November 21, 2024 Show with M.D. Perkins on “Culture Warrior”

The Program Opens With Iron Sharpens Iron and a Scripture-Based Mission

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 21st day of November 2024.

As many of you may have heard already, there is a note of historic significance today in that Matt Gaetz, who was nominated by the President elect Donald Trump to be his Attorney General, has removed his name from consideration, and I'm sure we'll be finding out more about the details on that in other media formats and find out who will be President Trump's choice to replace him and so on.

That has nothing to do with our program today. I just thought I'd mention that as a note of interest, having just heard about this shortly before the program started. But today we have a returning guest.

Introducing M.D. Perkins and the Documentary Culture Warrior

I'm thrilled to have him back on the program. Many of you may remember that I have interviewed twice before M .D. Perkins. M .D. Perkins is a staff member of the American Family Association and author of Dangerous Affirmation, The Danger of Gay Christianity, and today he's gonna be addressing a brand new documentary that is available for free for everybody listening today, Culture Warrior.

And if you have any questions for M .D. Perkins, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

After this live program is over, I would urge all of you to, at some point, as soon as possible, if you have not listened to these interviews already, you can listen to my interview with M .D. Perkins on November 16th of last year, 2023, on his book Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity, and also our interview on January 30th of this year when M .D. and I, over a response and loving rebuke to Alistair Begg, and that was involving his counsel to a grandmother to demonstrate her love as a Christian to her grandchild who was marrying somebody, alleging to be transgendered, to demonstrate love to that grandchild by attending the wedding, and that put a lot of people who highly regard Alistair as a faithful biblical exegete and Christian pastor and teacher, put a lot of people in a tailspin, and could no longer in good conscience recommend his ministry because of that, especially since he never repented of that choice of counsel.

But you can listen to these programs at ironsharpensironradio .com and just type in Perkins, P-E-R-K-I-N-S, into the search engine and they will come up. But today, as I said, we are discussing the new documentary Culture Warrior, which is primarily a tribute to the late Don Wildman.

Don Wildman was actually still with us on this side of Glory the first time I interviewed M .D. Perkins. He went home to be with the Lord at 85 years old on December 28th of 2023, and he is the founder of the American Family Association and American Family Radio, which originally arrives on the scene under a different name.

And we'll find out more about that and the legacy that has been left by Brother Wildman. And also, we're going to be discussing some controversies that exist and disagreements that exist, even amongst those in the body of Christ, who may be equally as faithful to the Scriptures as Don was, who may be equally conservative, equally opposed to all forms of entertainment and media images and music, lyrics, and other things that are offensive to God but have different approaches on how we as Christians in a free state and a nation that upholds the freedom of speech as one of our core beliefs that cannot be violated.

There are different approaches to this subject, and then we will have time to hear about your opinions as well when you send in your questions if you care to do so. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip.

Design Radio, M .D. Perkins. Yeah, good to be with you, Chris, once again. I appreciate your program,.

Willingness to have me on and talk about this stuff. Why don't you, first of all, give us a little bit more information about the American Family Association? Yeah, the American Family.

Association was founded back in 1977 by Don Wildman, and he was a Methodist minister who was concerned about television entertainment at the time, and that public concern grew for him over the years. And this is really the subject of the documentary, Culture Warrior, Don Wildman and the Battle for Decency that I'm talking about that we've just completed and is now released to the public.

Culturewarrior .movie is the website. You can go there and watch the movie for just a very brief registration name and an email address, and you can get access to watch the movie for free at culturewarrior .movie.

So the story behind AFA is really Don Wildman's story, but the ministry exists beyond Don. Like you mentioned, he went to glory but Don's concern began with just sitting down to watch TV with his family one night in December of 1976, and it had been a busy week.

He was a pastor in South Haven, Mississippi, and he sat down to watch TV with his family, and each station offered a different vile option. There was violence on one station, there was profanity on another, and there was a sexual encounter happening on the third or the three network stations that existed at that time.

