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PASTOR BRUCE BENNETT
of WORD of TRUTH CHURCH in Farmingville, NY
Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with 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 hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.
Arntzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity listening via live streaming all over the planet Earth. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this third day of August 2015 and we've got, I think, a very important topic that we're going to be addressing today and I'm very enthusiastic about it.
It's been a long-held tradition that in order to keep polite company and polite conversation you should avoid at all costs discussing religion and politics. Well I'm throwing that out the window today because we're discussing both on Iron Sharpens Iron, the church and politics and how closely can they mingle and how far should they stay apart.
And we have two guests to discuss this for the next two hours. We have, first of all, Pastor Bruce Bennett of the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, and their website is WOTChurch .com if you want to jot that down, WOTChurch .com, which stands for Word of Truth Church, and they are in Farmingville, Long Island.
Pastor Bruce was a 2002 candidate for New York State Senate for the Right to Life Party, and in 2006 and 2008 he ran for New York State Assembly under the Republican and Conservative parties, and from 2009 to the present, he has been a Suffolk County Republican committeeman.
He is also the chairman of the Long Island Family Coalition, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron, my old friend, Pastor Bruce Bennett. It's great to have you on, and Bruce Bennett was a very frequent guest and co-host on the old Iron Sharpens Iron when it was originally broadcasting out of New York, and he has been a dear friend and a very supportive friend, one of the most supportive friends and brothers in Christ in regard to my radio station and even in regard to my personal life, and has been with me through some pretty dark trials in my life, and it's always a pleasure to have fellowship with you, to hear your godly counsel, and to interview you, and also have you co-host with me on the program.
It's a joy again, Chris, to be with you. Always a blessing. And it is also my great.
Honor for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron to have in the studio with me State Representative Stephen Blum, and Stephen Blum is also going to be discussing a very important book that he has written in the second hour.
They've crossed the line, and we're going to be getting into more details about that book during the second hour when Steve and Bruce switch sides, not switch sides politically, but on the first hour, Steve will be more of a co-host interviewing Bruce along with me, and the second hour when Steve is going to be addressing, they've crossed the line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom, Pastor Bruce will then be serving as co-host and primarily interviewing Steve with me, and it, by the way, you too can feel free to jump in and answer questions as well.
You don't have to stick to any strict guideline in regard to the hat you're wearing as co-host or guest. But first of all, before we even go any further, Pastor Bruce, I want you to start off the program by telling our listeners something about your church where you pastor, Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, and also the Long Island Family Coalition that you chair.
Tell us.
Something about both of those organizations. Well, church, our church actually was planned in 2009. It was the fourth of four church plants that had been planted out of grace, now pastored by Patrick McCarty.
We have a church basically dedicated to the Reformed confessional standards that you'd find in the Westminster, the Heidelberg, the Belgic, the Synod of D 'Or, you know, but we're also unique in that we're not strict cessationists regarding the sign gifts, so we're charismatic, but if I'm pressed against the wall, I'll have to admit that we're a charismatic Calvinist church.
So in a nutshell, that's kind of where we're coming from. We have a congregation right now that's growing, and we're located, interestingly, in a place where another Reformed church is now in Medford.
We're looking forward to, with the gospel of God's grace. They also do the Loyal Family Coalition of Christian Brothers that decided back in 2006 to better educate and equip the body of Christ to impact the civil arena for the glory of God.
So we're really primarily about educating fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow evangelicals, God's view of government, and of course we start with self-government, then we look at family government, we look at church government, and then of course civil government.
Also often we run over to verse 3 that we actually talk quite a bit about as well. Government created by God, which was, you know, self-government, family government, and ecclesiastical government, and the way he chose Israel and how he chose people, if you will, in the sense of God's original intention before the fall, at least, was to just have, you know, family government and self-government.
Enlightened, you know, ecclesiastical view there. Because of sin, we have a situation where we need civil government, and we've all too often neglected it or misunderstand it. So we at LIFEIC are just there to be an assistance, a body to encourage believers, again, to better understand how God has ordained government, how it should work from a biblical point of view, and.
Then to challenge them to get involved accordingly. And Steve Bloom, tell us something about your job as the state representative of Pennsylvania, what that actually entails, because a lot of people like myself are not that politically savvy, and we don't know what all these governmental positions involve, what your responsibilities are, and so on.
So tell us something about your life as a state representative of Pennsylvania. Sure, and thank you, Chris, for having me on the.
Show. It's great to be joining you for the first time, and hopefully maybe back.
Again sometime in the future. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. In Pennsylvania,.
We do have a full-time state legislature. We have a House and a Senate. It's sort of modeled after the federal government, but we don't have actual federalism, but it's set up that way. We have an executive in the two chambers in the legislature.
In the House, we have 203 members. We are the second-largest state legislature and the most expensive state legislature in the country. Wow. So we have a lot of issues, as you can imagine, a lot of fiscal issues we face, and one of my missions has been to cut the size and scope of state government, to reduce the burden of taxes and regulation, and to ultimately, you know, fight for our constitutional freedoms.
And by doing those things, unleash the power of the free market to allow people to lift themselves out of poverty and hopefully end some of the fiscal challenges that are facing our state government. It's, for me, as a Christian in government, I developed right when I first was seriously to the point of having won the primary and about to run for the fall election, which I knew I had a decent shot of winning back in 2010, developed a personal mission statement as a Christian in government.
My personal mission statement is, Lord willing to serve in the public square as a loving witness for Jesus Christ and an effective champion for life and liberty. So that's what I'm about, why I'm doing this, and it's been, for these last four and a half years, an intriguing journey.
I was brand new to the political realm when I ran, and I have learned more in this past four and a half years than I did in four years of.
College and three years of law school. Wow. Well, I wanted to let our listeners know that you could email us questions for our guest, Pastor Bruce Bennett, to start with, and feel free to send emails for our guest Stephen Bloom during the second hour, and you can ask general questions also that they can both answer at any time, and that email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
When you email us a question, please include your first name at least, and your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you're outside of the United States. I know that we do have a lot of listeners and a growing audience globally, and it's always exciting to see different parts of the world where our listeners are listening from, and in addition to the number of states here in the United States who represent our audience.
So that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, and first of all, and by the way, I want to also add that Bruce and Stephen, if you disagree with each other, you don't have to feel timid or shy from making that known.
You could, as soon as you'd like to respond, if you hear a statement that either one of you make, if the other would like to rebut that in any way, shape, or form, I have no problem with that at all. I know that there are a lot of differences in the body of Christ in regard to the political realm.
Even in the same churches, in the same pews, you could have very opposing views in regard to politics, although as most of our listeners would know, and as you men both know, most conservative evangelicals would tend to try to vote conservatively as consistently as possible.
That doesn't always happen because of some reasons that may be due to family loyalty to the Democratic Party, or perhaps a wrong view that a compassion for the poor and underdog is rightly only deserving of a Democratic vote, and things like that.
You have all different kinds of views why people vote differently, but even in the conservative area of voting, there are differences, and we know that we have Republicans that are closer to conservative libertarians than they are Republican, and so on.
So there's all different kinds of differences, and especially when you mix in the church into the combination. And I'm going to start with you, Pastor Bruce. How do you respond to the commonly held view that is not foreign to people with our theological views?
You and I are both very conservative Calvinists, Reformed Christians, if you will, and amongst our camp, you do have people who think that although an individual citizen and an individual Christian is free to be actively and aggressively and openly involved in politics, and can even run for office, and perhaps even if they have those gifts should run for office, but you have the view that the church should not be involved politically as an institution, because that is not one of the primary things that the church is supposed to be involved in.
In fact, they would say that the church should not be involved in that as a body at all, as a gathered body, and as a corporate entity.
And how do you respond to that? Well, I would, what government is, look at it from God's perspective. That government is, and again, in a foreign world, this type of scenario is, you're going to have it, you're going to have chaos, you're going to have all kinds of injustices, institutions whereby people are controlled as to, again, their liberty interests being present.
For example, if you hurt me, without most, in fact, to all that, and that would be too much of a church influence. But the church should be the guardian of the values that a society wants to maintain, to hold it together.
