Gods of the Earth: The Role of Civil Magistrates

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All right, well, thank you for coming to this event. It's an honor to share the stage with John Harris and Russell Fuller.

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It's also my first time in Wisconsin. It's beautiful here. And after publishing this book,

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I've been to many places. And America is a very diverse and beautiful place.

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And this just adds to my impression of that. So thank you for being here again. Yeah, as John said,

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I did come out with this book. I want to say years in the making, I guess.

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But there it is. And so today, I want to talk about the importance of great men in light of Reformed theology and Reformed thought.

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So it's the idea of the great man. You've probably heard something like that before.

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I want to just kind of expand and talk a little bit more about that. And if you have any questions, like John said, please write those down.

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We'll try to address those later. But I want to start off with a quote by a

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French intellectual. I know starting with a French quote is probably not a good idea. But this guy was one of the good ones, in my estimation.

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Ernest Renan, he said, great men, glory, I mean the genuine kind. This is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea.

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So the great man is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea.

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The idea being that if we have a nation, part of that, of thinking about what the nation is, who we are in relation to the nation, our attachment to it, is in part, not only, but is in part the history of the great people that did great works on behalf and for that nation.

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And so as Americans, who would you say is one of the greatest? Someone can start with a

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W, not Wolf. Washington, yes, thank you. It's George Washington, my personal favorite founding father.

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So well, before I get to Washington, so what is a great man, just in general, not just a political?

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I feel like I'm giving a lecture asking questions in a school. But it's a director, it's a sort of director of men.

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So you can think of a military officer. A military officer is someone who directs people into battle, directs them to actions, as a group to do great things.

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They themselves are also men of action. So a great man can be military leaders, they can be political leaders, they can be both.

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They can be great writers. But whatever it is that this great man is someone who can shape and direct people in action.

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And then they leave a legacy within those people, that people, to give people a positive regard and understanding of who they are as a people.

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So I brought up George Washington because he truly was the greatest of the great within,

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I think, in American history. He was a military leader, of course, also later a political leader.

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He was a founding father. He literally chaired, he was the chairman of the federal convention that led to our constitution.

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He didn't say much, but that didn't matter because what was he? He was this tall, great man who could set the tone with his own gravitas and presence for the very importance of that event.

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Years after his death, decades after his death, homes would have images of George Washington, not on their private study or in their library, but in their living room.

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So this was a very common American practice decades after his death to have his image in the living room.

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So he continued on as this great man. In his farewell address, so he set the tradition until FDR broke it, of only having two terms as president.

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But in his farewell address, before he said, I'm done, it's been 30 years, I'm retiring finally, he said, he was basically subtly saying, in my interpretation,

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I've held this thing together, now you guys have to hold it together. He said, we have common sentiments, common religion, we have common struggles.

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I know you're a set of squabbling colonies and then states under the

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Articles of Confederation. Now you're one great nation, you're one people. Now I'm retiring, you deal with it, and you hold it together,

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I'm no longer gonna be that man. But it was the man, in my view, Washington, that held the country together.

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And so this is not a lecture about Washington, even though I wouldn't mind that. But we can think of other men as well.

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Abraham Lincoln, FDR, you may have different opinions about these people. Nevertheless, they still had this great man kind of persona.

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FDR is interesting because he, of course, could not walk, and yet still led a

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World War II as president. So it doesn't, so the physical presence does not necessarily matter as much.

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But you have other founders, famous founders. You have Solon of Athens, you have Lycurgus of Sparta, you have

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Romulus of Rome, you have Madison, Adams, all these people. So these are the great men, and they inspire and unite a people and create a heritage.

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Nowadays, if you think of what the sort of people we consider great, it's actually kind of the opposite.

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It's people who are largely passive. It's people who happen upon a certain identity and then assert that identity in public, and that identity is then praised, and they are elevated.

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There was recently a, I saw Biden was asked a question by, I guess, a journalist, and she said something to the effect of, someone

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I know told me that a trans kid is scared and wants to leave the country.

