they even suggested that you could break the arms off the cross and just make it a single pillar, and then it'd be constitutional, just don't make it look like a cross. And that got to the Court and the Supreme Court said, that's crazy. We're not doing
that. And the court said, if something is a long standing historical, traditional practice, we're going to assume it's constitutional like crosses at a cemetery, etc. So with that, you can start saying well my goodness, there's a whole lot of stuff that is constitutional if you do that, nativity scenes and prayer at schools and 10 commandments and Bible and whatnot. And so we didn't know how far they were willing to go but at least they knock down the test and they said Lemon tests
really is a flawed test. It's not very good. And then last year, there were two cases where they just kind of put the nail in the coffin and said we're done with Lemon, those 7,300 cases were all wrongly decided. We need to roll all those back. And part of it came with our friend Mat Staver at Liberty Counsel who had that flag case, where that Boston City Hall flew more than 200 Different commemorative flags, but they refuse to fly a Christian flag. We'll do anything except
Christian. And they did that because of Lemon test and so the court at that time said, No, you're going to fly that flag too. And the Lemon test, this is just a terrible test, and it's not appropriate. And then later that year with Kelly Shackleford's case, Bremerton versus Kennedy or Kennedy versus Bremerton, Coach Kennedy who had prayed in the football games
there at Washington state. And they told him you can't pray and it was privately after the game he'd go up by himself to center yard line, kneel down have a silent prayer. And you can't say the primary purpose of that prayer is secular. But you can say the constitution does give you a free exercise of religion. So how can the primary purpose of a prayer being secular, how come you're allowed to strike down the explicit language for the free exercise and that's where the court said we're done
with Kennedy. And so with that being done, it has opened a new door. And most Americans are not aware of the fact that there's some 7,300 different court decisions that were decided limiting religion in public that are now pretty much off the table. Now, that doesn't mean it's all back in, doesn't mean we're going to aren't having Bible reading in schools or prayer in schools or anything
else. It means that the court has opened the door and said, hey, if you'll walk through it, and if you can prove that it's historical and traditional, then we're willing to say that it's constitutional, even if it's religious. And so now you got a lot of legislators starting to move forward with those ideas, starting to say, well, let's put some cases before the court and see. And by the way, let me just tell everybody that you just need to be doing this everywhere
you have an opportunity. If you're on the city council, make sure you open city council with prayer. If you're on the school board, make sure you open the school board with prayer. If you've got kids graduating this year, make sure they include a prayer at the graduation ceremony, make sure they have a baccalaureate service at a church, because these are all the things that have gone on for decades and centuries in
America. Go back to doing this because the court has said hey, we're willing to roll back this other stuff. So with that, we've just seen a lot of guys in the legislature willing to say, okay, let's go back to what was constitutional for decades and decades, even centuries. And let's get that back in again, now that we've taken the activist court out of this.
Well, and so that means then that we need legislators that are willing to be aggressive, churches that are willing to be aggressive, organizations. And of course, you know, Phil King is one of those guys and went into the legislature with him as freshmen many, many years ago. Now he's over on the Senate side, and he's your senator. So 10 commandments is nothing new for
WallBuilders of course. We've talked about the Stone v. Graham case for many years, we've talked about, wow, wouldn't it be good if we told the kids not to murder and not to steal and do that sort of thing? So I think it's really cool that your state senator is the one that is bringing that bill for here in Texas, I think that's just like poetic justice.
It is pretty awesome that we have our senator leading the charge because we got to go down when he introduced it in the Senate and testify in the senate committee. We had our good buddy Matt Krause, who actually does some speaking for WallBuilders periodically, but now he... former state legislator works with First Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford group, and they're the ones that had the Kennedy decision. And so Matt Krause, my dad and I all got to go down and
testify in the Senate. And really, it was fun unfolding this, because Matt was able to tell kind of the story of what has happened legally, in the last several years in this journey from Bladensburg, really until kind of the major overturn with Kennedy, give some level of explanation of, the even the notion of the separation of church and state, how that's really not the proper legal understanding of what you can
do. And then certainly, Dad, when you started getting into some of the history, starting with the New England primer from 1690, and showing from the very beginning of American education, the 10 commandments was fundamental, so much so that, for example, back to the New England primer, that was first in 1690, all the way to the early 1900s. In the back of that New England primmer, students had to memorize Westminster Shorter Catechism, which has
more than 40 questions. On the 10 commandments, students had to know the 10 commandments and really had a good understanding of the 10 commandment. And this was in first grade, the first level, they had to know this
very well. And then as you go forward, whether it be in the history books, such as Noah Webster's history book of America, where he explains the 10 commandments, literally God giving them to Moses and students had to learn and memorize portions of that which of course, they had a foundation in from the Bible already. When you get to McGuffey Readers, which is one of the most sold textbooks in American history, with the tens, arguably hundreds, of millions that were used in public schools, and he
went to the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments have always been a foundation of education. And then I was able to make the argument for the moral components that the obvious moral need of the 10 commandments and so together, it was something that once we were done, there really wasn't a good argument against the 10 commandments, when you can show that legally, historically, morally, this is what should be
happening. It was so effective that actually there was a Democrat who voted in favor of the 10 commandments coming out of committee. Now, once it went to the floor vote, it was a straight party line vote, probably some Democrat got a hold of the Democratic who voted in favor and they're like, hey, you can't vote for the 10 commandments. You got to be on our side. Which is just crazy, that no Democrat thinks that students should be exposed to the 10 commandments.