We have a common set of values that hold our country together, and those are ultimately derived from a particular philosophical worldview system. So either it's going to be a secular view, an Eastern view, or a Western view, meaning Western religion, Eastern religion, or secular.
So either we're going to, you know, have a atheistic type country, which is what America has largely become at this point, in terms of civil governance, or we're going to have an Eastern, you know, Hindu, Buddhistic type country, where we're going to have laws emanating from those worldviews, or we're going to have what we used to have up until the 1960s, a country that's ethics were derived from biblical concepts and ideas, whether people believe in the Bible or not on an individual basis is irrelevant, but the church always challenged the civil arena to say that, no, we need leaders who are going to uphold those biblical standards, whether we actually believe or not on an individual basis is irrelevant.
You need to hold our nation together as shared godly values. Any other value that's going to be embraced will ultimately be destructive for the nation, and that's why I'm glad you're doing this program, because as we lurch more and more towards secularism, the church retreats from engaging in the civil arena, we can see that America is closer and closer to some real big problems.
Hey, Bruce, can I ask you a question that kind of ties into what you just talked about? You know, looking at government itself as the means for sort of holding society together through laws and enforcement of laws, we can see how inept the government ultimately is at that role.
You know, we are not able as a government to protect everyone from the consequences of sin. What do you say, how would you define the balance between the church's role in advocating for good government and having a role in helping the country to govern itself versus bringing the message of Christ to people in a way that helps them through God's power to live a more orderly and sin-limited life through the conviction of the sense that they understand what's right and what's wrong and they have those values?
I know a lot of our founders talked about our Constitution being wholly inadequate to the governance of a non-religious people.
That's a great question, and I think we have to be careful that we don't think the church should be being discipled to values and take what they're false witness.
Amen, amen.
...typical values, ultimately, right? And we should then, in our own personal discipleship within the four walls of our church, chapel to go out and make a difference in the body politic, in the actual town wall, in the actual county legislature and state legislature and the Capitol down in Washington, D .C.
So, I don't think there's any distinction. I think it's one and the same. If we're doing our job as a church and discipling our folks, and as Jesus said, teaching them all that I've commanded them to obey, and he's referring to the moral law of the Old Testament, which is much of it repeated in the New or expanded upon, actually, leading to a higher level of accountability, we need to, I don't think, make a distinction there.
Just keep your discipleship going, and it should ultimately affect the civil arena around you.
Now, one of the difficulties that obviously arises is that the difference between a church functioning as a body to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, to educate and disciple people in the ways of God from the scriptures, to help to mend wounded souls, to take care of the needy within the outreach of the church, either through the needy within the body or the needy in the area that the church is, or even through missionary works and so on.
You're not going to have a lot of different gospels in a church, if at least a church that is biblically faithful and conservative, that believes in the inerrancy of scripture and so on. You're not going to have a wide variance of doctrine, although you may have some degrees of differences that are permissible, because we are human, we are not infallible, and we don't have a perfect understanding of God's Word.
There will be some flexibility in most churches that are not behaving like cults, but there isn't going to be an extremely wide spectrum of beliefs held where you do, in the political realm, you do have differences of opinion.
How can the church stand for a specific view on certain things like immigration, certain things that involved government outreach to the poor, and how the welfare system works and even how large the government should be.
As I mentioned earlier, you have the libertarians, some of whom are just as conservative and are also Christian, many of them, on moral and social issues. Now, I'm not talking about, obviously, there are also atheists and liberals who are libertarian, but I'm talking about those that we would call brothers in Christ who are libertarian, who believe in a very small government, and you have the republicans who very often believe in a much larger government.
Some of them you can't even distinguish between the Democratic Party's view of the size of government and so on. How can a church be monolithic and unified on things like that?
...guide us as law on the bench, some type of appellate court on a state level, or from a legislature, or with one wave via pen stroke on a piece of paper, allows now the transgender population who feel that, you know, they feel like they're a girl, and they feel like they're a boy, to actually use the girl's bathroom, and vice versa.
And this didn't get much fanfare because it was done through the back door, through administrative action, but it has the effect of law. So we have to use the biblical guidelines that we have in Scripture.
For example, if a man doesn't work, he shall not eat, right from 2 Thessalonians. So what do we do with that? Well, if we have a welfare program, we have to, you know, incorporate that into the welfare program.
Like you said, illegal immigration. Well, first of all, we have to, you met multiple references, be merciful and adopt your values. So we have a, we should allow them in, but not allow them to come. You will see that actually there is a biblical answer at the end of that question.
And Steve, since you are a part of the program, if you could respond to that same question. I don't know if you differ at all from Bruce, but in regard to the church as an institution and its involvement in politics, as opposed to individual members of a church being involved.
Well, certainly individual members of the church do need to take an active role in the political process, at the very least by voting. And we've seen in the last couple of presidential cycles, a huge number of evangelical Christians who simply didn't go to the polls.
And that's why we have the president we have right now. And it's very frustrating because, you know, I don't know, I can understand, you know, there are some, there are some strains of Christianity around here in Pennsylvania.
We have a lot of the Anabaptist tradition, the Amish and the Mennonite, and some of them take a view that they are to live apart from the world, not within the world. And so they, they don't vote, but most mainstream Christian churches aren't teaching people not to go vote, but yet so many evangelicals aren't voting, and we're paying a terrible price for it.
We're seeing people suffering because of the poor, destructive policies of those that are allowed to get into office when the church doesn't vote. On an institutional basis, I think the church has an obligation to speak truth to society.
We have in Pennsylvania, it sounds very similar to what Pastor Bruce has, we have a Pennsylvania Family Institute that is comprised of individuals of numerous different faiths and church backgrounds that work together to advance good, solid, family, positive Judeo-Christian policy as part of a political agenda.
And that's certainly important for churches to be involved in organizations like that, and to speak truth from the pulpits in churches by all means. I mean, we are not banned from speaking about politics.
I think some, and we'll maybe get into some of that in the second hour, but I think a lot of our clergy today have sort of been intimidated to the point where they think that they're not even allowed to speak of things political within the church.
But that is not the case legally or morally. The church does need to speak out. We are an example of how misunderstood we often are as conservatives and as Christians. Christ made caring for the poor a core mission of who we are as Christians.
It's critical that we care for the poor. And many conservatives like myself, the reason I'm involved in politics is to care for the poor. I just don't happen to believe that a policy of a vast welfare state that empowers them to be stuck in poverty or entraps them in poverty is the way to do that.
I want to give them opportunities to escape poverty and to have, as Pastor Bruce talked about, some basic scriptural principles that allow for people to work, to earn things. That's the way God planned it.
And that helps people to benefit, not only by having the things they need to care for themselves and their family, but to have the joy and the satisfaction of being involved in creating something of value.
So as Christians, we're so often misunderstood because we don't take on the political issues. And sometimes the leadership in the church doesn't dare to speak of these things, but it's important that we do.
We're going to go to our first station break right now. And if you do have a question for our guest, Bruce Bennett, and of course, you could email questions for my co-host, Steve Bloom as well. And Steve will be primarily the guest for the following hour.
But the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please remember to include your first name, at least, and your city and state of residence and your country of residence.
If outside the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Bruce Bennett and Steve Bloom on the church and politics.
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And if you've just tuned us in, we are talking about the church and politics today because it's an issue that obviously divides Christians, even who are sitting in the same pew of the same congregation.
This is a very multifaceted topic that we will probably never have agreement on until we are in glory. And when we're there, it's not going to matter. But if you do have a question for our guest, Pastor Bruce Bennett, you can email us at ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.
ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. He's our guest right now. State Representative Steve Blum is my co-host right now. And he will be the primary guest in the second hour to talk about his book, They've Crossed the Line.
And once again, please give us your first name and city and state of residence and country of residence if outside the U .S. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. One of the things that can be dangerous, I believe, well, it's even more that I believe this, it's just true.
If a church is publicly as an entity going gung-ho to rally support behind a candidate and they are very public as an institution or as an organization supporting a specific candidate whose policies they agree with the majority in that particular congregation, the danger of this person being revealed in some scandalous way, either because of their personal life or just being a charlatan, is very real.