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And what did Biden say? He said, well, you know, grow up or something, or I don't know. He didn't say, he said, oh, give me the phone number and I'll give that kid a call, and said everything will be okay.

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Sounds very nice, but it was an elevation of a certain identity. Someone claimed to be scared, and then that person was elevated as being, in a way, worthy of a call from the president to say everything will be okay,

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I support you. So the people who make the loudest noise have the biggest outrage. People who are simply just victims of injustice or perceived injustice are elevated as great and get statues in their honor, even when they really didn't do anything at all.

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So what this does is it shapes exactly what we, as a people, are starting to think of as great, which is victimhood, passivity, and essentially expressing an identity, and if you don't recognize that identity, then you will be attacked.

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And then that person who was attacked, that person will then be elevated as being great.

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You can contrast this with some names you might have heard of recently who have been assaulted, or have been attacked by the regime, largely illegally.

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Someone like Daniel Perry, who subdued someone on the subway in New York City. There's Kyle Rittenhouse, which is a little closer to home here, you probably know that story.

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Stories you may not know is a guy named James Scurlock. He was a bar owner who was, during a

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BLM rally, he went to the bar to protect the bar. After bricks were thrown into the windows of his bar, he and his father tried to push these people back, or something to that effect, or just protect his bar.

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He was subsequently attacked, brought to the ground, but Scurlock had a gun, shot his attacker.

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The local investigator said that it was self -defense, but it made national news, and after that, the district attorney came down, charged him with a federal crime.

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A couple months later, Scurlock committed suicide. Another man named Jonathan Pentland, he was an

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NCO within the Army stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. There was a deranged man who had come to his neighborhood who had then touched kids, and kind of walk, be very strange, have very strange erratic behavior.

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Cops were called, nothing happens, and finally, Jonathan Pentland, or Sergeant Pentland, said, enough is enough, and he kind of roughed the guy up a little bit.

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He was subsequently arrested, charged with assault, and convicted of assault, made national news, and the point being, why am

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I talking about these guys? These are people that, in an earlier era, would be praised for self -assertive, individual action on behalf of their community, apart from, maybe, the lack of wisdom on Rittenhouse's fault.

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Nevertheless, the willingness to act on behalf of your community for its good when the authorities or others around you are not acting.

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So, these are the kind of people who our regime now attack, whereas the people who simply assert their identity in public are then praised.

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So, I think this kind of highlights, can actually the great men of old arise anymore, or is that precluded, is that completely out?

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And I think that's kind of the first point I wanna make, something to think about. Can someone like Washington actually rise up and become a great man in our future, given the current conditions?

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And I would say that is likely, at least it seems that cannot happen, and perhaps that's something we need to think about and try to change.

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All right, so I wanna kind of shift into civil rulers, civil leaders. Again, civil leaders can be great men.

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In particular, I wanna talk about two aspects of civil leadership. So, there's obviously the law -making authority.

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They can tell you to do this or not to do that, but there's more to it than that. When we want civil rulers, we also want someone who has this sort of persona and personality that inspires us for a love of country and to act as well.

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So, in a military leader, you don't just want some guy who's gonna say do this and do that. You want someone you can respect and someone you can follow almost by instinct from that respect.

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And there is this, within the Christian tradition, there is a lot of commentary on the importance of civil leaders, but also around the office itself and the importance of the office as a sort of divine office.

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Some of the language you find is kind of striking. So, let me read just some of what Calvin said.

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He said that, first of all, first of all, you can look at Psalm 82 .6. This is the common interpretation where scripture calls princes gods, meaning, well, we'll get to that.

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But Calvin says it's a sacred title, it's a sacred character and title. Samuel Rutherford says that civil rulers have a resemblance of the king of heavens, being a little god and so is above any one man.

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Calvin says, when good magistrates rule, we see God, as it were, near us and govern us by means of those whom he hath appointed.

