Tennessee Heartbeat Bill: Where Was the ERLC?, with Matthew Nowlin

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00:03

Welcome to conversations that matter. My name is John Harris and I got wind of a story that I just thought this should be told more.

00:11

And so I'm going to have the person who knows the most about it, tell it to you.

00:16

And his name is Matthew Nowlin. Matthew Nowlin is the director of the conservative Christians of Tennessee.

00:22

Thank you for joining me, Matthew. Well, thank you, John. I've been watching your channel for quite some time and you do a great job.

00:29

I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you very much. So the reason I'm talking to you is because the

00:34

ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention has, from what

00:40

I've heard recently, I guess either they've opposed or they're not supporting this heartbeat bill.

00:47

And that's what I know. I'm going to let you correct anything that I get wrong in there and explain what's going on.

00:53

Yeah. Yeah. I would. I'm glad I'm here because I don't want to say that they've opposed this bill. OK. I don't want to say,

01:00

I'll speak their lingo. They pulled a page out of Martin Luther King Jr.'s

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letters from a Birmingham jail and they're just silent. They're apathetic on this. They didn't show up.

01:12

This is a Tennessee issue. And the

01:17

ERLC is based in Tennessee. And this isn't just a local issue. This is an issue of national importance, which

01:24

I think we can get into in a minute. So by not doing anything, they've actually, their inaction has almost forced some other

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Baptist institutions to step in and fill this niche that really is in their wheelhouse.

01:39

It's in the ERLC wheelhouse, in my opinion. OK. So another, other organizations are kind of filling the gap that they should or we would assume that they would be doing.

01:49

So explain. Let's just start at the beginning here. Explain what the heartbeat bill is.

01:55

OK. So the heartbeat bill essentially started at saying the idea was we can now detect a heartbeat with ultrasound technology that's really very common in most prenatal care institutions.

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So let's therefore, they brought in some doctors to testify,

02:19

Dr. Brent Bowles, a health craft, this legislation. He's a teaching doctor. He is an OBGYN.

02:24

He delivers babies and he teaches new doctors how to deliver babies. He's a medical expert in Tennessee.

02:31

Dr. Bowles worked with Mark Fowler, Family Action Council of Tennessee. I'm sorry,

02:37

David Fowler, Family Action Council of Tennessee. And he worked with Senator Mark Potey, who's out of Lebanon, Tennessee.

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One of the 33 senators in Tennessee. And they crafted a bill that said, when you have detect a heartbeat.

02:53

And they argued that from the Ninth Amendment, which reserves rights to people, it's based on common law.

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They argued that there was a common law protection of babies. And that common law protection, John, is something that we see everywhere.

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A lot of people don't realize it, but a baby can be deeded property in a will. If a baby is killed in a car accident and there is a murder, a vehicular homicide charge that comes along, a baby will be tacked on as another person that was killed.

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Only really in the area of abortion do we see a separation.

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But no one has made this argument before. Everybody's argued from the 14th Amendment that clarified the rights of people and the status of people.

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But nobody has argued from this Ninth Amendment angle that common law applies here.

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That these common law carryovers of property, etc., apply to this infant.

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So that's what this bill sought to do. Well, as they got further and further into this, and they studied it more and more, it became apparent that it was very arbitrary to say that a heartbeat is the point at which a life starts.

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Because this bill isn't about protecting a baby. This bill is about establishing personhood, legal personhood, for all pre -born people to say that they are a person.

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And it's really all this debate has ever been about, between the pro -life and the pro -death side.

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So the logical conclusion of this has morphed into, as soon as the mother is aware she's pregnant under this bill, the baby's life would be protected.

04:34

Okay, so you're Director of Conservative Christians of Tennessee. You're a Christian, you're a conservative, obviously, and you have been an activist supporting the argument you just put forward and this proposition, this bill.

04:49

Now, you said that there were some, like, what are some other sponsors or organizations that have come in to support this?

