Christian Liberty and the Church in America

Nathan Shackelford’s Presentation

The other thing that we couldn’t have expected was our win rate. We’ve been using this model for over 25 years now, and we’ve never had a win rate in a single year under 90%. And we know the second that we say that’s because of us, it all goes away, because if you know about the legal profession, no one is 90% good without God’s favor. So we truly know, we truly feel that God’s hand is over us in what’s going on here, and so we’re just continuing forward with that.

But the other thing that you should know is kind of how the Supreme Court works, which is the Supreme Court gets over 7,000 requests a year, and they take, generally, about 60 on average. So your odds of going to the Supreme Court, if you said, “I want to go to the Supreme Court every year,” your odds of that are less than 1%. So, in the last two years, First Liberty hasn’t had one case at the Supreme Court, or two, but we’ve had four at the Supreme Court, and they were all four wins. So what I want to do is show you these cases, show you the surface level victories, but then show you the victories of what the rights of that gives you that you probably didn’t even know you had today.

So the first case that I’m going to start with is out of Maine. Is anyone in here from Maine? Okay, I’ve been doing this for like a year and I haven’t found someone from Maine yet, so maybe one day this will happen. But Maine is so rural that less than half of the school districts in Maine actually have a public school in their school district. So if you’re trying to send your kid to school, you may not have a place to send them. So, Maine instituted a school voucher program, a school choice program. You can send your kids anywhere you want to send them, all-boys school, all-girls school. You can even send them to Canada if you want, we don’t care. Here’s the money.

But you can’t… a few years ago, the attorney general added a provision saying, “But you can’t send them to a religiously affiliated school because then that’s a government endorsement of religion.” We got involved and said, “This isn’t a government endorsement of religion, all you’re doing is telling the parents, ‘You can’t send your kids to a Christian school.'” Because the difference between “private school A” and “Christian school A” is classes on religion. Other than that, they’re the exact same.

So the Supreme Court agreed six to three and said, “We’re not saying that everyone has to have a school choice program, but from now on, if you have a school choice program, you are not allowed to exclude religiously affiliated schools just because they’re religiously affiliated.” Because when it breaks down to it, the government isn’t saying you have to send your kids to a religious school. This is the parents’ choice. All you’re doing is telling the parents you can’t send your kids here on the basis of religion. So that’s the government restricting religion in that case.

If that was the end of it, you’d think that’s great, because if Texas ever gets school choice, that would allow us to send our kids to private Christian schools. But it doesn’t stop there, because if you look at the background of this case, what is a school choice program? It is a government funded, government grant program. What other government funds are available? Well, there are government grants and funds that are available for homelessness, for drug and alcohol abuse, for women’s shelters.

So I was speaking in Oklahoma City not too long ago, and a gentleman approached me and said, “This just changed everything for me.” He said, “I run a homeless men’s shelter, and for years, we’ve been asking for grants from the state of Oklahoma, and they’ve denied us every time, saying that they can’t give us the money because of our name and our religious affiliation.” He said, “So what you’re telling me is now we have access to thousands and thousands of dollars that we didn’t have access to before.”

So this is a game changer not just for ministries, but for also churches, and any other group that wants to take access of these government funds and apply them for what they’re doing to serve the body throughout the community. So this is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars now that’s available to churches, nonprofits, and groups that want to take advantage of this publicly available funds for their ministries and for furthering God’s kingdom. So it’s a huge case.

Another case is… the best way to describe this one is the modern day “Chariots of Fire”. So you have a guy that’s on the mission front, Gerald Groff. He’s a missionary, comes back from home and says, “God has told me I’m not supposed to work on the Sabbath, so I cannot work on Sundays. Where should I work?” The post office. Great idea! Until Amazon enters into an agreement with the post office, saying, “We need you to deliver on Sundays.” He asks for an accommodation not to work that day. Says, “I’ll work doubles, I’ll work any holiday that’s not a Sunday, I just cannot work Sundays.”

At the post office, you kind of have to work your way up to full-time status. Gerald Groff is almost at full-time status, where he could have just said, “I’m taking that day off,” and he would’ve been fine. But what happened was they said, “We need you to work Sundays, you have to work Sundays.” He said, “I can’t do it.” So he transferred branches, went all the way back to the bottom of the totem pole, started his career all over again in another branch. Two months later, that branch enters into an agreement with Amazon, and he’s now in the same situation.