And so he just had the TV turned off, and that began for him, I think, a level of dual concern. First of all, there was a recognition that he had been a bit complacent in the midst of all this, and second of all, he realized just the erosion that had happened in terms of ethics and morality and decency in America.

Just kind of gotten used to, and most people had gotten used to. And so while he could just sit there and turn the TV off, which he did that night, he started a campaign at his church called Turn the Television Off Week, and this was something that he was using as a springboard to raise awareness among his congregation about the issues of television, media, how much we consume, how much time people were spending in front of the television set at that point, and realizing how many violent images a child would see over the course of his life just from watching normal network TV over the course of those early years of development and childhood.

And this was something that, Don, it's fascinating that he wasn't just someone who was happy with just a private conviction, but it became a public witness that he wanted to bear on this. So he wrote a press release and sent it out to local media, which then got picked up nationally.

And so this Turn the Television Off Week kind of became a bit of a movement, and as he recognized people sensing the same sense of frustration and burden and concern, he began what was called the National Federation for Decency, which is the original name of Ohio and the American Family Association, which is the ministry that I work with today.

So that began, the NFD started in 1977, changed its name to the American Family Association in 1988, and some of the cultural issues were broadening out, and the concern was a little bit bigger than just the issues of decency related to television and pornography was a major point of concern there in the 1980s that he was fighting against.

But that's kind of the roots of the American Family Association. We still exist today. We're based out of Mississippi, and it's about 100 staffers who work for the ministry. Tim Wildman, Don's son, is the president of the ministry, and then grandsons of Don, which are Tim's sons, Wesley, vice presidents here at AFA.

And so that's not just because it's kind of a family legacy. They really do carry on and embody the spirit of Don, his concern, and his approaches to dealing with this over the years. And so AFA has grown and expanded in a number of ways from those early days of the 1970s and 80s, but so many of those sides of concern and how we approach these issues remain the same even today.

Yes, and I'm sure it.

Shocks many who discover Don Wildman. I'm amazed by how old I'm getting so rapidly because there are, I'm sure, many people who listen to Iron Troupe and Zion Radio who are younger than both of us who have never heard of him and don't even have any recollection of the struggle of the AFA and the reasons for its existence, especially early on, because many of them weren't even around on this earth yet.

But one of the things that I was wondering about watching the documentary is I was a bit surprised that the decline in morality on television seemed to be some kind of an amazing revelation for Don and his family during that Christmas season in 1976.

Was he watching TV before that? Because it seemed like news to him that during that Christmas season when he was trying to watch programming with his family that he believed would be at the very least sentimental and appropriate for Christmas, that time and time again as he turned the channels, there were things that even by today's standards would be considered tame, but back then were more disturbing for your average Christian as far as perversion and sexuality.

But why was this such a revelation to him at this point?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons for that, Chris. I mean, one, I don't think Don watched a whole lot of television just generally. That wasn't his chosen means of entertainment. He was much more, much preferred the company of books to that of TV.

And I think also he expressed just more of having turned a blind eye to it over the years, had not really given it that much consideration. I mean, he certainly had recognized there had been a decline overall socially, but in terms of how he would respond to it and the burden that that put on him, because it wasn't just an issue of it impacting his family.

I mean, as a pastor, he began to think of the implications on his church members that the people in his church were consuming a lot of television. And what was the implication on them? What was the implication on the children in his congregations?

And then even if he were to completely turn off the TV or throw out the TV, you know, his children were in schools, they had friends, the neighbors were around. And so the influence of television, I think it was more than just being burdened about the particular implications of just the decline that had happened, but it was also seeing the interconnection in the bigger picture.

And that picture broadened out even more for Don over the years where, you know, he says at one point, we include the clip in the documentary where he says, I suddenly began to realize the more and more I was reading into this, because he started doing a lot of research in light of his burden that night.

But he said, the more that I looked into it, the more I began to realize that even if you were to remove all of the sex and violence off television, there was still something fundamentally wrong with it.