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He says the image of God shines forth in them when they execute judgment and justice. Calvin even says that the palaces of princes, so the houses, palaces, ought to resemble a sanctuary for they occupy the dwelling place of God which ought to be sacred to all.

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So some of this, mainly in his commentaries, he says these things, and others.

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And you find this kind of language throughout not only the Reformed tradition but also the Christian tradition.

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And you can see this rooted not only in Psalm 82 but also in Romans 13, the idea that the author they are,

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God's deputy or minister or servant, also that the power comes from God.

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But there is something about the character of that office that is more than just, he's more than a man.

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Of course, he's not divinized. When we say, you're our president now, we're not divinizing him, we're not saying, infusing him with divineness or something or divinity.

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He holds a certain office. But holding a certain office, you also ought to live up to that office which means not only just law but also having this sort of virtue and piety that comes with that.

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And so I wanna first start off with some of the personality traits that we might wanna look for or that a civil ruler would have and then go from there and talk about law.

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So some of this relates to what I said before. Our civil rulers ought to kind of live up as the first of the people.

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The idea that they are, just like in the army, we say that you always lead from the front.

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So the same way civil rulers, they ought to lead from the front in virtue, in honor, and in piety.

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And in this sense, they ought to have some kind of gravitas. There's a reason in the military why when a commanding officer enters the room, everyone stands up and goes with tension.

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And he says, and the officer says, at ease unless you're in trouble that you get yelled at. But normally, he'll just say, at ease.

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But why do you do that? Well, in that space, by recognizing, you're recognizing his presence in that space and his authority, and it's giving him the honor due to him given that even if you don't like the officer, you still are supposed to do that given the office that he holds.

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These people, these great men also ought to inspire greatness, a love of country, a love of place.

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Again, I will mention Washington's farewell address where he does commend the people for their sacrifices in the war and bringing themselves.

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But now, you must be great yourselves apart from me, Washington, your leader.

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So there's another quote from John Witherspoon. John Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and founding father, also one of the presidents of Princeton.

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He has a nice statue in Princeton that was just there a few days ago and took a picture of it, and he's standing there looking around thinking what happened to this place.

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Let me see. So he says the magistrates ought to encourage piety by his own example.

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All right, so is that the only quote I had here? Well, okay, there it is. He ought to, that's good enough. He ought to encourage piety by his own example.

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So he ought to be, so this is a founding father saying that that's what civil rulers ought to do.

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I think it's important to stress that these guys are not church ministers. So there is a difference, of course.

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I mean, we all know this. There's a difference between a civil magistrate and a church minister. Church minister, you could think of as someone who represents, brings the things of the kingdom of God, which is, you know,

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I don't wanna get too theological, but in a sense, it's otherworldly, it's spiritual, and they are ministers of Christ as he is mediator of the things of heavenly life.

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But a civil magistrate, he gets his power largely from God as creator.

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So he directs things of this world, the earthly things, and so his power is, in a way, more physical, more earthly, more coercive.

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It's more, as John was talking, actually, your talk does fit, in a way, with what I'm talking about.

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There is a certain sublime element to the great civil leader that you can imagine if the president, even

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Joe Biden, okay, I don't wanna bash Biden here, but even if Biden were to walk in today, there would be a sense in which this guy has, holds the office of the presidency of the

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United States. And if it was a president that you respected a lot, that would probably even be intensified.

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So there is something about the physical aspect and the power and coercion that he has.

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The point being, I think, what I'm trying to get at is that the civil, we should expect civil rulers to have this kind of sublime warrior strength to him that we wouldn't necessarily want from a church minister.

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Church minister serves things through persuasion. He preaches, tries to persuade you, and he serves things, serves the sacraments as well.

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A little bit different office, and we should not conflate the two, in my view. Now, I wanna be clear that I'm not talking about a monarchy.

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So I've been accused of wanting a monarchy to be in the United States, that's not true. I'm not against monarchy in principle or in itself.