I mean, we see this happen all the time. And when the church is supposed to be known for proclaiming the undiluted truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the doctrines that are found in the inerrant word of God, to have such a collapse of integrity happen with a church after they have supported a particular candidate, I think could be, the damage could be immeasurable.
If you could respond to that.
Well, I think using the grid, the correct view on politics should be, you know, as far as being out in the media about Planned Parenthood and its role, right now is an opportunity for pastors, and what can you do to further that to your elected representatives, funding from at large and also seeing that abortion eventually, so again, if you do it the right way, Chris, there really shouldn't be a problem with that scenario that you described.
And before I go to a listener question, do you have anything to follow up with that?
Sure. Pastor Bruce, I was wondering for you, you did mention that you ran for the General Assembly in the state of New York on a couple of occasions, I guess three times, and as a pastor, what kind of reaction did that provoke from the folks that you were shepherding?
And also curious about the reaction you might have gotten from fellow clergy to you stepping out of the traditional clergyman role and actually going out there and enlisting yourself as a candidate.
Excellent question.
Yeah, well, I was going to say, actually, it was pretty positive support from other ministers, mobilized, said, hey, wow, there's a pastor running, let's get on board, and you know, they helped me with my campaign.
Sure. How about from people outside the church? Did anyone seem to hold it against you that.
You were a pastor?
Not at all, not at all. Of course, my liberal opponent really took advantage of it and said, oh, come on, this guy's an evangelical pastor, you can't elect him, you know, trying to make me out to be some right-wing, you know, people that just listen to me debate him on the local TV station or interviews with media.
All right, we got an audience question here from Todd in Cumberland County. In light of recent friends in government to force people and organizations to submit their beliefs to the will of popular culture, i .e., supporting homosexual marriage, what can churches and individual Christians do to protect themselves from legal punishments while staying true to their own faith and practice?
That's a very good question. Bruce?
Okay, I'm not sure what context, specifically, that's per se. If it's homosexual, now a federal law, unfortunately, as per, you know, ISIS common law precedent, the Supreme Court should never have been given the Marbury decision in 1803, but unfortunately, let's just look at the homosexual marriage in government as per law.
Now, if they couldn't do it, I'd have to just resign my position. Now, I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but I'm by vocation. I'm actually a high school teacher as well. I teach history law in government just outside of New York City.
And let's say, for example, a student comes into my classroom and she says, you know, hey, Mr. Bennett, my mother, you know, Joni, is coming in tonight for a conference. I said, wait a minute, I just talked to your mother yesterday, Mary.
She's my other mother. No, you only have one mother. I'm not going to, you know, if it means my job, it means my job. So we may have to, you know, on an individual basis, take the persecution, take the, you know, firing or discipline we get, or we may have to resign if we can't stay in that position.
But as far as churches, thankfully, at this point, that Supreme Court case, the Obergefell case, does put a firewall around churches in the sense that those who have religious objections, but that wouldn't pertain to any type of governmental agency, per se.
So that's the conundrum.
Yeah, I want to ask Steve Bloom the same question, since he is a licensed attorney. Like, for instance, is there anything that compels legally a church to in any way look favorably upon or be accommodating to, is a better way of putting it, be accommodating to two individuals of the same gender to seek marriage?
The churches do have to be careful in that, as Pastor Bruce said, there's a clear carve-out still for any church, preventing a church from being forced to perform, for example, a homosexual marriage if that church's doctrine doesn't support that idea.
But we need to be real careful with some of the ancillary functions of the church. Let's say you have a social hall that you rent out on a regular basis to various different groups who may have a wedding reception there.
And they're not necessarily even getting married in the church, but they've been able to rent out that facility on a regular basis. If you don't create clear and objective standards to indicate that only those functions that are in line with the doctrine of your church can be permitted there, you might find yourself in an unexpected difficult dilemma, legal dilemma, of perhaps saying, no, we're not going to host or allow this facility to be rented to this particular, whatever that occasion is that you're not comfortable with.
But if you don't have a clear policy in writing, you might end up at the wrong end of a lawsuit on that. And the other thing is, and we'll talk about this again, too, in the next hour, don't be shy as a church to seek out legal advice.
Across the country, we have the ACLJ, we have Alliance Defense, we have in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Family Council has a Liberty Law Institute. We have pro bono attorneys literally on standby to help Christian organizations make sure that they can protect themselves from improper application of the law, from being forced to do things that would violate their constitutional rights to religious liberty.
So don't be shy about utilizing these resources. There are well-trained attorneys, very experienced in these kinds of cases that are awaiting to take on the forces that are trying to sometimes force churches to do things that violate the very doctrines that they teach.
So if you have a list of requirements established for your church's fellowship hall or what have you, that will protect you when you make decisions to refuse?
As long as it's in line with your doctrine, your sincerely held beliefs. You can't make up false beliefs that don't have anything to do with your church. But you've got to express your standards, your values as a church in your policies for facilities use to make sure that you're not going to get unexpectedly stuck in that kind of a dilemma.
And of course, a church typically wouldn't be prohibiting other people or groups to use their facilities if they didn't have a church-related reason or doctrinal-related reason. I mean, you could even legally restrict the use of your buildings on your property just for your members, couldn't you?
Sure, absolutely. And you can do that, but you've got to make sure that's your policy. The problem is the trap comes in if you are opening your doors to all different groups and then this one particular group comes along and you say, no, not you.
They may have a standing for a lawsuit at that point.
Pastor Bruce, going back to the question of whether a pastor is a legitimate candidate for a political office, you said you were an associate pastor when you did run for political office in the past, but how do you respond to, I know a very well-known Christian who would agree with us theologically on most things.
I'm not going to state his name merely because he's not here to more accurately express himself, so I don't want to speak for him, but he would say, for instance, that a pastor shouldn't even be involved in pro-life marches and picketing Planned Parenthood and all those types of public things in the political arena, but having said that, a pastor should boldly and vociferously and loudly denounce abortion as a crime against humanity, as infanticide and so on, and that there is a difference between his function as a minister of the gospel in a church and a political activist, the feeling being that he is diluting his office by being involved in political activity, especially if he's running for an office, which would rob him of time to appropriately care for the sheep in the flock, if you could respond to that.
Well, again, you shouldn't be taking time away from your flock, but I know there should be time in your schedule unless you actually go out and do what John the Baptist did. Politics represents, where does the word politics come from?
And the word polis means congregate would be necessary to precede that, because, again, God ordained government in four spheres, self-government, family government, church government, and then civil government in that order of importance.
So if my church duties are consuming more of my schedule, and I don't have time for my civil duties, to that extent, at least I have time, as Stephen mentioned before, to vote. Yeah, I may not be able to go out there and speak up, but if I do have the time, and the Lord's leading me, I definitely should take advantage of it and speak up, like the people I just mentioned, and not allow this false distinction to be erected, bifurcating the civil arena as some type of villainic place.
It only becomes dark, demonic, and villainous when Christians withdraw from it.
Exactly, exactly. And so you would be basically saying that a pastor's role in politics depends really on his schedule. He may have too many congregants that he's responsible over to even venture out in any other activity other than those that he is responsible for in his home and his church.
I'm assuming that's what you're saying.
Individual life you have to take care of. I have to sleep, I have to eat, I have to maintain hygiene, I have to work to provide for myself, and then my family comes next. My wife, my kids, their needs are being met.
So if my needs are being met, my family's needs are being met, okay, or my church's needs are being met. And whatever church ministry I have, whether I'm a pastor, I'm an evangelist, I'm a deacon, elder, I'm a congregant in charge of making sure the bathrooms are clean or whatever, I've got to make sure in that order those things are being taken care of.
Then my next responsibility, as God ordained it, is to impact the civil arena. And we don't live in an empire, which the New Testament has written, and that's why you don't see a lot written about this, okay, where the people couldn't impact the government.
They had to simply say, yes, yes, yes, or else they were going to, you know, be killed or sanctioned somehow. But here we are the government. We the people. We were designed by a Christian ethos, by a Christian vision of having the Christian moral system, the Judeo-Christian ethic hold us together as a nation, and it's we the people who are the civil government.