He’s punished nine times. He’s called an inconvenience to his coworkers. His bosses berate him in public over and over again. He knows that at punishment number 10, he’s going to be fired. He doesn’t want a federal firing on his record, so he resigns. And we file a lawsuit because there’s a protection under the Civil Rights Act about religious accommodations, that if you’re asked to do something that goes against your faith, you don’t have to do it. The employer must grant your accommodation as long as that accommodation is not a substantial burden against the employer. So you would think that’s pretty good, they have to prove it’s a substantial burden on them not to give you your accommodation.

Well, there was a case about 30 years ago called TWA vs. Hardison that said, “what does the word substantial burden mean? Let’s try to figure out what it means.” And they decided substantial burden means slight inconvenience. So if your employer has a slight inconvenience about granting your accommodation, they can say no. So we went to the Supreme Court and we did something that’s kind of bold, which is, we asked the Supreme Court to admit that they’re wrong and asked them to fix it. That is not an easy ask to make.

And with this court, you know that it’s not a very even court, it’s pretty split. But this case was a 9-0 ruling, saying that the law was wrong, what we’ve done is wrong in TWA, we need to go back to what the law says, which is the employer has to have a substantial burden to deny religious accommodation moving forward. So what’s huge about this is it gives more rights to people in the workplace than they’ve had in probably the last 30 years. The next place that we’re probably going to see this is in types of things like pronouns, of someone being asked to use their pronouns and someone saying, “I have a religious belief that I’m not allowed to do that,” and we think that’s where this will play out next.

Another case, actually, our longest running current case, are the cake bakers in Oregon who their only mistake was opening up a bakery in Oregon. Because when they opened up their bakery, same sex couple comes in, they said, “We can’t give you a custom cake, we’ll sell you anything else here.” Oregon gave them the largest civil fine they’ve ever given out in the history of Oregon, over $150,000, bankrupted their business, and then told them they’re not allowed to speak publicly on their views on marriage.

Obviously, you can’t do that, so we got involved, immediately got an injunction on the speech, and this case has been going on for over 10 years now. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, “Hey, we just had a case like this out of Colorado, maybe try it again, Oregon.” Goes to Oregon, Oregon sits on it for two years, and then says, “Okay, well, the fine was excessive. Here’s $50,000 back. You still lose.” We go back to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court says, “Hey, Oregon, we just, again, had a case about online content providers that’s similar to this. We’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Try it again, Oregon.” So we just argued again at the Oregon Court of Appeals for the third time this past spring, and now we’re going to wait to see what Oregon’s going to do here, to if they’re going to give up, or if they’re going to make us go to the Supreme Court a third time. So we’ll see what will happen in that case.

And then the case that you’re probably familiar with, if you’re familiar with one of our cases, is Coach Kennedy, who was fired for taking a knee at the 50. We’ll give you a little bit of background on Coach Kennedy. He grew up in a tough environment, didn’t really have a father figure, and went to the military, got his life together, met his wife, found faith, and was running one day in his community up in Bremerton, Washington, and the athletic director said, “Hey, have you ever thought about being a volunteer football coach?” And he said, “No, I don’t watch football, I don’t play football. I don’t know any of the rules. But if this is a way for me to serve young men, maybe I’ll think about it.”

So he goes home and he says, “God, if you want me to do this, give me a sign.” So he goes and he prays about it, and turns on the TV, and what’s on TV? “Facing the Giants”. And he goes, “Okay, I think this is my sign.” So, Coach Kennedy does this for years. In “Facing the Giants”, the coach takes a knee, says a prayer. Coach Kennedy does that for years, no issues. After one of the games, one of the opposing coaches goes up to the superintendent and says, “Hey, it’s so cool that your coach does this.” Superintendent had no idea the coach was doing that. Told him he could pray, confronted him and said, “You can pray anywhere you want as long as people can’t see you. So if you want to go into the locker room, if you want to go into a closet, just anywhere where no one can see you pray.” So Coach Kennedy says, “I can’t do that.”