04:58

The Tennessee Pastors Network has come in to support this. Really surprisingly, this bill is unique enough and this bill is strong enough that we've had direct support from a lot of the crisis pregnancy centers in Tennessee.

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There was a letter delivered to the Lieutenant Governor and to the Governor with 16 pregnancy crisis center signatures on it.

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These organizations have had to change their bylaws to allow them to speak out on this in some cases, because they were not political.

05:27

Right. Interesting. Okay, so the ERLC then, since they're in Tennessee, and you would think this is kind of like the primary thing that they would do, like within the job description that you'd think they would have, but this is not something that they've been,

05:43

I guess, vocal about. So run through this story then. Are they unaware?

05:51

I mean, I find that hard to believe. Have you tried to contact them? Has anyone else notified them?

05:57

And then why are they absent? Yeah. So to be honest with you, through the Conservative Christians of Tennessee page, we started, we noticed this absence.

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So I had reached out to a few of these people on Twitter, specifically, now Daniel Darling is one of like the jolliest people that you'll ever run into on Twitter.

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Like I honestly just feel like he's a jolly guy that I want to talk about books with and eat. Like, I want to go to his house after church and like my wife to supply a massive vat of milk and cookies and us to talk about books.

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He wrote The Human Dignity Revolution. I believe that was the title of the book he wrote, wasn't it?

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What's his position then at ERLC? He's the Vice President of Communications.

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So it makes sense to me that he would be a person at that organization that I would communicate with. Communicate with, because he's up community.

06:47

Okay. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I got nothing just with a few, you know, like a tweet in May.

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Nothing about this. You know, where are you? So I started tagging him and I started tagging

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Russell Moore on our page, Conservative Christians of Tennessee back in April and May on this issue.

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You know, and the tag would show there, you'd get the black text, you'd be able to click to it and go to their page. And then like the tags would disappear.

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So they weren't, you know, like whoever's running their Twitter accounts or them, they were. Yeah. Well, in this case,

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Facebook. Yeah. Whoever's running their Facebook account was, was, was untagging them. It's it's unfortunate.

07:32

So there was one instance where I made a joke on Twitter and I mean,

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I can look this up and find it. I don't remember what it is off the top of my head, but I made a joke and we've got some ha -has and Daniel Darling replied to it.

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So he had ignored my tweets on, on this issue, you know, of where is the ERLC, but he, but he replied to this.

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But, but more importantly, you know, we were doing this in front of tagging these people on Conservative Christians of Tennessee.

07:59

People were seeing this post, people were liking these posts. They were replying to these posts, they were getting views and they just didn't reply to them.

08:06

So they're aware of this issue. But more importantly, John, if we never contacted them, this is all over the news.

08:13

That's what I was going to ask for those outside of Tennessee, like, is this something that it's possible for them to be ignorant about? So it sounds like no.

08:18

Yeah. Yeah. You have a common law 9th and 14th amendment issue, you know, so, so the 9th amendment common law are related.

08:25

The 14th amendment is related and the ERLC, you know, man, uh, I'm in Memphis. So with all the

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MLK 50 stuff, you know, there was a lot of, uh, uh, of, of discussion of, you know, the ending of slavery, you know, leading, leading up to all this stuff.

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So they're, they're, they know these are, this is a human dignity issue and it's turned into a, uh,

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ERLC Baptist inaction issue. Right. Okay.

08:52

So here's, you know, from my standpoint as someone who just not in Tennessee, but watching this and hearing what you're saying, because I remember, you know, we, we've communicated a little bit here and there.

09:03

And you mentioning this like months ago that like, where's the ERLC, they know about this and aren't doing anything. And now finally, um, it's just obvious that I guess they're not going to get involved and, and, and yeah, they did some stuff.

09:15

They did reply to the pressure, uh, that folks were putting on them in some ways. Uh, the ERLC made like a, like an abortion update video.