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But I think that, just like Washington, Washington, he was there when he contributed to the formation of our

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Constitution, and he abided by that Constitution, and even set precedents that were held until we amended the

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Constitution with regard to term limits for the presidency. So even in a republic like ours, you can still have great men who are leading us and abide by the

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Constitution and have great effects upon our country. So, all right, that's the personality side.

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So you've gotta have great men of personality. Now I wanna get into civil law. So now put on your lawyer caps.

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You're all gonna become lawyers by the end of this. No, I'll try not to make it too dry here.

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All right, so civil rulers have lawmaking power. What is law?

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Law basically says do this or don't do that. That's kind of what law does at its most basic idea is do this or don't do that, and if you fail to do what

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I say, then you're going to be punished. That's at kind of the most basic, probably simplistic reading of it.

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But I think in order to understand how civil law works, we have to think what sort of being we are as human beings.

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So we are created in a world in which there are laws of nature, and all beings, all creatures, are in a way under a sort of law of nature.

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So you can think of a dog or a cow or these other animals. They don't have reason. They're not moral beings.

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When one animal kills another being, you don't accuse it of a moral error. You might think, wow, that dog is a poorly trained dog, but you don't think in terms of that dog just committed a moral crime or something to that effect or violated a moral law.

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They're just following their instinct. The difference between us and non -human beings is that we're under a moral law.

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We are under a law that is rational, meaning that we can know it, we can think about it if our minds were sound, we could think about it properly, and we have the will to choose or not choose.

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So animals, they have a kind of volition. Sometimes you can see a dog contemplating if it really wants to do this or that.

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But we actually have the free choice to choose to obey the law or not obey the law.

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I'm Calvinist, but we'll get that free choice thing another time. But yeah, nevertheless, we do have, part of being under a moral law is that we have moral choice and we can do this or not do that.

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We have a sense of justice. So we don't really think, when we watch some sort of documentary on animals, we don't think, wow, that's an injustice that animal did.

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We don't think like that because we don't conceive of animals under a moral law. That's not true for us.

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We are under a moral law. This moral law is something that is natural to us, meaning that it's something that, well,

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I'll go through the definition here, but it's natural in the sense that it's not simply,

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A, it's not simply what's written within the Bible. It's also kind of created with us.

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I'll go into this in more detail in a moment. The point being is that it's a natural thing.

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So there's a famous theologian, famous, there's a, my famous, excuse me. My favorite theologian is a guy named

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Francis Turretin, and he said this about the natural law. He said, the natural law is founded on the natural right of God with regard to which things are not called just because they are commanded, but they are commanded because they were just and good antecedently to the command of God, meaning that the reason we ought to do this or ought not to do that is not simply because God says it is good or it is bad, but because it actually is good or bad flowing from his very moral nature, and since he created us, we are moral beings in line with his moral nature.

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Okay, so it's not a pure divine command as if we ought to do these things simply because God says do or do not, but he tells us to do this and don't do that because of the very moral nature that we have from being created by God who himself is perfect, morally perfect.

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Okay, that's really important because it means that when you obey the moral law or the natural law, you are actually obeying, you're being truly human.

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You're doing human actions. You're doing what you ought to do as a human being. You're not simply obeying

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God's command. You're actually also being just a good human being in accordance with how

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God created you, okay? All right, but the thing is with natural law is that it's really a set of principles.

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It's not an actual set of specific commands of saying you ought to do this or don't do that in a very specific sense.

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It's more like natural principles, okay?

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So it's like when you're commanded to honor your father and mother. That can look very different depending on what you're doing or how old you are.

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The same thing is love your neighbor as yourself. That might involve you putting your neighbor in jail or it might not involve you putting your neighbor in jail.

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So you have to apply these principles in context, okay?

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Now, because this law flows from God, this natural law flows from God, it is the only law that binds your conscience to action.

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So no one can tell you do this or don't do that unless they have actual license from God to do that, okay?

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So the only thing that binds you to action, the only one who binds you to action ultimately is God, okay?

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Now, how does that relate to a civil ruler? Or how does it relate to, I mean, you talk about family life, but let's just go to an actual civil ruler.