Going into one of his last games, he waits until the kids are doing the fight song, he takes his knee, he says his prayer, and he feels hands on his shoulders, and he goes, “Oh, no, this is my kids. They’re here praying with me.” It’s not his kids, it’s the other team and their coaches that knew what was happening, and they came around him and prayed with him in his last game. So if you see pictures with Coach Kennedy with people praying with him, that’s the picture that you’re seeing.

This then started a seven year legal battle where Coach Kennedy was fired. We went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, “Hey, we need some more facts, try it again.” We went and got more facts, went up to the appellate court. The appellate court said, in their opinion, said, “Maybe Coach Kennedy should go back and read the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, where it talks about not having lofty prayers.” Puts that in the opinion. So we go to the Supreme Court, and the big deal about this case is we’ve never had a case involving – what are the rights of schoolteachers and coaches at the schoolhouse?

Do you suddenly, if you’re a school employee, does that mean you can’t show your faith? So it’s huge, and we go to the Supreme Court, and they rule 6-3, Coach Kennedy had the right to do what he did. He’s not going on first down, taking a knee, and saying, “Hold the game, I’ve got to pray.” The game is over. You have other coaches that are talking to their spouses, they’re texting, they’re off doing whatever they’re doing. So Coach Kennedy is no longer on school time. If you’re not on your school time, you have the right to engage in whatever religious expression you want, and it doesn’t matter who can see you.

So it’s really big for what it means for people in the school area, but it doesn’t stop there, because there’s a precedent behind that case called Lemon, which was decided in the same court as Roe v. Wade. So you know that we’re getting into bad stuff if we’re talking about that same court. So, what the Lemon case decided was, “Hey, we’ve been giving religious freedom too much of a free pass. We need to really crack down here. Any time that there’s government and religion, we need to be strict on it. There needs to be a separation of church and state that is not found anywhere in our constitution. We’re going to put that into law here, though, in Lemon. And we’re going to allow private citizens to sue if they’re upset about religious imagery, like 10 Commandments, monuments, and those kind of things.” One of the most harmful cases on religious freedom we’ve had probably ever in the history of the U.S.

So about three years ago, we had a case for this cross in Bladensburg, VA, that was for the fallen soldiers of World War I in the area. And it was on private land, but the government needed to expand the highway, so they kept it up. Atheist drives by and says, “I’m offended by the cross, take it down.” Well, one of the big things about this case is it’s in the same area as Arlington National Cemetery. So if this cross goes down, what happens to every cross in Arlington National Cemetery? So we win the case seven to two, the cross gets to stand, but 5-4, they say, “Hey, we don’t really like this Lemon decision. We’re choosing not to follow Lemon today.” We go, “Well, that’s interesting.”

So we get back to the Coach Kennedy case and we say, “Should we make a Lemon argument?” And we say, “Hey, this case is so important for what it means for the rights of our education system, we can’t make a Lemon argument,” so we don’t make it. The judges then decide to make it for us. In oral arguments, they start saying, “Didn’t we decide that we don’t like Lemon? Why are we here? This is just a government and religion intersection. The only reason we’re here is because of Lemon.” So we get the opinion back, we get the opinion back, and it’s 6-3, Coach Kennedy wins, but it’s also 6-3, we want to make it clear, as of today, Lemon is no longer good law.

And what is the replacement test? What did the founders intend for our First Amendment to mean? That’s the replacement test. So the crazy thing, and it’s hard to believe, but you now have more religious freedom sitting in your chair today than you’ve ever had in your lifetime, and that possibly your parents ever had in your lifetime, because of this case.

Introducing Tommy Nelson

Nathan Jones: The most encouraging aspect of Nathan Shackelford’s presentation was not merely the information he presented, highlighting both the challenges and the victories and arenas, including Education, Churches, the Military, and individual Religious Liberty. It was even more thrilling to see many young people among our conference attendees approach Nathan after his session to ask how they could get involved in standing for Truth in our wayward world.