And he began to realize that what that was, was it was a secular humanistic worldview that was influencing the television producers, the executives, and that these guys were intentionally removing any sense of the kind of the Christian basis for a lot of people's normal life.

You know, Don would often say, you know, you could pull up a network TV show, and you would never know that over half of the country identifies as a Christian, or even more identifies practicing some kind of religion, you would never know that from watching television, because the television shows don't don't show characters who are actually religious and in a very genuine sense, it was always Christians were the bumpkins, they were the, they were the butt of the joke, they were, they were hypocrites, they were schemers, they were even murderers, in some cases, you know, but they were never presented as just ordinary people.

And so he began to see that there were, there were larger things happening there than just sex and violence on TV, their worldview issues. And of course, you know, he picked up on things that Francis Schaeffer and Norman Geisler and other guys like that, Sproul, were writing and beginning to speak about the issues of secular humanism as a worldview, and how these things were, were influencing many, many aspects of American social life during that period, even though the behind it would never would always act like they were neutral.

In fact, when Don, Don would debate a, an executive at CBS in 1981, about, about bringing up consumer boycotts, and whether this was a form of censorship, and all of this, this was the common accusation that Don faced.

And, and the, the, the network executive said, you were a pastor, you know, you're a preacher. So you have a very particular worldview mindset that you're coming from. But I am a television executive, and I don't have any worldview that I'm, that I'm promoting, which, of course, is completely false and erroneous.

Right. Everybody has a world. Right. But this is, this is what the kinds of things that were being thrown out there to people, kind of the, the idea that secularism is just, is just the neutral category.

It's not pro or con religion. But then you begin to realize, no, it actually is against religious worship and religious practice, and especially Christianity. And, and so Don began to, to raise a spotlight.

Onto that, too. Now, I can't even remember if I completed my thought before. But what I was starting to say is that I'm sure it would shock many today, especially, to know that Don Wildman was a United Methodist minister.

And today, most people who, of any knowledge of the United Methodist Church know that there was a recent huge divide. The more conservative and biblically faithful members of that denomination broke off from the United Methodist Church to start the global Methodist Church.

Although there are many, there are many conservative Bible-believing Christians that don't think that even that group has gone far enough. They still ordain women and so on. But did Don remain in the United Methodist denomination for his entire life?

Because it was only a year ago that he went home to be with the Lord, and that denomination has been known for denying the Scriptures on not only essential theological truths—not that everybody denied essential theological truths—but it was permitted to deny even the deity of Christ, and the virgin birth, and bodily resurrection, and substitutionary atonement, and we could go on and on.

In addition to being a denomination that was at the forefront of promoting the murder of unborn children and the promotion of same-sex relations, although apparently they were not in their church polity as far into allowing those things as many of us thought.

From what I'm hearing is that those things were not like same-sex marriage and the ordination of homosexuals was not something that was technically legally acceptable within the polity of the United Methodist Church.

It is now, I believe. But where was he at? I mean, what was he saying about his own denomination? And when did these things start to surface while he was a United Methodist minister?

Don Wildman, the Methodist Church, and the Roots of AFA

Yeah, Don's history with the institutional church is fairly vexed. I mean, from the early times of him trying to raise awareness about his concerns in society, he immediately faced pushback within his own denomination, almost instantly.

And he was often very burdened by that fact that he struggled. Of course, there was a decent bit of support that he also received from Methodist ministers and people who were involved in Methodist churches and so on and so forth.

So, I don't want to give the impression that he was kind of the lone voice in there. But he certainly was. He didn't garner widespread support. I'll put it that way. And it was something that bothered him.

It burdened him. It grieved him. And it was something that especially as, you know, in the late 90s, a lot of these denominations, it is interesting that the mainline denominations, despite having eroded so much of those biblical doctrines, they had not fully embraced on the public side homosexuality and these things in their polity, even though they were not, I guess, fighting against it or dealing with the disciplinary cases related to it until the late 90s, early 2000s, and really even into the 2000s.