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Where does the power of a civil ruler come from? Or the civil magistrate or the king or civil government?

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Where does that power come from? It comes from God. That's precisely what Romans 13, rule one says.

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There is no authority except from God, okay? So when a civil ruler says you ought to do this, he establishes something in law, and if that law is in conformity to the natural law, which is the overarching moral principles you ought to follow in life, then in a way that is

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God telling you you ought to do that thing because God's authority is invested with a certain man who is a civil ruler.

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That civil ruler is telling you to do something in accordance with the natural law that God has put you under, and therefore, in a way, in a kind of immediate or intermediary way, that civil ruler is acting in a way as God to tell you to do something, and he has every authority and right to do that, okay?

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Now, that's not to say, I'm not gonna go into injustice, unjust laws, but I'll just say that you're not bound to obey unjust laws, and why is that?

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Because, as I said before, no one can tell you to do something unless God has already told you to do it, okay?

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And if they are commanding you to do something unjust, they're commanding you to do something outside of God's natural law over which he's placed you, and that's why you don't have to obey it, because that's why a civil ruler with power telling you to do something that is unjust, you do not have to obey him because he's actually not exercising the power of God properly, okay?

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So, to kind of recap all this, you have a natural law placed over you by God from the beginning.

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That natural law is directed for your good, but it's really a set of principles, and this is one reason why we have a civil leader, and the civil leaders take those principles and say, do this or don't do that for our good, and they do that with a power of God, as Romans 13 once says, as ministers of God, to tell you to do this or don't do that through civil law, and in a way, those laws are laws of God because his rightful representative is telling you to do this or that, and that's one reason why

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I think in Romans 13, Paul says, for conscience's sake, you are bound to obey God.

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Here's God's minister. He's telling you to do something. Now, obey for conscience's sake because he is the minister of God.

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I think what this means, then, is we should have a kind of deferential posture.

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I know Americans don't like this, but I think we should have a sort of deferential posture towards civil leaders when they tell us to do something through law or some other means.

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We should assume that they have the common good in view.

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Now, I'm not saying absolutely. I think, so during COVID, I know that was very controversial, but eventually,

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I think us regular people, you know, we'll see that this law is dumb and doesn't work or it's destructive, and I think there can be a point where we start disobeying, or if worship is canceled, but, you know, you can still go to bars or something like that.

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When there's clear inconsistencies, we can disobey, and I don't wanna get into all the disobedience aspect, but the point is

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I do think we should have a deferential posture as these people who do have legitimate authority and ought to be in a better position to decide the sort of laws we ought to obey.

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So I'm not trying to violate a good American principle of defiance and civil disobedience.

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So there still is that, I think, theoretically we could do that, but at the same time, we shouldn't have such a anti -authoritarian posture.

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I've kind of done an overview here of what I see as civil rulers having this kind of twin or twofold aspect to them, which is both the ability to direct via law, which is a more direct way.

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It's a direct way of saying what you ought to do and what we ought to do, but that's not enough.

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It's not enough to be like a Paul Ryan or a Paul C. Wonk who, it doesn't inspire greatness in any respect, but can only give you laws.

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There has to be more than that also, a sort of personality that directs you to greatness and has a legacy to that end.

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All right. All right, so those are the two aspects.

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So I want to do a little bit of application now, if you'll let me. We have, of course, mixed government, meaning we don't have a, what

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I'm talking about might make more sense if we had kind of a unitary executive, like a monarchy. Of course, we don't have a monarchy.

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We have a government that is kind of a mixed regime, of course, three branches, three separate powers, each one lodged in a different branch of government.

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This power of God is kind of, in a way, diffused, in a way. So which personality do we respect or do we look for?

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Can the great man be a congressman? So I think, yes, it can come from anywhere, any branch of government, but ideally, it would be the president.

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I mean, the president is the head of state. He's the executive. He doesn't have any lawmaking power, but he is the executor of the laws.