09:23

Um, and, uh, but that was just like really vague and not specific. It was in the spring or summer.

09:29

That was in the summer. It was in the summer. Yeah. I mean, it was produced. So it's not the kind of thing that just appears overnight.

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Um, and, uh, and it wasn't like a complicated offsite, you know, production thing, but it was produced in a studio, you know, it was professionally edited and so forth.

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Um, but you know, like about the time that Russell Moore should have been testifying or somebody from the organization should have been coming alongside

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Senator Potey and offering support in April. Um, you know, that was very shortly when

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Russell, after that, that Russell Moore launched his, uh, his personal YouTube channel.

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And we started getting all these videos that robots and aliens and yeah, well, there was a video on like what happens to our faith if, if, uh, if aliens from outer space show up and the last day of testimony on the summer study, which we just got out of two days of studying this video.

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I sat through two days of listening to testimony, um, on this issue.

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And instead of being there, um, Russell Moore's channel launched, uh, a video, uh, or an article of something in the effect of, uh, of what happens if your child wants to baptize their robot friend and it's cited a book that had been written 15 years ago.

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So I mean, yeah, we're moving towards areas of AI, you know, there's machine learning going on at Google and Facebook.

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I get that, you know, that, that we're seeing, you know, even more automation that it places everything from McDonald's to whatnot, that there's, there's intelligent learning processes going on around us.

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I get the implications of what's going on in Hong Kong with government using these sophisticated monitoring systems that learn people's patterns and behaviors.

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I get the social credit. So I get the importance of that, but we're dealing with an immediate issue.

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We're dealing with, with literally a slaughter that occurs day after day after day.

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So let me ask you this. I mean, I know the answer, I think, but you're frustrated, would that be fair to say?

11:26

Yeah, I'm, I'm frustrated and a lot of Baptists are frustrated too. There was the Tennessee, uh, the

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Tennessee Baptist convention and the Tennessee Baptist missions board, um, sent out, uh, they, they produced a video and they sent it to, to also their

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Baptist churches in Tennessee. And I heard a lot about it from, from people, a lot of churches showed it. And the, uh, pastor

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Randy Davis of the, uh, who was sent, you know, spoke, he testified on behalf of the

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Tennessee Baptist missions board. He testified eloquently. Um, and he, uh, you know, one of the, one of the

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Democrat senators asked some tough questions of him that really set her up to look poorly and he couldn't, you know, he,

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I guess what I'm saying is you had a pastor in a political wheelhouse who, who nicely handled himself and delivered 16 ,000 signatures.

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Um, and, uh, and, and even took heat for being from a group that didn't have female pastors.

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And he then informed the Senator, you know, Hey, well, 65 % of these signatures, 16 ,000 signatures that we've vetted in this binder are from women, you know, just, just shut her up and embarrassed her.

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Um, why, why did he have to do that? When the Southern Baptists have a lobbying group, essentially,

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I mean, why did he have to do that? When, why will, why will the year old scene not defend the life of preborn children at something in their backyard when they'll go up to New Jersey and defend the right of Muslims to build a mosque.

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And by the way, they've, uh, they're bringing David Platt and the international mission board, uh, on, on with them to sign that.

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I mean, that was a, was a local issue. Uh, but they filed amicus briefs and they worked along with it. They spent a lot of legal resources on that, but they've done silks for this.

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And it's not just a local issue. It's a local issue with national implications. It sounds like this, uh, uh,

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Jim Bopp, Jim Bopp, who is the lead attorney for the national right to life. He has helped craft the

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Republican platform. I think he said five times, uh, for, uh, you know, for presidential elections, uh, years, uh, he made the statement that this was, was not, he had never thought of this legal argument before is what his testimony boiled down to.

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So since he had not thought of it, he, he, he was kind of going back and forth between, ah,

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I don't think this will work and man, we need to try this, you know, and, and, and listening examples to it.