And I think the PCUSA didn't officially change their doctrine on this or their positional statement until 2011, if I'm remembering correctly. But Don, so one of the initial things that AFA produced back when it was the NFD, and it still does it today, was something that's called the, it was initially the NFD Newsletter, which then became the National Federation for Decency Journal, the NFD Journal, which became the AFA Journal, which is now called The Stand.

We still have this magazine. But one of the things that the reporters in that were constantly reporting on were the denominational issues and the position shifts on abortion, on homosexuality, and also the larger worldview issues related to Orthodox Christian thinking.

And so, yeah, I mean, Don was willing to point things out and to talk about it. When he stepped into the public ministry of AFA, he stepped back from being a local pastor and took on the NFD role full-time.

And so he was no longer active in the sense of being a pastor. He was always active in his local church, in his local Methodist church. He was always active there teaching Sunday school, keeping nursery, being involved in the life of the church and having those relationships and sitting under the preaching of the Word there.

But his connection with this denomination was always something that was frustrating for him, and it was frustrating for other ministers too, who came out of that Methodist background, who constantly were being derided or dealing with the questions and assaults of others who were trying to make it seem like he was being unloving in his response or that he was being foolish in his approach and all of these different denigrating kind of descriptions that he faced.

So yeah, it wasn't always an easy time for him. I mean, he suffered a major health issue in 2009. And so I think he was maybe already retired officially within the denomination by that point. But I don't think he ever removed his name.

A number of other ministers that were connected with him and stuff did as the new global Methodist started to emerge, or even before that, really. But yeah, it wasn't an easy time for him in the.

Methodist church. I'll say that. Yeah. And as I said, there are a lot of people who would probably be shocked to know that Methodism actually has its roots in fundamentalism here in the United States.

And in spite of my differences over the doctrines of sovereign grace, although there were Calvinist Methodists like George Whitfield, they stood side by side with Reformed Christians on all the issues of biblical morality and so on.

And I mean, even Bob Jones came out of the United Methodist church, and there are other well-known staunch Bible-believing conservatives who shared that same history. So in our day and age, that is a shock to many, as well as they know about the United Methodist church is the apostasy and the.

Perversion and so on that is promoted. Yeah. Yeah. And for Don too, I mean, he was very much a coalition builder around the broader social concerns that he was seeing and trying to get Christians, regardless of theological background, to connect together and to be able to speak out on some of these issues.

So he was willing to link arms with Christians in a number of different denominational backgrounds, even Catholics, and sometimes with the Mormons would even jump in, even though there's complete differences there regarding our understanding of who the Lord Jesus is and so on.

But Don saw these as moral and ethical issues that we could recognize a common source of understanding from, even though we weren't locking arms theologically on all the points of doctrine. But one of the things that he did was there was a coalition for better television, which was one of these coalition groups that he started in the early 80s, which was trying to rally a lot of Christians around this issue and get Christians to begin to think about not just being bothered by things that they were seeing, but also to really think for yourself about the kind of media that you're consuming.

And I think that's a message that we could stand to hear some today, you know, is to take stock a little bit more of the kinds of things that we're watching and listening to, the ways that we're being discipled by the world.

And so we try and bring out aspects of that with the documentary Culture Warrior as well.

Tom Hanks. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question, as I said earlier, for my guest M .D. Perkins, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsor.

The Documentary’s Message About Worldview, Spiritual Warfare, and Media Influence

Church Unreformed is a Bible-believing, kingdom-building, devil-fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone. Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image-bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt Christ.

This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona. Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth. Puritan Reformed Church. Believe.

Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com.

Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at SecureCommGroup .com. That's SecureCommGroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church.

On Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. He sensed that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in Long Island, Queens, Brooklyn, or the Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit NHPBC .com.

That's NHPBC .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word.

And delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother Chris Arnzen in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for reformed Christian literature for decades now, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, CVBBS .com, I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best literature that the reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer, and at affordable prices.

Not only does CVBBS .com offer up to 50 off retail prices, but you'll get an added 5 off orders of $50 or more by using promo code IRON, I-R-O-N, an added 5 off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

That's CVBBS .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable. Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio. Here at Iron Sharpens Iron radio, praise God for the generous monthly financial support.