Franklin was asked after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, what did you guys create in there by a woman out there in Philadelphia? And Franklin responded to the woman and said, ma 'am, we've created a republic if you can keep it.
So we all have a responsibility, especially as Christians, because I'm supposed to love God and love my neighbors and love myself. I can't love my neighbors and love myself if I'm not speaking up for righteousness in the public square.
One of the things that concerns me and it concerns folks that I know and respect and who I share much in common theologically, one of the things that concerns us greatly is the rampant ecumenical movement in the United States.
And I'm not talking about the ecumenical movement that was championed beginning in the mid part, perhaps even earlier part of the 20th century that was championed by the liberals. I'm talking about the ecumenical movement in the conservative churches where it seems that political activism and social policy in regard to things that affect morals and so on, that these things are so primary above the gospel that there is a ecumenism between Christian churches and even non-Christian churches, organizations that we would deem as cults like the Mormon Church and all kinds of involvement in between different religious systems to support publicly together political candidates.
And very often it seems as if the way people vote becomes more important than what they believe as Christians. And if you could just comment on that and perhaps even Steve Blum, my co-host here, could comment on his own, give his own opinions.
But Bruce, if you could start.
You know, voting for the right people and advocating for the right policies, you fail a test in your church because, let's say, the thing is that ultimately the churches should present and allow the members to be challenged by a biblical worldview, knowing that a biblical worldview, I have a debt to my neighbor to love him, to see justice advocated, what does Micah say?
To love justice, to advocate for justice. And if I don't speak up for righteousness, if I don't get people's opinions swayed toward the more righteous civil arena, then I'm going to allow injustice to prevail.
And if I allow injustice to prevail, then there's going to be a misdistribution of power, responsibility. Out of people's responsibility is supposed to come their identities, and out of their identities comes their purpose in life, and out of their purpose in life comes their mission.
If I allow any of that flow of change, that flow of thought I just presented, to be broken, and if too much power could be given to certain people in government, for example, then you have a problem. If there's too little power being invested into individuals where their identity, instead of being a farmer or a baker or a lawyer or a doctor or whatever, now they're just a welfare recipient, now I've stripped away their identity.
And so we have some big problems with justice issues here, and we end up with people with no purpose in life, and a failed mission in life. So even on economic issues, if we're not careful in how we pick right policy and through the right candidate, we can end up really messing up our society.
So this is a real big challenge for the Church to think holistically, biblically, and I think from that point of view, it's not that it's an individual task, but to present this in the context of Christian discipleship, the Gospel is not just John 3, 16, but it's making disciples, making learners, teaching them all of what God wants us to know, because life is not just getting saved and that's it.
We're also living here on earth, and we have to accomplish the mission we were put here on earth to do.
And Steve Bloom, you are a Christian, and your function as a state representative means that you're an official though, whose constituents are not only just Christians, so things are more delicate for you involving this kind of a question, if you could just speak freely.
Right, and when I look back on my life so far, I think that, and this is in no means intended to diminish the importance of my role as a state representative, but if I look on the eternal view of what are the most important things I've done in life, well I think raising my kids, who are now three kids grown, who are all believers, teaching Sunday school for many years, being a youth leader for many years, having the occasional opportunity to actually lead someone to faith in Christ, those accomplishments far exceed anything I can accomplish in the political arena.
But at the same time, the political arena is a mission field, and as I talked about my personal mission statement, the first part of it, Lord willing, to be a loving witness for Jesus Christ in the public square, it may be that the greatest work I can ever do as a state representative isn't enacting a bill or debating some great issue of the day, it may be the opportunity I have to share Christ with a colleague, maybe a colleague who's hurting, and as both of you mentioned, there are many individuals who I deal with on a daily basis who are completely outside of the realm of the Christian church as we know it.
They may be unbelievers, they may be members of other faith communities, and here I have an opportunity to interact with them regularly and have a relationship with them, and hopefully, hopefully through that to reflect Christ and through my actions and my words to draw them to Christ.
So it's a constant, there are multiple aspects of this. There's the flat-out politics, and I love policy and I care deeply about policy, but above that is still my role as a Christian witness.
Amen. That's good to hear that, and I'm very also delighted that you do not hide your Christianity and put your political hat as your most prominent feature, and also that you don't invent your Christianity like many politicians do.
I'm going to, before we go to our second hour, I want to ask you both, isn't there a danger that when we stress the churches involved in the political arena, that we are putting our trust in elected officials rather than a sovereign God, and that we very often, even if unconsciously, look to elected officials as little messiahs to solve the problems of the world, and even the government in general as a messiah to rescue us from our peril?
And if you could both comment on that before we go to our second hour where we're discussing primarily Steve Bloom's book, They've Crossed the Line. If you could first, Pastor Bruce Bennett, comment on that.
Yeah, I think if we're electing the right people, it's how they designed their government. Now, they actually came out with a, what they did do is they made sure for some type of welfare that they met qualifications.
The public purse will feed just about anybody, regardless of, if our government's properly limited, which according to biblical, not like the government we have today, which is virtually unlimited, and completely out of control with its spending, et cetera, encroaching on, that's the issue if we're electing the right people.
And Steve Bloom, your comments?
I think one thing that didn't come up this hour was the discussion of the importance of prayer. We as elected officials, and I've, again, having now been in this for four and a half years, I've come to see it firsthand, we are, this has made me deeply aware of how powerless we are, and how at the mercy of God's power we are.
And even as I've gotten to see the most powerful individuals in my state, in Pennsylvania, up close and personal, when I've seen governors attempting to do their work, when I've seen the Speaker of the House of Pennsylvania, or the Senate President Pro Tem, attempting to do his job, I can see that nobody has that much aggregated power within themselves.
It's always a group endeavor, and it's always bigger than any one individual, and I can literally almost feel God's sovereignty over these decisions and these actions, when I can't, I am powerless as an individual Christian, even as a state representative, to really accomplish anything without God's hand being on me, and God's sovereign purpose being somehow fulfilled in what I'm doing.
So, praying, and that's something I do all the time, I pray literally for the Capitol, I pray, I look at the Capitol building on my drive in, and I pray that God would break the strongholds of evil that are within that building.
And those are the kind of things that I think are more powerful, and sometimes more effective, than anything we can do as individuals.
Well, we are going to go to our next break, and we are going to begin our second hour of this two-hour broadcast to focus primarily on Steve Blum's book, They've Crossed the Line, and we hope to hear from more of you with your questions for Steve Blum on the issues at hand, the church and politics, how much can they intermingle, how far should they stay apart from one another.
If you have a question, the email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country if outside the USA. We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Orrins, and if you've just tuned us in, for the last hour we have been discussing the church and politics, and that divisive issue of how closely they can mingle together and how far they should stand apart and remain separate from one another.
And we had as our guest the last hour Pastor Bruce Bennett of Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island. And he was also a candidate for New York State Senate for the Right to Life Party in 2002.
And also a candidate for New York State Assembly for the Republican and Conservative parties in 2006 and 2008. Since 2009 through the present, he has been the Suffolk County Republican Committeeman. And he is the chairman of the Long Island Family Coalition, and as I said earlier, pastor of Word of Truth Church, which is, the website is WOTChurch .com.
Well, he is going to now function as a co-host as we interview together my guest, our guest, Steve Bloom, who is a Pennsylvania State Representative, and he is the author of They've Crossed the Line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom.
And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron as my guest for the next hour, Steve Bloom.
Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.
And why don't you let our listeners know something about your Christian experience. Were you raised in a Christian home? Did you come to faith later in life? How did this all take place?
Well, we only have an hour.
As much as you could describe in a….
Let me just say this, and it's funny because I'm listening to you guys and I'm hearing these New York kind of accents. And just so I have some credibility with you and with Pastor Bruce, I was actually born in Manhasset on Long Island and lived for my first few years in Far Rockaway.
So I have some New York roots and lost that accent if I ever had it. I don't know if I had it as a little toddler, but it's great hearing you guys. But I was raised in a family that was actually very far from the church.
And I, long story short, I didn't come to faith until basically toward the very end of my law school experience. So in my early 20s, as I was finishing law school, I finally came to that point where I understood what it meant that Christ had gone to the cross for me for my sins and that I was a sinner and that I needed forgiveness and the redemption that Christ could offer.