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Um, this is, this has never been thought of. This has never been used. This is totally unique of this is the, this is the stone in the sling that could go to the

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Supreme court. And I'm, I mean, this, just to be fair, it was entered into the record by the author of the bill that the purpose of this bill is to get challenged in court and to make it to the

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Supreme court and overturn Roe versus Wade. Okay, Matthew, this is big stuff. Like this is, this is, it sounds like an awesome opportunity and it seems like the most obvious, primarily important thing that a organization like the

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ERLC should be involved with. I want to get the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. I don't know how possible it is.

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It's really hard. But like for those who are Southern Baptists who are watching, give money to, you know, some of their money goes to the

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ERLC. What, what can we at least say? Is there any out for the

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ERLC here? Is there any, like, what are they thinking? Do you have any indication of what's going through their heads and why they're not stepping up to the plate?

14:53

Well, I don't, I don't really know. I mean, well, okay, let me, let me, let me rephrase that. I've seen some things that, that lead me to have a strong opinion on, on why they're acting the way they do.

15:08

But they need to understand that this is a national issue, that if this makes it to the

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Supreme Court, that, that this is at a bare minimum going to give states the right to, this, this will restore the pre -1973 status quo.

15:23

They need to talk to their pastors. They need to have their pastors watch this and their pastors need to be calling their statewide convention.

15:32

They need to be calling the Baptist, the Tennessee Baptist Missions Board to thank them for this involvement. And they need to be calling everybody they can in a position of leadership in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, whether or not they're in Tennessee or not, not to destroy the ERLC, but to call them to action on this.

15:52

They have a lot of resources. They need to be offering them to Senator Mark Potey. I'm not speaking on behalf of the

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Senator. I've not talked to him about this, but they have a lot of resources and they could help him.

16:06

Yeah. So these resources are given to them by Southern Baptists who give in their local congregations.

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And I want to ask you, are you a Southern Baptist, Matthew? I am not a Southern Baptist, but I tell you what, when that video broadcast,

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I got people were sending me like, I got all these clips that started at different stages.

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You're talking about the video about abortion that they put out? The video that the Tennessee Baptist Missions Board put out saying, sign our petition.

16:34

I started getting video. I mean, people were like, yeah, somebody's doing this.

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And I just have all these staggered videos starting at different places, you know, because Bubba Joe's a little faster getting his cell phone going than his grandpa,

16:48

Billy Bob. But yeah, we are in Tennessee. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, you know,

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I mean, I'm frustrated and, you know, to be honest, man, if these guys didn't get my communications and they're sitting here, they're watching this and they're thinking, this guy is way off base.

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I don't even know who he is. Well, I mean, I've talked with some of them on other issues, you know, so they might have forgotten who

17:13

I am, but they knew who I was at one point. But if they genuinely didn't know this was going on, then, hey, like.

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Which is, which is impossible. Yeah. I apologize if you didn't know what was going on.

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And if you're watching this video and you're really mad at me right now, please accept my forgiveness. If you didn't know what was going on, then you need to ask

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Southern Baptist for forgiveness and you need to ask the Lord for forgiveness because this is your wheelhouse. Um, this, this issue has huge ethical implications.

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So whatever, like we don't have to like be best friends, but hop on board with this and please help us save babies.

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And the Tennessee Baptist missions board, man, I like, I cannot tell you how impressed I was because at one point one of the senators hopped in a

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Senator Katrina Robinson of Tennessee. And she said, uh, she was trying to do a setup of the

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Christians don't care about babies after they're born type thing. And pastor Randy Davis like, well, hold on, you know, the

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Tennessee Baptist missions board is involved in foster care and we have hundreds of children that we care for.

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And she's like, well, what's going to happen if this, you know, with all these news. And he basically said, you know, we'll rise to the challenge.

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And he was speaking for Southern Baptist. And I know that he was speaking accurately. Southern Baptist will rise to the challenge of caring for these children if they're born.