Tim Moore: I agree. I listened to several exchange contact information with Nathan and made it clear that they want to get plugged into the work First Liberty is doing. Our nation is in freefall, but for the time being, the freedoms that are enshrined in–or actually recognized by–our Constitution are still available to us. That is why we can gather and hold an annual Bible Prophecy Conference. It’s why we can broadcast this Christ in Prophecy television program and share the Good News through Christ in Prophecy Radio. It is why all of you can gather regularly with fellow believers to worship the Lord and to encourage one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Nathan Jones: I think the impact of the law in our system of government is why some Christians are drawn to serve the Lord in that arena. Well, Tim, you considered a career in law for a while, didn’t you?

Tim Moore: Yes, I’ve always enjoyed deliberation and debate. Before I served in the Kentucky legislature, I actually considered pursuing a law degree, and even without it, I became very adept at digesting the legalese and various bills that we voted on.

You know, lawyer jokes aside, I am grateful that God calls Christians to that arena to advocate for godly values, biblical principles, and the freedoms we cherish as followers of Christ. Those may be taken away someday, but we must fight to protect what has been handed down to us.

Nathan Jones: And speaking of that, our next speaker addressed the church’s role in standing firm on the faith once and for all handed down to the saints.

Tim Moore: Tommy Nelson is the pastor of Denton Bible Church. I asked him to speak as a pastor to living for Christ in the midst of a nation in freefall. He made clear applications from the Jewish experience to Christians today. Our churches should impact our communities far beyond their own four walls, binding up the wounded, strengthening the weary, and encouraging the anxious–even as they boldly proclaim the Gospel.

Tommy Nelson’s Presentation

Tim said to me, Tim Moore says to me, “Could you speak to us about how to live in a country that is in freefall?” And I said to Tim Moore, says I, “You know, Tim, that’s been asked before in Ezekiel.” He says, “Behold, we are rotting away in our iniquities. How should we then live? How should we survive in the world that we’re in?” How many of you have ever read the book by Francis Schaeffer of the same title? “How Should We Then Live?” was taken from that text in Ezekiel. We are rotting away in our sins. What should we do as God’s people? Schaeffer in ’73 watched the world begin to plummet, and he wrote that book.

Y’all ever heard of a guy named Os Guinness? He wrote the book “Dust of Death” with the counterculture movement, that we have cut the tether from the mothership. We’re freefalling. When you get rid of God, you get rid of all the corresponding ideas like sexuality, marriage, the home, government, right/wrong, peace in the cities, violence. When you get rid of God, everything else comes apart.

Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheist, said it rightly. He said, “Where there is no absolute by which to judge, all points of life are meaningless.” If you don’t have God, you don’t have man, you don’t have society, you don’t have government, you don’t have sexuality, you don’t have marriage, you don’t have child rearing. Once you cut loose from God, it’s just a matter of time before you quit living on the echo of morality and you find yourself in California…you find yourself in the mess that we’re in right now. All right. Welcome to Texas.

And so what I want to do with you is to look at the forerunners of the Christian Church. The forerunners of the Christian Church were the Jews of the exile. From 606 BC to 586, Babylon deported them to Babylon. Then after them came Persia. After Persia came Greece. After Greece came Rome. And so when you jump from Malachi to Matthew over that 400 year period, Israel looks nothing like they used to look. The Jews of the exile form the standard of biblical heroes.

Think for just a moment. Who are the Jews of the exile? The High Priest Joshua, Zerubbabel, Joseph, Ezra, and Joseph was pre-exile, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah. Those are all the people you see in your children’s book of children’s stories, of Bible stories. They’re the heroes, and they are the fetal sack that morphs into what the Christian Church will be.

As a matter of fact, by the end of the Old Testament, you never see the word synagogue. Synagogue was invented in the intertestamental period, some say by Ezra, because Israel was surrounded by the pagans and they had to have a way to keep their identity, their language, their morality together. They had to be able to bind what Heaven bound, and to loose what Heaven loosed.

And so you have the corporate worship, the synagogue, of Israel, that when Christ comes, morphs into what we call the local church and the local assembly. It’s like the exilic Jew was like the fetal sack by which the church would be conceived in. When you look at your non-Christian life, how many of you can go back and look at things God did with you before you were saved that formed the womb by which you would be converted in? It happened to me. And so, just let me run through just a second, what were the elements of the exilic Jew, and see if it sounds familiar to you.