Of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America. For the perfect custom-designed engagement ring, or any one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry created exactly according to your imagination and specifications, Royal Diadem Jewelers has you covered.

No matter where you are in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step-by-step through every stage of the process, and even hold a high-tech internet virtual visit using state-of-the-art jewelry design technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs. They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you. From rough design to digital model, to photorealistic image, to wax prototype model, to the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes, making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed, and well beyond your expectations. Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today. Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife Bronnie, his business partner and manager Brian Wilson, and the entire family thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of.

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And don't forget folks, with Christmas on its way, if you have a loved one for whom you wish to purchase jewelry as a Christmas gift, please go to royaldiadem .com to make that purchase, especially if you love Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, because you'll not only be blessing your loved one with the finest in jewelry this Christmas, but you'll be blessing Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, because if when you make that purchase, you mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, we will get 100 of the profits from that sale, whether you're purchasing jewelry that they already have in stock at royaldiadem .com, or if you're having a one of a kind customized piece of jewelry created.

Either way, if you mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, we get 100 of the profits. Please go to royaldiadem .com today to at least get your ball rolling on your purchase. Even if you're not making your purchase today, please get the ball rolling on that purchase to further ensure we will get 100 of the profit from that sale, because we have no idea when royaldiadem .com is going to pull the plug on this mind-blowing offer to us.

So go to royaldiadem .com, mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We are now back with MD Perkins, who is on staff with the American Family Association. We're discussing the new documentary, Culture Warrior, Don Wildman and the Battle for Decency.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Before I go to any of our listener questions, I wanted you to basically explain what it was that Don Wildman actually was attempting to do.

Because, as you are fully aware, as you and I are here in the 21st century as conservatives, not only having conservative theology, but adhering to conservative political principles and so on, the most frequently today, as I'm sure you would agree, the people who are trying to bring censorship into the public arena and prevent people from watching, hearing, and reading what they want to, and even things being called dangerous information that should be made illegal when it comes to health and things like that, it's the leftists that are far more often trying to control what the population is consuming mentally.

And so here you have Don Wildman, for all appearance sake, and I'm sure that a lot of this has to do with a wrong impression or idea of what he was actually trying to do, it seems that you have people like Don and, of course, Jerry Falwell back then and others who were trying to basically be cosmic killjoys and take away the rights and privileges of people who were not Christian to enjoy and be educated by whatever they chose to hold onto as their favorite sources of media and information.

And so it seems that you very rarely hear, in our modern day, conservatives doing this. Many people may remember in the late 80s or the mid -80s, perhaps it was, when record labels were being compelled to have warning labels about the sexual and violent content on the lyrics.

Well, that whole movement was spearheaded by Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore. So she wasn't some right-wing ideologue doing this. But anyway, if you could explain what was Don Wildman actually trying to do and have many misunderstood what he was trying to do?

Yeah, I mean, the charge of censorship was always something that the left threw at Don almost instantly, because once you start talking about television and concerns about what kind of programming is on television, people immediately say, well, are you saying that I have no right to say this?

And one of his common responses was to say, well, I'm not saying that you don't have the right. I'm saying you should take more responsibility with the right and freedom that you have, because what you're doing is detrimental to society.

And the reality is, I mean, Don had a very much for free market approach to this. He looked at it like, well, first of all, when he's talking about network televisions, the networks were publicly owned.

So this is essentially every taxpayer in the country owned a piece of ABC, NBC, and CBS. So there was that aspect to it. So these were not necessarily really even privately owned entities, even though they were privatized to some degree and had kind of a complicated, complex leadership structure regarding all of this, but they were public airwaves.

And so there was that aspect. But there was also the fact that he said that, you know, the networks can produce the kinds of shows that they want to watch and people can watch the kinds of shows that they want to view.