So I came to faith very late in life as a 20-some year old and been on an incredible journey since becoming a born-again believer. Just God has blessed me in so many ways, professionally with my family, with opportunities to serve in different ministries and with the relationships He's allowed me to build with folks as a Christian.
And so I'm acutely aware, having come from a background, being far away from the church, I'm just acutely aware of the power of God's grace.
Amen. And tell us something about your life in the political arena. When did this interest in politics start and how long have you actually been actively involved in politics?
I always cared deeply about politics, even growing up. My parents were active in politics, although they were on the other side of the fence. They were Democrats and actually they're both still Democrats.
But as I came to faith and as I got out in the workplace as an observant person, I began to realize how destructive so many of these liberal policies were toward our society and toward the people's opportunity to bring themselves up out of poverty.
So I became very conservative in my values, both socially and fiscally. And I cared deeply about politics, but I felt like the biggest impact I could make was raising my kids, being a good dad, being a good husband and serving my church.
In 2009, the state representative who was currently in office decided he was not going to run for re-election. And right about that time, my youngest daughter was toward the end of her high school career.
And I suddenly realized that, wait, my mission is going to be different in life now. And when a couple of folks suggested to me how to consider running for office, I prayed about it. I talked to my pastor about it.
I talked to the men in my accountability group about it and my wife, of course, about it. And everyone was saying, yes, you should. And I was getting a clear green light from God and the people I trusted.
So I jumped into a seven-way primary, ended up winning that on the Republican side, faced off against a Democrat in the fall and won that fall as well. So I've been in for four and a half years now, won two subsequent elections.
And we run every two years in Pennsylvania for the seat, for the House of Representatives seat. So it's a very frequent cycle. You're always constantly thinking ahead. Every even year is going to be a campaign year for as long as the people want to have me in this office and as long as I feel that God is calling me to serve in this way.
So it's been a fascinating journey, very new to me. I was practicing law and doing some part-time teaching at Messiah College and doing some writing prior to running for office. But this is a very much full-time job in Pennsylvania.
And I have very little time now to do much of anything else, although obviously there's still some things that I can do. And I still maintain my law license and do a little bit of law practice and obviously still care about my family and my church and those kind of things.
And Pastor Bruce Bennett, you are now functioning with the co-host hat. I want you to keep in mind that you can speak freely. And since I cannot see you, as long as you're not interrupting Steve Bloom, just chime in whenever you feel the need or desire to.
You can interrupt me at any time. Just don't interrupt my guest, Steve Bloom. And I hope that you're an active participant with asking questions and so on. Just quickly let our listeners know something again, for those of our listeners who just tuned in, something about the Word of Truth Church and something about the Long Island Family Coalition.
And our email address for anybody desiring to join the conversation with a question of your own is chrisarnson at gmail .com. We do have a couple of listener questions waiting that I will try to get to as soon as possible.
But Steve Bloom, before we actually go into the details of your book, it has been said that it is nearly impossible to find a truly Christian attorney, and you're both an attorney and a politician, which seems even more incredible to many.
The question that many people have, especially when you're outside of local level and state level politics, do you think that an unabashed, completely, thoroughly, consistent, and completely honest Christian who is truly dedicated to his Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ and to the inerrant scriptures, do you think a political candidate for the office of president is possible for a political candidate with that background to actually win since the constituents he has to appease in order to be elected come from extremely wide, diverse backgrounds?
Boy, that's a tough question. I don't know if there is such a person even on the face of the earth. We are all sinners, and we've all got that burden to overcome. But you look back on the history of our country, we did have individuals who boldly and clearly espoused a thoroughly Christian worldview, and they weren't ashamed of it, and they were elected to the highest offices in the land.
So I don't think it's impossible. Like anything, I think it would take providence. It would be God's desire to see that person become the president, but I don't think it can't happen.
Obviously, with a sovereign God, anything can happen. Well, let's get right to the book. They've crossed the line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom. I think we should establish, first of all, who are they who have crossed the line, and what line have they crossed?
Interesting question. I mean, the idea with the title is we have constitutional liberties in this country, and in particular in this book, I'm talking about the First Amendment. And I'd like to just read that just to refresh listeners to what does the First Amendment to the United States Constitution say?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.
And the line they have crossed is really, whether you call it secular society, government, the powers that contend against Christ and his church, they've really tried to shut down our ability to freely exercise our religion.
And they've crossed the line by impinging on the constitutional liberties that were granted, really not so much by the Constitution, but ultimately by God, if you go back to the Declaration of Independence, and understand where these rights that we have came from.
They were endowed by our Creator with these rights. Interestingly, I have a forward in the book written by Senator Rick Santorum, who folks know is actually out on the campaign trail this cycle, again running for president.
Came in second to Mitt Romney in the last cycle four years ago, and he is a gentleman I've had the privilege to meet on several occasions. I heard him speaking a couple of months ago in Pennsylvania, and he was talking about going down to Washington, D .C., and talking with a group of prime high school students from around the country.
They'd been assembled for some sort of a conference, and he was one of the speakers. And he asked those students about our rights as Americans, and those rights enumerated in the Constitution and the Declaration.
And he asked first the kids, you know, how many of you think these rights come from the government? And some hands around the room went up, and then he asked these students, who again, cream of the crop high school students from around the country, how many of you think these rights came from God?
And he got laughter. And I want to ask Bruce about this. I know this is backwards because he's supposed to be interviewing me.
You can feel free to change hats any time you want.
But Rick Santorum talked about how he was shocked. These students not only didn't understand that God had a role in creating these liberties, but they laughed at the concept. They had no idea. And I wonder, Bruce, if you're seeing that in the high school where you teach, if the kids, when you start to tell them about the source of our rights, do they get the idea?
Is this the first time when you tell them that they've ever heard of that God, our Creator, endowed us with these rights?
Unfortunately, that is what I experience, yes, right now.
And again, I was blessed to have Rick Santorum write the foreword for the book. And the book is really just to encourage Christian believers not to get taken in by the secular myths. I've identified really seven common secular myths that relate to our religious liberties that, unfortunately, many Christians believe.
The people sitting next to us in the pew in church, our pastors even sometimes, believe these things. They believe that we can't pray in school, that we can't talk about God at work, that there's some right out there not to be offended by others, that God is banned from our government functions and our activities, that the First Amendment is about freedom of worship.
You've got to be careful with that because freedom of worship is a much smaller thing than the free exercise of our religion. Worship is what you do, typically, within the walls of your church on a Sunday morning.
Exercising your religion is 24 -7. And there's a lot of secularists who have tried to narrow our freedom down to worship rather than exercise of religion. Another myth that America is a secular state never was that way, never was set up that way.
We're not France or Soviet Union or some country that was set up with a constitution that said we must be secular. Christian thinking, the Christian religion, the Judeo-Christian heritage has always been a part of who we are as a government.
And then a myth that religious liberty is just kind of naturally eroding from the scene. It's just disappearing because of some inevitable evolution taking place in our country. And I wanted to help folks understand that those are myths, that we, in fact, still do have these religious liberties at school, in the workplace, in the public arena, in government, that we are still free to be Christians, but so many times Christians have been intimidated into silence, that we've been browbeaten into sitting down and shutting up when we should be standing up and expressing ourselves, living out our faith.
And this book is simply written in plain language to help folks understand their legal rights to do that, to live out their faith in our country the way that our founders intended it to be and the way our courts, on the whole, still recognize.
We haven't lost these rights, but we'll lose them if we don't start to exercise them more vigorously.
Were you saying something, Bruce?
Yeah, yeah. I was wondering, do you agree that the state...
Yes. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the whole scenario that gave rise to the idea of a wall of separation between church and state, it wasn't to keep religion out of the government. It was in a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Church, assuring that church that the government wasn't going to interfere with them.
Right, exactly.
And that's where it came from, and yet it got twisted around, and people now use it as a tool to pound us into submission and say, well, you can't even bring up God or religion because of the separation of church and state.
It doesn't exist in the Constitution, and it was never, ever intended to protect the government from religion. It was to protect religion from the government.