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But, but beyond that, John, like there was like, there was a pregnancy crisis group there that was one of the signatories of that letter

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I told you about. They're an adoption agency. They're a full service adoption agency as well as a pregnancy crisis center.

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They provide counseling to women all the way through this process. Um, like ERLC help us create a crisis with not having, uh, help us create a foster crisis.

19:08

That's even greater than, than the Baptist will rise up. Hmm. Yeah. You know,

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Matthew, you're very nice, uh, because I just, just Googled, um, Tennessee heartbeat bill and yeah, it's all over the place.

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National publications included. There's no way, there's no way you'd have to have your head in the sand, not to know that this is going on, especially if you live in the state of Tennessee.

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I've been, I've been told if you, uh, and you're politically minded. Yeah. Um, I mean, the

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ERLC was, was really heavily involved in a bill against animal fighting and like all of them, they lobbied that through and all of them, a lot of them came to the signing of that bill.

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Wait, this was in Tennessee. Um, yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, this might've even been a, yeah, this was in Tennessee.

19:54

So this is like a local issue that they're getting involved with to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Or they got, they got involved in like a zoning issue in New Jersey with that mosque, the mosque.

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So that's, that's pretty local. And they took that to the Supreme court and sign an amicus, you know, we're, we're like, it's been a lot of money on it and everything.

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So that's not very, yeah, I mean, it is national cause it went to the Supreme court, but it's literally, it's literally a zoning issue.

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Right. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Just equal, you know, weights and measures, just measuring, you know, this and how important what you're talking about, uh, is against some of these things that they've gotten involved with, which we scratch our head, you know, is that really, you know,

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I'm always using the term sometimes theological triage and I just have to wonder, you know, where are they at?

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I mean, like, is this a triage problem? But I don't want to speculate on them too much. You know, under, under Richard Lamb, you had an

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ERLC that, that, that, and this is not my quote, but I won't say whose quote it is because this guy, uh, wouldn't appreciate me bringing him into it.

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But under the ERLC under Richard Lamb was, was really positioning itself as, as preacher to legislators, you know, and, and, and, and blesser of Baptists and under Russell Moore, Russell Moore really views himself as like a prophet to these wicked

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Baptists is it was, that's what it seems like. Um, but like we have these, these children that, that are in this womb.

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And a lot of times, you know, their fathers are pressuring their mothers to abort them. Yeah. And we're, you know, one of the prayer points we had, we did a 12 point prayer guide for this, one of the things that we prayed was that God would turn the hearts of these children's, uh, fathers towards them, you know, uh, as it says in the book of Malachi, um, and you would think, you know, to me, this is a, this is an issue of just simple right and wrong, but I don't understand how social justice warriors don't see this as a huge issue.

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That's the, that's the crux of this whole thing. And you just nailed it. Um, and, and, and I think the other thing you said too, about the prophetic voice, it does seem like instead of being a prophetic voice to the culture and to the sins of the world and, you know, pushing the antithesis saying this is wrong, it's diametrically opposed to the law of God, we're going to fight it there.

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Some of the efforts that they've gotten involved with are almost like trying to virtue signal to the world that like,

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Hey, we're going to be the prophetic voice instead of the church. We're going to get whipped them into shape. So some of the issues that they're kind of backwards on, uh, they won't be.

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And, and of course there's secondary issues, if issues that shouldn't be focused on at all. Um, this is just the primary thing.

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If you're, if you really are concerned about biblical justice, I mean, a modern Holocaust, which is what most of the

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Baptist thing would agree with me, that that's kind of the parallel here. We're killing people. Yeah, that's kind of like, you know, no, we're, and we're killed.

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We're killing people. See, here, here's the thing that just amazes me. I mean, this is spoken to in scripture.

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A child sacrifice to, uh, to Moloch, you know, in, in old Testament, it was, you know, sacrifice your child to Moloch and we'll grant in the gods will, you know,

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Moloch will grant you prosperity. Your crops will, will grow well. We will protect you from war, protect you from violence.

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And now it's a, you know, a young lady, you're about to go into college.

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This is going to affect your prosperity, you know, abort your baby. And the

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God of reality and fate will, will grant you more prosperity than, than what you have access to right now.

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And this is, this is an issue that seems in some ways so new, but it is, it has plagued

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God's people for so long because, you know, there's no, I mean,

23:39

I'm sure. There are possibly some people that, that would just be wicked enough to kill a child for fun.

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But really this is a, this is in a lot of ways, a calculated decision to sin to gain.

23:55

Right. Yeah. I mean, this is what I would want to say, uh, being someone who was a

24:01

Southern Baptist at one point, but, um, uh, yeah, I would want to give my money to an organization that is not just officially pro -life because I don't even know that URLC is officially pro -life.

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They have to be. Uh, that's, you know, who the people that are giving them money, that's their support base and pro -lifers.

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I wouldn't want to be part of an organization that just has the position. I want to be part of an organization that is doing their utmost best, taking the hard stands to fight this.

24:27

And John, they've got to, I mean, we, I had one attorney say, there is so much pro -life.

24:34

Okay. So J .D. Greer made a claim that Southern Baptists were responsible for Alabama passing its pro -life bill that they did.

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And like Kay Ivey is a Southern Baptist. She signed it. There are a lot of Southern Baptists, but like I'm, I've been unable to find any examples of lobbying coming from, from any

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Southern Baptist institutes. If I'm wrong, it would actually make me feel good to know that I was wrong. So somebody please tell me.

24:57

Comment, comment underneath if, if that was true, uh, that what J .D. Greer said. But I had a well -known constitutional scholar say there's so much of this activity going on,

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Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, that first of all, oh, and here's, here's the other thing.

25:17

I didn't even think to tell you this. Okay. First of all, and now Tennessee and Florida that similar to the anti -obscenity laws that the

25:26

Supreme court heard in the sixties, I mean, they swooped up and heard like just dozens of cases at once and made this mass ruling on them.

25:33

There are enough abortion cases going on, uh, that we could see something like that.

25:39

But John, here, here's a big reason the ERLC should care about this. Tennessee is seeing an increase in abortions right now.

25:47

And the reason that it's seeing an increase in abortions right now is because of perception. Any counselor, uh, who does sidewalk counseling,

25:55

I've had a couple tell me this, will tell you that women have abortions. Many of them think that since it's legal, that it's okay.

26:03

Okay. So you've had Kentucky, you've had Missouri, all these states that I named surrounding

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Tennessee, every state, but Virginia, which has gone the opposite way and the Carolinas that surrounds

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Tennessee has passed harsher abortion legislation to give you an idea of what we're facing, uh, even though these laws have been enjoined and none of them have gone into effect

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Planned Parenthood in Huntsville, Alabama, which is, you know, about like 20 minute drive from, from Tennessee.

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They had to start running an advertising campaign that essentially said, Hey, we're still open because of perception.

26:37

So, uh, choices of Memphis, which is an abortion clinic in Memphis. And if you want to see the citations for these, you can go to tnchristian .com

26:46

forward slash stop dash abortion dash surge. Um, CBS news, uh, choices in Memphis reported to them an 8 % increase in patients and abortions this year.

26:59

Um, the clinic in Nashville was shut down for a while from, for performing abortions, the Planned Parenthood clinic there, but they said they anticipated an increase in abortions.

27:08

Um, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Knoxville said that they've seen an 18 .8 % increase in patients and abortions this year, because that was, that was reported in Knox news.

27:19

So not only is the ERLCs, um, and everybody else who's done nothing on this, like, like I don't feel responsible,

27:26

I've done my best. I have a clean conscience on this. I really do. I have, I have sacrificed, um,

27:35

I have, I have made personal sacrifices for this that, that, that, that don't earn me anything, but, but just to say that, you know, like I've worked hard.