And then the networks can advertise on the kinds of shows that they want to advertise on. But part of what his role was and what he was doing was to make the connection for people that if you don't like this kind of show or the kind of content appearing on something like Three's Company or Mash or some of these shows from the late seventies, early eighties, you know, that you can have your voice be heard at the advertiser level.

Because the truth of the matter was whenever he would go to the network executives or the producers to talk about it, he realized they would just lie to him, listen to if he even got a hearing, they would say, well, okay, like we hear your concern and we'll do something different.

And then nothing changed. And so he realized, well, all of these guys are mostly just driven by money anyway. So if I just skip that, I can go to the advertiser and say, well, Sears, you know, you were supporting your ad dollars are going to support Three's Company.

Like if you were to remove your support of Three's Company, then perhaps Three's Company and the producers and the network will have to kind of reckon with the idea that people don't want to see some of these sexual depictions on television.

And so it was kind of making that point of connection for people. But, you know, it wasn't advocating for laws to censor because the reality is censorship is something that the government does to people.

It's not something that the people do when they choose to not produce a certain kind of television show for whatever reason. I mean, that's not censorship. If ABC polls doesn't produce Three's Company anymore, that's not censorship.

That's their choice as an entity in the free market to choose what they want to do. And so he was never represented very fairly on this and his position was never represented. They just kept hammering the drum of censorship and that you're against free speech.

It is interesting how free speech has now become the threat to democracy and the threat to individuals to, I don't know, to thrive, I guess, somehow in society, because you hear ideas that are counter to what you believe.

Don was willing to have open conversations, but, you know, he was really trying to get Christians to pay attention to the things they watched and then to say, you know, if you don't like this, because one of the other things too, you know, is if you go into a grocery store, for example, and they have Playboy and Penthouse that they're selling on the magazine shelf, you know, and then you stop shopping there because you saw that, he would say, well, I mean, that's fine that you're not shopping there, but you haven't really made any impact because you didn't tell anybody that you're not shopping there as a result of this.

And so to be able to speak to the manager and say why you had this concern, why you no longer want to spend your money there because of this problem that you see that they're selling, then it gives them no response, no time to respond or to change, and no opportunity for your Christian witness to really shine forth.

And so it was a matter of the public Christian witness coming out. And that's where the nature of these boycotts and things happen, because when you say boycott, it gets people's attention, and it makes the company start to think about where they spend their money, and it makes people start to start to talk about the issues more than they would have if you had just kind of politely raised your concern.

Sometimes you have to step in there with a little more force to get people to actually.

Recognize the concern or the danger. That's there. Well, we have a question from Roland in Merriam, Kansas, and Roland said, correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember Don Wildman having the insight to recognize the fact that everyone on all sides of this issue had a spiritual root in what was occurring.

It was not just Christians preaching what they believed to the population with a spiritual message. The enemies of Christ were doing the same thing, and it was equally spiritual, and I believe Don even used the phrase that we were being preached.

At by the left. Is this true? Yes, that is absolutely true, and this comes out in the documentary Culture Warrior, which, by the way, if you want to watch the documentary, go to culturewarrior .movie.

It's a website, culturewarrior .movie. You can go there and watch the movie for free, and there's a little brief registration there, name, email address, but then that'll give you access to watch the movie for free.

But yeah, we talk about this in the documentary, the idea that you are being preached at, and that, you know, this goes back to the question over secular humanism, because when, so in 1981, Don debated one of these television executives, and the television executive said that you are a preacher and you have a worldview, but I'm a network executive.

I don't have a worldview, and in that, that idea was what was being presented commonly in the marketplace of ideas, and Don said, well, everyone who is in a network executive role or within the higher echelons of film and television production, they're all coming from a particular worldview mindset, and there was a study that was done by some sociologists named Lichter and Rothman, and one of the things that they brought out was that despite most of the people within the higher echelons of the media elite having a religious background, whether it or Jewish or some other, or Catholic or some other religious background, 95 of them didn't recognize any religious participation or affiliation at all, but they were producing all of the media content that was going out on television and movies and within the network television news outlets and all of these different things.