Nonetheless, it was super fun to be able to be down there in the Senate committee. And then it went over to the House. And we were able to testify, actually, this time, just Matt Krause and I. Dad, you were flying in, trying to be there. You landed a few minutes, literally, a few minutes before he testified you were at the airport, said hey guys, I just landed, I'm on the way. And we said, well, they just called our bill. So we'll see you when we're done. But Matt Krause and I testified on
the House side. And actually, it looks like maybe tomorrow they're voting this out of committee, God willing. So it's something that actually everybody listening, you can pray that tomorrow. I believe that this committee is reconvening in Texas and they're... one of the things on the agenda is for them to vote on this issue. So pray that it is voted favorably out of committee and if it gets out of committee, we have a lot of confidence that it should make it on calendars, make it to the
house floor. We think there's votes in the House floor and then we have a lot of confidence that Governor Abbott will sign it back in, but we really... Let's jump to Phil and just let Phil give an explanation of some of what's been happening and some of the progress, Rick, you alluded to, that we're now seeing happening based on the overturning of some of these bad precedents that have been for
decades in use in America. But now with the overturning of them really Coach Kennedy last year pinnacle overturning of the Lemon decision is just changed the game in a lot of ways.
More good fruit from years and years of work in this arena. Stay with us folks, Senator Phil King, our guest. We'll be right back on WallBuilders.
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. In the early 1700s, the Reverend John Wise preached that all men were created equal, that taxation without representation was tyranny, and that God’s preferred form of government was the consent of the governed: all of which is language recognizable on the Declaration
of Independence. Why? Because in 1772, the Sons of Liberty led by founders such as Sam Adams and John Hancock, reprinted and distributed the Reverend Wise’s sermons. So four years later, much of the declaration reflected the language of those sermons by John Wise. In 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge affirmed “The thoughts in the declaration can very largely be traced back to what John Wise
was saying.” Few today know that the Declaration was so strongly influenced by the Reverend John Wise. For more information on this and other stories, go to WallBuilders.com .
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders. Our good buddy state... I keep want to say state rep Phil king, but its state Senator Phil King, moved over to the other side of the Capitol and nearing the end of the legislative session and leading the way on a 10 commandments bill. Imagine that, actually getting back to the foundation of what made America great in the first place. Phil, thanks for coming on, brother.
Thank you. Good to be here.
Hey, man. So tell us what the bill does. And what you think chances are of getting this passed, this year?
All right. Well, you know, when I grew up, many schools had the 10 commandments posted. And then in 1980, there was a lawsuit out of Kentucky, I think it was Stone V. Graham. And the Supreme... Worked its way to the Supreme Court, and they said no, you can't have 10 commandments in the classroom. It's a violation of church and
state. Well, the Coach Kennedy case from last year, abolished the Lemon test, which was the religious liberties test that so many cases like the 10 commandments had been based on. Well, now that that's gone, we filed a bill that has passed out of the Senate. And it simply says that every school room in Texas will have a posted copy of the 10 commandments. And we use the same language that is in the 10 commandments monument on the Texas capitol, and passed out of
the Senate on party lines. And we'll see what happens in the house. But I think it's got a good shot.
Yeah, man. That's, you know, imagine that. We've talked about this a lot over the years, you know, that if you actually put in front of children the idea, you know, Thou shalt not kill or murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not lie. I mean, these are good things to teach the kids. It's just basic values that you're teaching. What kind of objections are you getting to that?