And it's, in fact, being used in 180 degrees different fashion than it was intended. Yeah. There was a promise to the Baptists by Jefferson, don't worry. It's not going to be like Puritan Massachusetts, where you're being persecuted and so on, or like England, where the Church of England was persecuting people because of their differences of religion.
And, in fact, liberalism, one of the reasons that, in my view, and you can respond to this, one of the reasons why liberals seem to make such advances in accomplishing their agenda through getting laws enacted that give them legal freedoms to commit all kinds of atrocities and wind up also restricting our freedoms as Christians is that they believe that their views, their ideology, and their behavior are non-religious.
But that's not even really true, is it? Isn't liberalism a religion, even if it's never called that?
These people have a value system that is akin to a religion, even if you wouldn't strictly define it as a religion. And there are certain sacred truths that they worship, or at least act as if they worship and act upon.
And mankind is created by God to be a religious people. We probably can't help it. The Scripture talks about God even being evident in creation. And so for those who try to deny the idea that there's any religion, that's almost an impossible task because it's real.
God is real.
Yeah, and you'll very often hear the liberal or leftist drumbeat. I actually prefer to use the term leftist because true liberals believed that conservative and liberal views should have an equal part in the public arena of discussion and so on.
But a leftist wants to silence….
They want to squelch. They want to erase us. I mean, we see it right now in some of the cases we talked about, where there are organizations that are dedicated to removing all traces of Christianity from our public institutions.
Right now, there are organizations at work today attempting to cleanse all Christian concepts, thoughts, discussions from our military, for example. And ironically, they call themselves a group called….
I think it's called the Coalition for Military Religious Freedom or some name. It's a Newspeak name. It's the exact opposite of what it means. But there's a guy, Mikey Weinstein, who is out there trying to, through the force of law, intimidating Christian chaplains, any serviceman or woman who dares to express their faith in any public way in the military.
They're trying to intentionally drive Christianity out of that. And that's happened in all the different spheres, in public schools, in our institutions of higher learning, government organizations, the military.
It's just happening across the board. It's not by accident. There are people dedicated to purging us of our religious heritage.
And what I was going to say earlier is that the drumbeat that we hear from the left is that the conservative right wants to impose our morality on the citizens of this country. And yet, every progress, every inch of progress that liberals have made has been done in their concept, in the name of their concept, morality.
For instance, even the civil rights movement, where both of us, both liberal and conservative, would view as a very important accomplishment for the rights of minorities. People of different races and ethnicities being given the freedoms that every single citizen of this country is entitled to.
But that was done on the basis of morality, wasn't it?
Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the whole abolition movement, it was a Christian-driven movement. And that's been our heritage, the whole movement to protect children from being forced to go to work at a young age in dangerous conditions.
A Christian-driven movement. Time after time, it was the Christians. I mean, it was Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian pastor, who led that civil rights movement because of his faith. And yet, we are somehow being accused of being a destructive force that has to be cleansed from society so that people's rights can be protected.
It's an upside-down, backwards world.
And let's go to the book that you've written. They've crossed the line, A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom. We've already defined what you meant by the title. Let's get into the subtitle. How is this a guide to religious freedom?
What specific ways are you guiding people? And I know that you have at least three main subcategories of this school, work, and everywhere else.
Right.
Which each would involve probably an entire show at least.
Exactly.
And the idea was I wanted to first of all write a book that was easy to use, that wasn't full of legal jargon. And so it's in simple English. I use little vignettes at the beginning of each chapter to open up and sort of put the situation in context.
A student who shows up at school with a T-shirt that has a Bible verse on the back. Things that have happened in real life. And then provide a very brief legal summary. And then in very plain language, bullet points.
So that a parent or a grandparent or a teacher would understand what are the rights of my child in school. Can my child pray in school? Can my child bring a Bible to school? Can she wear a T-shirt with a biblical verse on it?
Can there be an after-school Bible study at my school? Can students get together and pray? Just answering the simple everyday questions that come up in real people's real lives. In a clear, concise, simple way.
It's a short book. It's not a big fat legal treatise. It's a short, simple book written for lay people who don't have legal training. To be able to understand their rights and exercise those rights. Or help their family members exercise those rights.
And we have similar sections laid out with respect to faith in the workplace. And then faith in the public arena. In government and in the different public settings we deal with.
Well, one of the most controversial issues in regard to school. You will hear very often conservative political candidates. Especially if they are from a Christian background. But not exclusively. That the collapse of American culture began when they removed prayer from public schools.
But you will also hear from a less heard group of conservatives. That since we are now in a pluralistic society. Unlike, not near to the degree, the small degree. That it was pluralistic when the nation was founded.
Or even going through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. That why on earth would a Christian want his child to be under the tutelage of a teacher. Who is going to say anything of religious significance.
Including a prayer in the public setting of a classroom. When that teacher could totally reject the maintenance of those parents' faith.
I mean, again, it's part of the freedom of who the founders intended us to be as a country. And just as if an adult could pray in any setting in our society. They had always been allowed to pray. Now, the current state of the law is that a teacher in a government funded school.
Isn't going to be allowed to lead group prayers in a classroom setting. But doesn't mean that the children in the classroom can't still pray on their own. And the government can't choose. If the government allows for, or the school in this case, which is acting for the government.
Allows for other discussion to be taking place. Let's say you have a study hall or a free time. Recess in the hallways, whatever it may be. Where they are allowing other types of speech to take place.
That the government can't say, you can talk about all those other things. But you kids, you can't talk about God. Or you can't pray. So students can always do student initiated prayer. As long as other speech is being allowed.
And the government can't come in and choose strictly to shut down only prayer. And allow for discussion of all the other topics the kids may want to talk about.
Would you sponsor a bill like that?
You couldn't actually get a bill like that enacted with any teeth anymore. Because the Supreme Court has said that they can't do it. So I don't want to be just creating new statutes that don't actually serve a purpose.
Because the Supreme Court has made it clear. That the institutional led prayers aren't going to be happening in the public schools. But I want to make sure we are protecting. And we have done bills, for example, with the whole common core issue.
I've introduced a bill that would make sure that we're exempting our Christian home schools. And private schools from the application of common core. So that they aren't forced to teach things they don't believe in and don't agree with.
I'm looking for realistic measures we can take that will actually protect our religious liberty. While we still struggle under the weight of the Supreme Court cases that have defined marriage. Or legalized abortion.
Or prevented teacher led prayers in the schools. We can't do much as state legislators to undo those things. Absent a change in the court's rulings or some sort of federal action.
We're going to be going. Bruce, you can pick up where you left off right when we return. Because we're going to our final break. And it's going to be very brief. We look forward to hearing more from you, Bruce.
And your questions for our guest, Stephen Blum. And we look forward to hearing more questions from our listeners. Right after this message from our sponsors. Don't go away.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Ornson. And we are discussing the church and politics. And right now, we are specifically addressing the book written by our guest, Stephen Blum. Who is Pennsylvania State Representative.
The book is titled, They've Crossed the Line. A Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom. And our guest, or should I say our co-host is Pastor Bruce Bennett. Who is the pastor of Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island.
And he's also the chairman of the Long Island Family Coalition. And you were asking, you were about to ask another question of our guest, Steve Blum. Pastor Bruce, so if you could continue.
I'm wondering, Steve, if the Vitale, which is the decision that banned school prayer back in 1962. If they were to reverse angle.
Yeah, I would certainly favor that and either introduce one or co-sponsor one. But, you know, actually, I think now that you bring that up. I think we actually still have laws on the books that would allow that in Pennsylvania.
I think there may actually be a mandatory statement that there is supposed to be a Bible reading and a prayer in schools. Somewhere buried in our school code that's simply sitting there inert because of the Supreme Court.
But yeah, I mean, if we were free to do that, absolutely would.
And Steve, I'm sorry, you had something else to say, Bruce.
I did, if it's OK, Chris.
You know, it's funny, I was just, you know, I first of all, I'm not. My current call as a politician or a political leader hasn't been toward the bench. I've had some different people suggest that to me different times.