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That's the whole point of the presidency. But also, a head of state in relation to other nations.

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And so I think this is one of the, as Christians, as just human beings, we should seek a president that is, can have that sort of national greatness that we look for and need.

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Now, in recent years, we haven't exactly had that. I'm not gonna go Trump -ashing. I wouldn't do that anyway.

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But, and there can be times when we have to violate that in the interest of, for other interests.

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Nevertheless, as we train our children, as we look for God to raise up someone for us, we should look to those kind of qualities,

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I think. And I think, as we're looking for God to do that for us,

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I think, as Americans, we need to look, we need to remind ourselves that we do, in this country, have a heritage of faith.

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As much as we like, we hear people say, we're not a Christian country, we never were a Christian country, the

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Constitution is godless, that really were the founders established a secular government, we're more like the

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French than we thought, that's all false. And we, the,

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I would say, I mean, we don't have to go to the Puritans, we don't have to even go to the founding era. We could just go, we can go in the 1800s, all the way up through maybe the 1950s and 1960s, and Americans thought of this country as a

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Christian nation. You had foreigners come here, like Alexis de Tocqueville, he wrote the famous book,

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Democracy in America, you may have read that in high school or college. And he even said, yeah,

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I mean, of course, this is a Protestant Christian country. It's like, he contrasted it with the established churches in England, or in Europe, and he said, well, it's remarkable, in the

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United States, there's no established churches, or they're at the very limited establishment in some states, practically not established, practically disestablished, but the religiosity in the

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United States is off the charts. So there's no established churches, religiosity off the charts.

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Everyone, to the point where if you were not a Christian, you had to kind of keep that to yourself.

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And so it was a very Christian, and even into the progressive era, so we think of the progressives of the early 20th century as being maybe secularist.

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No, they were all liberal Protestants, and they applied a kind of a theology, or an eschatology, that placed a lot of hope, as the

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United States, as a world leader for justice and progress. Now, I don't think many people here would agree with what they thought was progress and other things, and really wouldn't want to think of the

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United States that way. Nevertheless, they said, we're a Christian country, and we ought to be like that to the rest of the world.

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So that was even among the, so it wasn't until after World War II. The point being is we have a heritage of faith, and I think we can,

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I do not, for the record, don't think that we are God's chosen people, or God's chosen country, or any of that sort of thing.

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Nevertheless, we, among other nations, I think England is also one of them, you can think of Germany and France as well, as having this kind of heritage of faith.

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I do believe that it's possible God can raise up a leader for us, that would remind us of that heritage, and see how we can recover through custom and law, that heritage.

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So I think that's something we should look to, and pray for, we should prepare for that as well.

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I think that that involves education, it involves teaching our kids, and reminding ourselves of that.

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So well -educated children, kind of training up that next generation, and you see a lot of hope within some of the education, the classical school education, all this sort of thing, you see hope in that.

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Yeah, and I would just say that another thing with kids and ourselves, biographies of the great men of the past,

33:29

I think that's also a means of inspiring. It used to be that's what biography was, you read

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Plutarch's lives, and what was it? But a analysis of great men of the past, their faults, their triumphs, there was a comparison between the different ones.

33:46

Even Machiavelli's famous, infamous book, The Prince, was intended as a type of manual for civil power, and he cites all these men of the

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Roman and Greek, ancient Greek period, to try to talk about. So there used to be, biography used to be a way to think through greatness and faults and try to raise up similar people.

34:22

I said that civil rulers have the means through law to direct us to what is good.

34:28

I don't think it's just to ensure that we can be individuals and do whatever we want without harming each other.

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So I'm not a libertarian. I think the point of civil rulers is to say what is good, so let's try to enact and encourage people to that end.

34:44

Of course, we're Americans and don't like too much of that. But I think as American conservatives,

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I'm assuming most people here are, we ought to start, I think, becoming more comfortable with using power for the good of the country, to see what is evil and that evil ought to be, in some way, suppressed, if not eradicated.