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I can sleep at night on this personally. Um, if everybody would just do a little bit, we could get this accomplished.

27:53

We could stop the abortion surge in Tennessee. We could, uh, we could get an even better team of lawyers to assist

27:59

David Fowler, family action council in Tennessee and nailing this legislation. And I think we could see rope versus weight overturned because again, this is a completely new argument,

28:11

Matthew Nowlin. Um, thank you for joining me. I'm going to make a final point and then, um, ask people where they can find you.

28:17

This is my point though. If you're a Southern Baptist and you are concerned about what you just heard,

28:23

I would encourage you to send this video to your pastor or your elders at your church and consider if you are an elder or a pastor, uh, consider perhaps not sending money to the

28:35

ERLC you can, uh, if you're staying within the denomination, you can, uh, send your money to the international mission board and or individual missionaries, or there's ways you can itemize it.

28:48

It might be hard for your secretary at your church, but I think this is worth it. You can't give money. I'd rather have people giving money to your organization.

28:56

Uh, Matt, we don't, we actually don't even take money. Oh, that was going to be my pit. Yeah. Yeah.

29:01

Yeah. We don't, we don't take money. No, I mean like seriously. Um, where would you give it then? Um, I'd give it to family action council of Tennessee.

29:10

Okay. They're, they're focused on the families, uh, affiliate here in the state, uh, for, for their lobbying arm. And I'd give it to family action council of Tennessee or I, or I would, uh,

29:19

I'd give it to there's an attorney in Nate Kellum who does, who also testified. Uh, he has an organization, um, whose name escapes me right now, but I'd give it to one of those two groups because they're going to be the ones that see this through.

29:31

So yeah. If you are more concerned with the abortions that are happening in this country and in Tennessee, then you are with your child asking you if the robot can get baptized, give to, and I, and I say that with a laugh a little bit, but, but I know this is serious.

29:45

Like I really do. And well, you know, you know, parents that actually teach their children. Um, you know, I had parents contact me that came up, uh, to the prayer rally that we did at the

29:54

Capitol earlier this week, uh, during the session and, uh, you know, their, their children, you know, the ones that taught their children were asking questions like, how does abortion happen in America?

30:05

Yeah. Not, not a, you know, not how do I baptize my Build -A -Bear. Yeah. So, yeah.

30:10

Which is a reference to Russell Moore's latest video. So Matthew, where can people find you if they want to look you up or ask you a question?

30:16

Yeah. Um, the best thing right now is to just email me Matthew at TN Christian .com.

30:22

All right. And that's, that's, that's TN, uh, T N is in the abbreviation for Tennessee Christian .com.

30:29

Well, Matthew, thank you for the work you're doing with the, uh, being the director of the conservative Christians of Tennessee and for giving us this information, which is a little hard to hear, but, uh, but I'm encouraged that this argument is going forward.

30:40

Um, last question for you, uh, do you think this is going to pass? So what are, what are the chances or, you know, do you even want to speculate?

30:48

Yeah, we have just passed the house. It has to be conferenced with the house. Again, if this version passes the

30:55

Senate, there's been a lot of uproar. So people do need to be praying. Um, I, I just don't know if the new speaker of the house at Tennessee is going to get is going to be in favor of pro -life legislation the way that, uh, uh, and there's a lot of politicking between pro -life groups.

31:13

Uh, we're seeing a realignment in Tennessee. So, um, a lot of people think that there's some needless bickering going on.

31:22

I actually don't like bickering. Just pray that God would, uh, uh, the biggest thing you can do is pray for your senators.

31:29

We have a prayer guide on our website at tnchristian .com. And just, just go through that prayer guide and pray for everybody.

31:35

We, we have every scenario covered there that, that needs to be prayed for. Um, relating to this that we could think of.

31:44

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Matthew. I appreciate it. God bless. Have a good evening. All right. You too. Thanks, John. All right.