You know, you ought to run for judge. I feel like right now I'm able to make a better impact in the legislative arena. But I don't rule things out either ahead of time because God always has completely different plans than I had for myself.
I didn't plan to be doing this, this political journey. And God opened up an opportunity and really put a strong call in my heart to do it. So I would say I would not rule that out. But it's certainly not currently on my agenda to become a judge or an appellate judge.
But I was looking at Antonin Scalia's dissent in the Obergefell case, the gay marriage case. And how he talked about, I believe it was Scalia's dissent, talked about the makeup of the court. And he mentioned that it's simply, it's nine people.
Eight of them grew up in the East and West Coast states. Not a single Southwesterner, not a single evangelical Christian, or even a Protestant of any denomination. And as Scalia says, and I'm reading directly from his decision in that case, his dissenting opinion in that case.
The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today's social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges. Answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to prescribe the traditional definition of marriage.
But of course, the justices in today's majority are not voting on that basis. They say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation.
No social transformation without representation. That's what we're facing. We're facing really five individuals on the Supreme Court imposing their policy preferences on us by their so-called legal decisions.
This was not a case of the court doing what it's supposed to do, which is interpret what did the legislature mean? What did the Congress mean by this particular law? Instead, the court said, we think it would be better if the law said this.
And that's what they've done, these five justices. So it's frustrating. And as Scalia so accurately notes, the sort of homogenous nature of the court is troubling once they become policymakers rather than simply doing their job of interpreting the law.
I'd like you to go, Steve, to some of the specifics in your guidelines for patriots and religious freedom regarding the school before we transfer over to the workplace.
Sure. Well, I mean, there are so many things, and it's important thinking about parents who are listening, grandparents who are listening, anyone who has guardianship over a child who's listening, that students don't lose their constitutional rights to free speech simply because they step onto a public school campus.
They can still freely express their beliefs through their words, their clothing, symbols they wear. If there's a school dress code, of course, if the code says no shirts with any messages whatsoever, then a Christian can't wear a shirt with a Bible verse on it.
But if the school dress code allows for other slogans on T-shirts, the school can't say no Christian slogans. You can't restrict a student's religious expression because you fear something they might say or could offend some other child.
The only restrictions that are allowed if there is going to be an actual material and substantial disruption of school discipline from the speech. But otherwise, a student has their fully intact rights of free speech in the schoolroom, in the classroom, in the hallway, on the recess playground.
And again, they can pray there. They can bring their Bible there. They can have a Bible club after school. They can talk with other students at recess about the Bible or even read the Bible. They can't.
The school can't shut down their First Amendment rights just because they're in school. And yet, in many schools, and again, I'm sure Pastor Bruce can attest to this, the common attitude amongst teachers, administrators, parents, and other students is that it's completely taboo to bring up religion or to bring a Bible to school or to talk, to pray as students.
I've heard this from many, many parents. I had a student who had bought my book or her parents bought the book and they talked about it. And they wrote me a note saying that this girl had gone to school and other school kids were passing out birthday party invitations and whatnot during classroom time.
And one day she went in and she wanted to invite students to a Bible study. And the teacher said, oh, no, we can't distribute invitations to a Bible study. And the girl's parents talked to her and they looked at my book and they said, oh, no.
The girl went back and told her teacher, oh, no, I've read the Patriot's Guide to Religious Freedom. I know that if you're saying that other students can pass out invitations to events, then I can still pass out invitations to a Bible study.
And the teacher had to back down once they looked at the law and talked to the administration and they were allowed to ultimately distribute the invitations because she knew her rights. But in many schools, the mere discussion of anything Christian or religious or related is considered taboo.
Is that what you see in the schools on Long Island?
Yeah, very much so. Very tragic that.
And I want to quickly, before I forget, I'm going to quickly give a website where you could get this book. Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service right here in Carlisle, about a 15 minute walk from where I'm sitting.
They have this book in stock right now and their website is CVBBS .com. That's CV as in Cumberland Valley, BB for Bible Book, S for service .com. CVBBS .com. And you can order Steve's book. They've crossed the line, A Patriot Guide to Religious Freedom.
And I might add that from what I've seen, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service typically has the lowest price on the book.
Oh, wow. Really? Well, that's a good plug for Todd and Penny Jennings over there at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who also happen to be a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron. We have a listener, Arnie, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, are there any legal restrictions for private and parochial schools on how they can conduct the education of children without getting into the obvious and areas that would involve the endangerment of the physical endangerment of students?
Are parochial and private schools free to teach students everything they wish to and conduct the education of these children according to their own beliefs and principles?
Well, Arnie, I'm not aware of any particular restriction on the ability to teach or what they're allowed to teach. Now, there are going to be some realistic standards that the students are going to have to meet if they want to excel further in their academic career.
So if a student isn't able to do some basic math and reading and writing some of those core basic functions, they're going to have a hard time when it comes time to do college admission tests and those sorts of things.
But as far as the state prescribing that you can't teach about any particular topic, I'm not familiar with any law like that. We sometimes have, as I said, I personally sponsored a bill to protect private and religious schools and homeschoolers from the mandates of the Common Core to make sure that the government wasn't imposing on them and preventing them from teaching the things they felt were important.
But for a parent, I mean, I chose my wife and I chose for the vast majority of our three kids school experience with a few minor exceptions for our first child, who was our guinea pig, we chose to provide a private Christian school education for our kids and a little bit of homeschooling for one of our kids.
But, you know, we made that choice because we wanted them exposed to biblical truth and to have that biblical truth be woven through all the subjects they learn, not just as an adjunct to their learning, but as an integral piece of what they were learning.
And I want to give a little plug for my own church where I'm a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, who runs the Christian school that our guest Steve Bloom has enrolled his children. So I just want to mention that.
We do have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, who asked in regard to homeschooling, are there any specific requirements on parents on what they must provide in the realm of education to the homeschooled children?
Well, and I'm not an expert in homeschooling law, but in Pennsylvania, at least with homeschooling, you do have to prepare a essentially a sort of a folder or a summary of your year of education and have that documented.
Now, when we were homeschooling, which we only did for about two years with our son, we had to get that certified by the superintendent of the local school district to just to document that the student had actually been attending school and doing work.
They didn't really dig into the content of it so much as the fact that there were record of the days that the student attended school and the fact that we had actually made a good faith effort to educate the student.
I think we've actually to some degree liberalized that law in that now I don't think I think this is something we did brand new. I think this is how it works to get their actual diploma issued. It no longer has to be approved by the local superintendent.
The parents or some other agency that that that wants to private agency that that may wish to provide a homeschool diploma can do so without even having to go to the school superintendent. But the laws are quite different on homeschooling from state to state.
And I'm not even an expert on Pennsylvania homeschool law in any any great level of detail. And each state's going to be different. And I think the color was from Long Island. So I'm sure the New York laws are going to be different than what we have here in Pennsylvania.
Before we move on to the workplace section of Steve's book, do you have any comment on that?
Since you're from Long Island, Pastor Bruce need to know more specific.
Well, basically, they were just asking if there's anything specific that a that parents must include in the curriculum and activities of a homeschool child by law.
I thought they asked about a public private school, right?
In fact, I think it is primarily involving homeschooling.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know.
Well, another section of your book. And believe me, I want you back on this program to more thoroughly and more in detail cover these aspects of your book. But let's move on to the workplace. I know that a lot of the problems that arise with Christians at their workplace involve banter and conversations during breaks and so on.
And I'm sure you agree that a Christian should not be robbing his employer of time by using the working hours as a pulpit to evangelize. Absolutely. But during lunch breaks, during Christmas parties, all these things that occur in the common day to day functions in life of people who are employed in secular businesses.
What are the things that you address in the book?
The laws that I talk about are very similar to what we talk about with the public schools and in a private employer situation or even the setting of a public employee. The government can't constrain or restrict the religious speech any differently than they can other speech.
So if the employer says, look, to be safe in our workplace, we want no talking on the plant floor. We want everyone to be just quietly and silently working. Well, then a Christian can't be out loud evangelizing his neighbor at the next machine down on the assembly line.