35:06

Of course, we have to have wise policy. But we don't want a negative vision, by which a negative vision would not be pessimism, but this idea that, well, we should use law just to secure individual freedom to be and do whatever they want.

35:24

I think there should be a positive vision. We should have a positive conception of what is good in the country, and we should seek through custom and law to bring that about.

35:32

For a long time, we've lived in a sort of neutral, positive or neutral world with regard to America's relation to Christianity, and that's trained us to think a certain way.

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And I think within our world now, now that there's more hostility, outright hostility to Christianity and just basic human morals, we ought to have a more positive vision, meaning implement policy that actually conduces to that end.

35:57

So what's an example of this? I, where possible, I think the government should stamp out all

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LGBTQ stuff within public schools. Now, when I say that,

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I mean that they should not encourage any of that stuff as teachers, and if they do, they're subject to being fired.

36:16

But what I'm not saying, and this is the conservative instinct is to say, well, when we say they shouldn't talk about that stuff in schools, we mean that no one should talk about their personal lives at all.

36:29

That's the conservative is let's neutralize, let's make it neutral so no one can do it at all.

36:35

When I grew up, and I grew up in California, so thanks for your hospitality, but I grew up in California, and even then,

36:43

I remember teachers saying, talking positively about their, there wasn't all this 80s and 90s, and I don't recall any teachers talking about their lesbian relationships, but they did talk positively about their family, and that was good, that was a good thing.

36:59

So I think that we, conservatives should not say, let's leap into a neutrality world where no, you can't talk about your family life at all.

37:06

No, it should be, if you're gonna talk about your family life, it ought to be something about your husband, and your wife, and your kids, and what you did over the summer.

37:19

So in other words, what is the good? The good is heterosexual marriage with children. That ought to be the standard thing that you talk in class.

37:30

So the next one would be religious exemptions. One of the strange things about us is that we think, oh, the

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First Amendment, what that does, it means that we have exemptions. We claim our religious rights to be exempted from some norm or law.

37:45

So when LGBTQ or whatever, I don't know, all these things are normalized in society, instead of us saying no, we need to say, no, that's just simply wrong and shouldn't happen, we ask for religious exemptions.

37:58

So essentially, we concede to the people who want to normalize deviancy, and then our response, instead of fighting against the normalcy, we seek an exemption.

38:14

One striking, like during Obamacare, when they wanted to force Roman Catholics to have contraception, or to provide contraception, initially, as I understand it, the

38:25

Roman Catholic organizations were opposed to the law in its entirety, or at least that specific provision that would require providing contraception through the healthcare plans.

38:40

And then someone said, oh, well, we'll provide a religious exemption. And then all of a sudden, the Roman Catholics, many of them changed their view, and said, okay, well, we'll accept it if there's an exemption.

38:50

And so that became the law, and now, I forget all the details of that, but the point being is that they were granted an exemption,

38:58

I think there still was a court battle over it, but nevertheless, there was a promise of an exemption, and as I understand it, the law passed by one vote in the

39:08

Senate, and that was because the exemption was accepted. So that would not have actually passed, as I understand it, if they did not accept the exemption.

39:18

I'm not saying religious exemptions are bad all the time, I'm not saying that sometimes it's a tactical, tactical strategic maneuver to guarantee our right to kind of live out our beliefs without being harassed, but we shouldn't be addicted to exemptions.

39:36

We should seek what is normal, what is right, that ought to be the norm. And so that's my main point there.

39:45

So lastly, I already mentioned this before, and I'm kind of running out of time, but I think we need to pray for God to raise up a figure, or people, or a movement that will deliver us from the evils that we see in this country, in a way to return to older ages, not entirely, of course, but to return to the heritage of faith, that heritage of faith we have in the

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United States. And I think a key element of that is going to be God's providence, but using these great people who will direct us to it, and it'll be a process of remembrance, not just an innovative new thing, it'll be a process of remembrance.

40:30

So hopefully we can pray for that. So thank you. Thank you.