Number one, they are aliens in a hostile world. Does that sound familiar? “I urge you as strangers and aliens,” said Peter. “Abstain from the fleshly lusts that wage war against your soul.”

The exilic Jew was proven through fire and through trial. Is that true about us? We never see idolatry in Israel again after the exile. They got purified. And so trial, it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. That’s why we don’t go through the Tribulation, the Judgment of God, because we’re going through our judgment right now and finding out who’s who.

Thirdly, the exilic Jew maintain their identity and their devotion by a local assembly. The same as us.

Number four, the suffering Jew was elevated in his culture because of the excellence of his life. Joseph got elevated. Abraham was called a mighty prince, surrounded by the Canaanites. Laban said, “I want Jacob working for me.” Daniel got elevated. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Esther, Mordecai. Because of the excellence of their life, the unbelieving world said, “We’ve got to have this guy with us.” That’s what we should look like.

Number five, the exilic Jew was targeted by their enemies as being dangerous. Even though they’re exilic, their laws are not our laws, their ways are not our ways. Remember the brilliance of Pharaoh? These people are multiplying. They’re going to raise up and go against us, and our enemies will join with them. The smartest thing we can do is get rid of God’s people. Can that ignorance still continue? The smartest thing we can do is to get rid of the Jew. Well, you want a great quote right here. Isaiah 5 says this. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” You know what one theologian said? That pagan men always call evil good. And then in the gap that is raised up and good men speak out, they will call a good thing evil. In other words, I believe that they’re going to say that homosexuality is okay, that cultural Marxism is okay, wokeism. And not only do I think it’s okay, but I refuse to let you have the right to say it isn’t okay. You’re going to say what I want you to say. If you’re going to have communism, you got to get rid of the Christians. If you’re going to have Chairman Mao, you’ve got to get rid of the Christians. Going to have Castro, you got to get rid of the Christians. And so woe to those who call evil good. But then we’re going to say to the Christian, like they said to Lot, “My brothers, do not act wickedly and do this thing.” “This man came in as an alien. Already he is judging us. We’ll do to you worse than we did to them.” You will not tell me what I cannot do. Does this sound familiar?

Number six, the Jew was uncompromising even until death. He would excel and be a blessing to his culture until he was asked to cross the line, and he was willing to die before he would deny his God.

The seventh thing, they were all victorious because of God’s mercies in the fire, and in the lions den, and with Haman’s gallows. God intervened and took care of them.

Also, they rebuilt the temple of God, Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest, they rebuilt the Temple of God to be a glory in the midst of their land. Are we in the midst of temple building right now? It’s called the local church, the universal body of Christ. We’re building it.

And the ninth thing is they knew how the thing would end. They had prophecy. Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, the most prophetic Messianic prophetic book in the Old Testament, verse for verse, is Zechariah, when they were in the toughest times to know that someday, the Messiah was going to come, and the Temple would be exalted in that day. And so we have prophecy. In Daniel’s prophecy, chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 7, chapter 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, are all about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. So we have encouragement because we know who’s going to win this thing. Amen!

I read ahead. We’re going to win!

Conclusion

Nathan Jones: We win! Tommy Nelson read the end of the same Book that Mike Huckabee did.

Tim Moore: We need to as well, and we need to remind each other of all the promises of God that await those who are His. Sometimes it’s easy to get swept up in the anxieties of the moment, especially in an election year! But as French writer Jean-Baptiste Karr wrote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The online “Wiktionary” interprets this to mean that seemingly turbulent changes do not affect reality on a deeper level other than cement the status quo. Wiktionary goes on to say, “A change of heart must accompany experience before lasting change occurs.”

Nathan Jones: And that is exactly what we preach. Only by putting our trust in Christ, allowing Him to remove our heart of stone, can we be changed. Tommy cited Ezekiel. God’s promise to the house of Israel was that He will give them a new heart and a new spirit, and that is what He does for everyone who follows Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Well, next week, we’ll pick up speed with portions of what we shared by David Reagan, David Bowen, and me.

Tim Moore: We hope you’ll join us. Until then…Godspeed!

End of Program