They've got to be quiet. They can't break the rules of the workplace. But if the employer says that chatter on the workplace floor, on the factory floor is acceptable, then the employer can't simply say, you can talk about anything else, but don't talk about your faith.
Really?
Can't restrict that. And if there's a Christian in the workplace who feels that there is some policy of their employer that is impinging on their faith, they have the right not only under court cases, but under the Civil Rights Act to have reasonable accommodation made for their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Like if people are using profanity and so on.
It's typically not going to be so much the right not to be offended, because if someone wants to use profanity around you and you want to talk about God around them, that's more or less the same scenario.
But if your employer says everyone else can wear a T-shirt that has a phrase on it, but you can't wear a T-shirt that has a biblical verse on it, that could be a problem. But if you're a Christian and you, for example, it's very essential to your faith that you attend worship on Sunday morning, you could ask for accommodation to make sure that your hours allowed for you a reasonable opportunity to attend worship service.
And the employer has to make an effort to reasonably accommodate your beliefs. Now, if you're the only employee and you want to quit on Sunday and Sunday's a big day for your employer, they don't have to go and hire somebody new just to work on Sunday.
They may say that's unreasonable. But if there's 100 people in the workplace and you're simply saying, please don't schedule me for those two hours on Sunday morning, that's a legitimate accommodation request that they would have to honor.
And that goes for clothing requirements, for allowing you to wear religious jewelry, and it goes for other faiths as well. It's not just for Christians. So a common case I've run into a number of times is a member of the Sikh religion.
Sikhs, as part of their religious attire, the men typically wear a small dagger on their head. And some places, of course, have no weapons policies. And courts have found that a Sikh may still have the right to carry their ceremonial dagger in the workplace, even if there's a no weapons policy.
But that's the Federal Civil Rights Act and centuries of case law say that you've got to make a reasonable accommodation for these sincerely held religious beliefs in the workplace.
Well, the right to bear arms, right? Well, see, what you brought up, or perhaps what our listener brought up, is kind of a Catch -22 area, because you also want to defend the rights of business owners.
And you don't want the government to be making decisions, even if Christians find them offensive, you know, in regard to enslaving business owners to act according to the whims of the government and so on.
Right. And it's a balance. But again, you know, these are constitutional rights. They do have priority over most other laws. And the right to freely express your religion is an essential core part of who we are.
And it's been a core part of federal statutory law as well as case law. And so sometimes an employer is going to have to bend or accommodate to properly respect someone's religious beliefs, even though it's a bit of an inconvenience for the employer.
And do you think that that type of government intrusion on a private business owner, you think that is a good thing?
I think it's a constitutional thing. So it's certainly something our founders intended.
OK, we have another question from Todd in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who emailed us earlier. While many in government have become corrupt, what practical means remain to support those that seek to serve in a God-honoring way?
That's a very interesting question. I mentioned earlier the group called the Pennsylvania Family Institute. They they are one of the groups that that serves as a support network for those of us in Pennsylvania state government who are Christian believers and who are endeavoring to sincerely represent our faith in the public arena of government.
And they provide. Not only tools for us, you know, drafting documents and proposed legislation and research and background, but also a listening ear, someone who can be an encouragement to us as we serve down in the state house.
So there's a group that folks can get involved with the Pennsylvania Family Institute. I'm sure they would be more than happy on their Web page, which I don't have the address for right now, but I'm sure you could just Google Pennsylvania Family Institute.
And I'm sure they'd be more than willing to accept support and contributions from the general public to help in their mission, which they are. They are one of the foundations that we rely on as Christian legislators to have a group like that.
There are other. Other ministries that serve in the in the in the state house. There is a actually a pastor who is down there as part of his call, who serves essentially as a chaplain for the folks, not only legislators, but staff in the capital.
And he makes his rounds and talks to folks. So there's different ways you can do it. You know, before I got into politics, I often heard politics saying politicians saying how important it was for them to have the prayers of the people back home in their district or back home in their state.
And I never really grasped how meaningful that was until getting into this situation myself. And I absolutely treasure the prayers of folks who who tell me they're praying for me as a state representative.
It's a big deal, as I as I mentioned earlier, the decisions I'm trying to make and the actions I'm trying to cause to happen are bigger than me. I can't do it alone. I can't orchestrate it alone. And it's only by the by God's grace that that that these things can happen.
So prayer is integral. Words of encouragement, letters to the editor, social media posts. There's so many ways that folks can show their support and encouragement, obviously getting involved in political campaigns, if that's what you're called to do.
Various representatives, senators, office holders of all kinds are. The reality is we have to raise money to do our campaigns, to get our message out. And so financial contributions are always, always important to us as well.
Christian in Boiling Springs wants to know if since we are talking about the workplace, a landlord is that's his his source of employment very often. Does he have restrictions on who he can bar from renting a room or even a home if he owns the property?
Specifically regarding some one's sexual identity, such as a homosexual or even unmarried heterosexual couples.
That's going to be and I actually don't know the answer to that in light of the new Supreme Court case. We if you wanted to use the analogy, which I'm not sure it's always the best analogy to the civil rights cases, it is a violation of law in most cases to bar someone from renting a premises because of their protected characteristics, their their race, their national origin, their religion, that sort of thing.
I don't know that there's been any cases tried on on the whole notion of could you bar someone if you so chose, for example, a homosexual couple, whether married or not, or an unmarried heterosexual couple.
Not sure that the state of the law on that and would have to do some further research.
Just out of curiosity, Bruce, do you have any quick comment on that since you're from New York from Perry County, Pennsylvania?
Oh, it's Pennsylvania. OK, so I'm sure I don't remember. It was definitely a federal case.
And it was definitely I think the one. The one I'm particularly thinking of was a hospital case where the guy was like an orderly in the hospital. And they determined that the fact that it was purely a ceremonial instrument, it wasn't to be used as a weapon.
It was an integral part of his faith that he was allowed to carry it.
OK, Todd has been asking a lot of good questions, so I'm going to read them all. I wouldn't usually let somebody hog so many questions, but Todd from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Are we approaching a time where churches may need to give up their nonprofit status to avoid government mandates that that conflict with their faith and practice?
And I know people that especially those towards the libertarian side who don't even believe it's a good idea for churches to be tax exempt because of the government control.
Well, I wonder about that, too. And that's an excellent question on Todd's part. Right now, so many pastors feel so constrained because they fear that should they say the wrong thing, if they mention politics or mention a particular campaign in church, that they would ultimately lose their tax exempt status.
That the IRS would take action to revoke their ability to receive these tax deductible donations. And while certainly it's of benefit to the churches that they can accept donations that are tax deductible to the giver.
It is a shame that it's already being used to some degree rein in our pastors. And think about the freedom knowing that God is sovereign and knowing that that God will honor us and we honor him. The freedom that pastors who now feel constrained by the Internal Revenue Service would be able to experience if they were free from that.
Just a thought.
And I'm going to let you conclude with unburdening your heart with everything you most want our listeners to have etched on their hearts and minds when they leave this program in about a minute's time, if you could do that.
Well, the key is, Chris, and thank you so much for having me on and giving me this opportunity. The key is for Christians not to be intimidated. And I'm not a proponent of unnecessary litigation. In fact, my first book, a completely different book, The Believer's Guide to Legal Issues, is all about really how God tells us, for the most part, lawsuits are ridiculous and it's a waste of our time as Christians to get involved in them.
But it's also biblical that, for example, Paul, when his civil rights were violated, appealed to Caesar. And when it comes to the question of civil rights and protecting our liberties, lawsuits can be legitimate for Christians.
And there are organizations to help folks. And if you feel your religious liberties are being violated, don't just allow yourself to be bullied. Seek out help. There are tremendous organizations out there.
Again, Alliance Defending Freedom, the ACLJ, the Christian Legal Society in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Family Institute has a separate religious freedom litigation firm that will do pro bono free legal services for Christians who are being persecuted.
And when we stand up and protect and exercise our rights, we preserve them for our kids and our grandkids and the next generations. And if we don't stand up, if we allow ourselves to be bullied into silence, we're really giving up our legacy, giving up our heritage of religious freedom.
And you can go to repbloom .com, repbloom, R-E-P, bloom, B-L-O-O-M .com for more information.