Well, you had some from people that are very, very far on the left that don't want the influence of religion in the classroom. And of course, it's part... there is no single document in American history that has had a greater impact historically, on both our legal system and on our moral code. And but as you said, We want every child to look up there every day, the entire time of their education, and read, honor your parents, don't don't commit murder, don't steal, don't lie,
those basic things. But the objections have been some from the far left. Some people have said, look, what if you're Muslim or whatever. And, you know, my thought is all the Muslim parents I know, want their child to see every day something that says don't lie, honor your parents, don't steal.
The surprise was the Texas Baptist General Convention, Christian Life Commission, who specifically said when I asked them, that they were there representing the Texas Baptist General Convention, came in and testified strongly against the bill, said that matters of religion, whether or not adultery was wrong, whether or not these other things, that those should be brought up by the family and not in a public school classroom. And I will tell you, I was utterly shocked.
Well, you know I'm not, in a way, Phil, because I remember of course, you and I came into the House together. I won't say how many years ago go because people would know how old we are. But you know, back then when I was campaigning that first time, I was shocked then at how a lot of those churches were against me or not for even getting involved or encouraging their people to vote, even though, you know, it was a very clear, you know, on one side, pro biblical, pro life, that
sort of thing. And on the other side, not. David Barton actually said, hey, you got to understand these people have been indoctrinated to believe in the separation of church and state thing, the way that it's been interpreted by the left, and they are against everything we're for, even though they should be with us, because they want the same outcome. They just don't understand the inputs.
And, you know, it's a shame, man, they are they... it seems like, you know, we expect the opposition from certain entities and organizations, but like you said, when it's people that are Bible believing Christians, you would think they would understand the value of that foundation of the 10 Commandments being taught. But it wasn't enough, I guess, if you got it out of the Senate.
Well, that's correct. And you know, the other thing they forget... people forget what the purpose of public education is. It's not merely to educate children. The real purpose is to provide a functional, educated, prepared citizen. And you cannot be a good citizen, if you don't also have a moral base. And that's why schools also have to be involved in teaching what's
right and wrong. And there's no simpler way to do that than the most historically represented document in our nation's history, and actually that of all western civilization, than the 10 commandments for the influence its had on the legal code, and the moral code. I mean, just look above the Supreme Court justices when you're watching them... When you're watching a hearing, and right above their heads are the 10 commandments.
Yeah, you know, and Phil you bring up a really important point, because it's not just the Texas Constitution, but virtually every state constitution, when you get to their education section, it starts with that, basically saying, in order to have an informed citizenry, in order to basically to preserve the Republic, you need citizens that have good values, and been taught these things. So really,
really good point. Now, you got... there's some other religious liberty bills going through, public school chaplains, things like that. Kind of catch us up on some of those.
Yeah, it's been a really fun session. The Coach Kennedy case opened up a lot of opportunity. And one is the... for chaplains, and you know, chaplains in the military... and I was a police officer for a long time. We had a full time chaplain with the police department. Chaplains take a more holistic approach to...
than a counselor does. You have school counselors, and frankly, they ended up mostly working on advising kids on, you know, what courses to take and that type of thing and struggling through some different issues that may come up. But the chaplain is more there with the student, with the child, kind of throughout the day, building relationships. And there is a bill that will allow schools the option of, in addition to counselors, hiring chaplains.
And of course, there are going to be people that are qualified for it. And the schools will make that decision. So that's an opportunity, then another opportunity is a bill that Senator Mayes Middleton is carrying and it just says that each school district, that their board of trustees must take a vote and... on whether or not they will allow a time for prayer and/or Bible reading, conducted by the students. And it makes it optional whether
they do that or not. But the Board of Trustees actually has to bring it up and vote on it. And that'll let all the parents know exactly where their trustees are on such issues.
Oh, that's good. That's good, man. Well, I heard that when you had your hearing on the 10 commandments bill, you had some guys from your district that showed up, last name Barton and, you know...
Yeah, they were a little on the weak side, you know, but but but they did okay. No, David, we had a great panel, in fact it was the best, one of the best, if not the best testimonial panels I've seen in 25 years in the legislature. David... Matt Krause, David Barton and Tim Barton. And Matt began by speaking on the legal aspects of the bill, and then religious liberty and separation of church and state and those
things. And then David talked on the history and brought some books from early school days in the early days of our nation that had the 10 commandments and, and things like that. And so that was incredibly impressive. And again, that's that history aspect. And then Tim spoke on the moral code and the importance of kids seeing that a moral code is so important, that it's posted in every class restroom. In every public school in the entire state.
So good man, so good. Well, last thing I'll ask you... Let you go, I know you got to get to the floor to vote, but just trends, kind of your perception after all these years in the legislature, and, you know, so many of these bills you're carrying now had no chance 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And, I mean, do you feel a resurgence of a desire to go back to those foundations in, you know, among your colleagues, and as you watch the testimony or talk to people in the district?
Well you know, it's such a battle. And, you know, it's not just whether or not, you know, you can do something like the 10 commandments or have a special time set aside for a few minutes for prayer for kids or things like that. But on the opposite end, we've got this giant fight over these library books. I mean, the lieutenant governor showed me a book the other day that they found in 124, of 125, public school libraries that they checked. And I'm telling you, it was
incredibly pornographic. The pictures and the how-tos that it showed, and then teaching kids things like, hey, you're safe on the internet. When you're on the internet, it's okay, that nobody knows what you're doing. It's your safe place. You can believe what's on the internet. I mean, this is in a book that was in
124 of 125... And this fight that we're having to try to get districts to go through and really look through their books, pull out the bad things, and then have good processes in the future to keep them coming. Fighting things like that is
just stunning to me. Plus the fact that we're having to deal with all this pronoun stuff and, you know, teachers being told that if a child wants to be called thay or it or whatever, that they have to, and that they have to do that and the fact that we're having on the one hand, we've got these great opportunities with things like 10 commandments. And on the other hand, we're fighting uphill to try to get pornography out of some of our public school libraries. And it's just astounding.
Yeah, no it's shocking to see the, you know, even parents taking their kids to these drag queen shows and all of the stuff that's happening, and it feels like to me that is shocking, a lot of these people that have been sitting on the sidelines into action and into supporting things...
Well, they need to get on the ball. Because telling you, I'm telling you, it is an uphill fight.
Man, man, it's a huge battle, brother. Well, you're in it every day, right there on the frontlines. We love you and Terry, and God bless y'all for what you're doing. Pray you have a really strong last few weeks of the session. And looking forward to some great victory after action reports. So thanks.
I look forward to it too. Thanks so much.
Stay with us folks, we'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.
Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is
Welcome back to WallBuilders. We're back here something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the
Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.WallBuilders.com .
with David and Tim. And of course, as we said earlier, guys, y'all have been working on this, we've been working on this at WallBuilders for decades and decades, it's a huge issue. And it's good for the culture, we need the kids to see these basic, basic rules of life and our entire legal system is based on them. So it's good for them to be seeing these things at the school.
And one of the things that should be obvious for most people is that every nation is governed by a set of morals and boundaries and the 10 commandments have been the foundation of Western civilization from the very beginning. The reason we came up with the ideas, like when in fact, we were testifying in committee, we had to swear that what the testimony we were giving was going to be a truthful, honest testimony.
Well, why don't we do that? The 10 commandments is actually the reason when we're not supposed to bear false witness. We're supposed to be truthful when we give testimony. That's where that idea came from. The reason that murder is wrong, the reason that theft There's wrong, the foundation of that lies in the 10 commandments regardless of class, regardless of group, regardless of political affiliation. There's a certain governing behavior that is
always right and wrong. The founding fathers were so clear that you have to have a moral foundation if we would going to
be a free nation. And this is where the 10 commandments, were that moral foundation that allowed us to be a free nation, the idea that we can send people to jail, if they kill people, if they murder somebody, if they steal, this is something it would seem like, if we are having kids that are murdering at a higher rate, they're doing violence at a higher rate, it would make sense that probably we should start telling them hey, guys, that's a bad thing to
do. To show them this moral compass of right and wrong, is the only logical position for someone paying attention. Unfortunately, there's just Democrats and sometimes even Baptists who didn't support that decision.
And Southern Baptists, their leader at the Capitol took his position. Most pastors would not agree with that. Most Baptists would not agree with that. So if you're a Baptist in Texas, or if you're a Baptist pastor in Texas, you need to be talking to leadership for the state and say, wait a minute, what are you representing us at the Capitol? What do you saying we believe? And I doubt that those Southern Baptists in Texas who oppose the
10 commandments. Maybe there is, but overall, overwhelmingly, Southern Baptists support the 10 commandments, except they're at the state capitol. And that's just not a good image for Southern Baptists to have at the State Capitol in Texas. So contact them let them know exactly what you think.
Alright, folks, we're out of time. You can learn more on our website today. Check it out at WallBuilders.com . Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders.