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American Thought Leaders
One Key Fact About America’s Founding That Isn’t Taught Anymore | Eric Metaxas
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We've really been living at a time where people act as though you can get the liberties that we have had in America for 250 years without reference to God. It's some kind of Enlightenment, French Enlightenment project. That's simply not true.
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Eric Metaxas is a prominent commentator, host, and author of several dozen books.
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Unless we, the people, actually govern ourselves because we're moral, we're people of virtue, it doesn't work to be free to govern ourselves. We have to govern ourselves.
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His latest book is titled the Birth of the Greatest Nation. In the history of the world, there
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will always be people who don't give a darn. So the question is, are there enough people who actually believe in something to do something or not?
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I actually find quite a few controversial things in your book. This is American Thought Leaders. American. And I'm Jania Kelik. Eric Metaxas. Such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
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My pleasure. Thank you.
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Congratulations on the book Revolution. Well, tell me, what would you say is the most controversial thing that finds itself in this book on the American Revolution?
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Well, I guess it depends how you want to phrase it. I would say that this may be controversial, but it's absolutely unavoidable and inarguable, ultimately not debatable, is that all of the founders, most people don't seem to know this because there's been a real kind of secularist push in our lifetimes. But all of the men of the revolution understood that this sacred cause, as they called it, was inextricably intertwined with the God of the Bible. That's something that I didn't really learn in school. You really hardly ever hear it in our culture now. But when I did the research, and I did a lot of research, I read a lot of books. It is absolutely undebatable that that's how they saw it. So. So even if we don't see it that way or somebody doesn't see it that way, you have to acknowledge that they saw it that way. And you have to understand why would that be? And I think I've come to see it that way myself. But we've really been living at a time where people act as though you can get the liberties that we have had in America for 250 years without reference to God. It's some kind of Enlightenment, French Enlightenment project. That's simply not true. And once I did the research, I thought, I never dreamt it would be so crystal clear, but it's just a fact. And I think we have a kind of an Obligation to know that and to know that history and to know how the men who gave us this revolution, how they saw it. But I think that that's it becomes unavoidable.
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Well, there's that famous line, is it John Adams about it has, it can only work for a moral people. Maybe you know, the exact citation.
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Well, yeah, it's been quoted a million times and there are many other similar quotes from other members of that generation. I mean, he says that, you know, our Constitution only works for a moral and religious citizenry or something like that. And he basically is making clear that there, unless the people, we, the people actually govern ourselves because we're moral, we're people of virtue, it doesn't work. The Constitution, he says something like, you know, that it simply doesn't have the ability to force us. And that's the conundrum or the paradox of freedom is that to be free to govern ourselves, we have to govern ourselves. And so what does it mean? How do I govern myself? Well, if I'm a person of virtue, if I have an opportunity to steal, I don't steal because it's wrong. I believe it's wrong. And so the founders saw that if people believe in God or a higher power, they have the ability to do the right thing. And they don't need the government to force them to do the right thing, to threaten them to do the right thing. This was at the heart of why the men of that generation believed it would be possible to have self government because they saw a population that was very Christian, very religious and therefore very virtuous. They saw this because of the second, first Great Awakening. Really Christian culture was everywhere and they thought it's possible to do this. And they knew apart from that, how do you get people to govern themselves? How do you not, you know, how do you not have a big government forcing them to behave? That really was, it was everywhere. So that's the famous quote from John Adams. But there are so many, they all really understood this.
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Something strikes me here, okay, something I think pretty fascinating. Obviously all of them were very serious about their faith. All the people that came to America did so because they basically stood for something. In fact, they were challenging the existing religious order right back home. That's interesting, isn't it? In itself? Well, it's fascinating because there were multiple different groups. So on the one hand everybody had deep convictions. On the other hand they had different deep convictions in many ways.
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Well, not that different. This is what's interesting to me is that because of the Reformation, suddenly you Have a host of people in Europe, different communities that say, I want to worship God this way. Now, it was all Christian. Okay. This is not anything beyond that. But it was different kinds of Christian, whether it's Quakers or Anabaptists or, you know, but huge variation.
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Yeah. Anabaptists versus Calvinists, for example. I mean, it's quite different. Right?
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But I guess, but the point is that it wasn't, it didn't go beyond Christian faith. But the point is that their understanding of Christian faith, suddenly, you know, let's say you're a Puritan, you're living in England, and, and King James I says, you know, if you don't toe the line with the Church of England, we will crush you, we'll persecute you, we'll throw you in prison, we're going to make you suffer. Because we don't believe in religious liberty. We believe that we're the king, we have the power, and we will crush you. So if you're a dissenter, you thought, this is bad. What do we do? So they suffered. And then eventually some of them were able to escape to, to Holland. Right? So a number of the group that eventually comes across in the Mayflower, you know, they spend a few years in Holland, but there were a number of these groups, they're being persecuted and they say, we believe we have a duty to worship God in the way that we see, you know, from what the Bible says. And we've come to these convictions. And so all of these groups, as you're saying, realize, ah, there is a continent. We didn't know it was there a hundred years ago, but now we know it's there and we can get there. Let's go there. And so you have all these different groups coming over in the, in the 17th century because they want to effectively be left alone to have a Christian community. And so the classic case is the Massachusetts, the Plymouth, we call them the Pilgrims, right? And then 10 years later, John Winthrop on the Arbela, they come over and they found the Massachusetts Bay Colony and they want to govern themselves. And so fast forward 100 years, all of the descendants of all these groups have effectively been governing themselves up and down the 13 colonies for like 100 years they've been doing it. England has not bothered them very much. And then where the book starts is suddenly in, let's say, 1763, the British win the French and Indian War. So they get big chunks of Canada and they've got. Their empire is much bigger, and it costs them a lot of money. And they say, you know what? Now we've got this big empire, we gotta pay for it. Now it's time to get serious. So we're gonna make the colonists pay their fair share because we've won all this territory, and they need to, you know, we did it for them. Not true, but that was the theory. So they decide to do what had never been done before and to say to all these colonists, you need to pay all these taxes. And the colonists, which I find this so fascinating, Jan, is that they really had principles and convictions about how are we supposed to govern ourselves? And who has the right to tell me that I need to pay you money? You know, are you threatening me or is this legitimate? And so they pushed back way harder than Parliament, and the king thought that they would. So suddenly you have this conflict about who has the right to tell me to pay money or whatever. We govern ourselves. We tax ourselves, you know, if I want a road, and we get together and we pay and we get a road or we defend ourselves. But suddenly, now this foreign power effectively is saying, oh, no, you're under us. And so it's an amazing thing that because of this religious background, they had, number one, these convictions about to whom they answer. It's not the state, it's not the government. It's to God and to each other in this covenant that they have with God and with each other. And they were not going to roll over just because the most powerful empire in the world had the power. They thought, no, we. We have God on our side. So that was part of the DNA of most of these colonies, but it was also fanned into flames. In other words, it had been kind of, I would say, to some extent, latent for a number of decades. But then you get the first great awakening, which really brings a lot of those in the colonies back to this kind of vibrant faith that. That their forefathers had a couple of centuries. So it really is kind of amazing to see how it comes together.
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And you describe this historic trial. Was it in 1761? That's what comes to my mind, anyway, where. I mean, before the Revolution, the principles are laid out. Well,
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there are a number of moments, so it's not like it happens all at once, but John Adams. And I start my book with this. John Adams, years later, says the opening scene of the revolution I start in chapter one for him, happened in a Boston courtroom in 1761, where James Otis Jr. Who's an important figure in the beginning of the book, he was arguing against what they call the writs of assistance. And this is just, you know, basically the king in England says that, you know, if we want to search your home or whatever, you know, we can just write a writ of assistance and they can just go in. They don't even have to tell you why they're going into your home. They don't have to tell you what they're looking for. They just have the right. And people like James Otis Jr. Said, oh, no, you don't. A man's house is his castle. We have rights as British citizens. You can't just come in. And so that for John Adams, James Otis Jr. Arguing this against the writs of assistance in Court in 1761, he said, that was the moment that in a sense, these ideas go head to head with England's power. And so not a lot of people would point to that. But John Adams, who was in a position to know, he goes, that was the opening scene of the revolution. And he says that day the child independence was born. So he really sees it as happening right at that moment. And then, of course, two years later, because of the victory of the French and Indian War, you know, Great Britain decides, okay, you know, we're going to lay some taxes on you, and the sugar tax and the stamp tax. And then it really picks up. But for John Adams, it happened in that courtroom on that day. He was 25 years old, single man, watching this, and he just thought, I'm watching something that's more than, you know, a simple court case.
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It's incredible. You know, you take us kind of, you know, step by step through these sort of opening salvos, if you will. Yeah, but I actually find quite a few controversial things in your book. Okay, so one of them, and this is one of them, is that it's the only revolution that ever worked. It's the only real revolution, actually. I think that's what you say, right?
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No, that is sort of. Yes. That's at least. That's debatable. I say the reason the book is called Revolution and not the American Revolution is because I say basically, there was never a revolution that can compare to it. I mean, when you look at the Bolshevik revolution or the French Revolution, they're miserable failures. Everything they promised, they did not deliver. So they're political revolution. You can call them political revolutions, but they don't deliver. This is the only revolution that actually stunningly succeeds. And why is that? Because they very wisely understood that it's not just about throwing off the chains of authoritarianism. Once you do that, you then need to say okay, so we're not being governed by those people that we hate. How are we going to govern ourselves? The men of the American Revolution understood we can only govern ourselves if we bow to God's authority. And John, sorry, Samuel Adams, on August 1, 1776. So it's the day before they all sign the official Declaration of independence. That was August 2nd in Independence Hall. The day before he gives a speech or sermon, and he has the line. He says, we have this day restored the sovereign capital S. In other words, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are looking directly to God as our king. We've thrown off the fake king, the false king, the monarch, and we're looking to the one true king. And so it's really because of that that it worked. And then when you see in the French Revolution, they said, well, we don't need a king, we don't need God, we don't need anything. And it turns into a horrifl. Horrifying bloodbath. So, you know, that's the basic idea of why I say this is the one revolution, that it changed everything and it succeeded.
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Well, so another thing that you say, I think that is also, I would say, very controversial to me. You say that we need to continue the revolution, have perpetual. Almost like you're saying we perpetual revolution. And that reminds me of actually something that the Bolsheviks might say.
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Well, not when I say revolution, I don't mean the war, because we call the war the revolution. But John Adams says there's a revolution before the revolution, and that is this revolution of ideas of how we think, and so on and so forth. And then Benjamin Rush refers to the revolution after the revolution. In other words, if we don't continue living out these ideals and take them seriously and attend to them, in a sense, it goes away. It's the natural course of things is for us to be governed by an authoritarian government or by authoritarian bureaucracy. So to continue the revolution doesn't mean to continue the war, because by God's grace, that ended in 1783. But Benjamin Rush and others said, this is something that we have to understand. We have to keep it alive. Nobody understood it better than Abraham Lincoln. He gives a speech. I don't reference it in this book, but he gives a speech to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield around 1838. He's a very young man, 29 years old or 28 years old. And he talks about this, that already in 1838, the men of the revolution are dying out and we're forgetting this. And he says that the silent artillery of time, just the passage of time, we're going to drift away from this and lose this. And it is vital that we educate ourselves. And so really what it boils down to is, and it's why I wrote the book, we have to know our history. Lincoln says that. And many have said that if you don't know, just evaporates. You've got to continue, in a sense, the principles of the revolution. And you can think even of Martin Luther King Jr. Talking about to be. I mean, Lincoln is saying by being true to that revolution, we have to continue the revolution by abolishing slavery, because that's in the DNA of we were conceived in liberty, and so now we have to take care of that. So we've got to do this next thing. And. And Dr. King, in giving his speech, talking about the founding documents being a promissory note, in other words, we have more to do. So the question is, how are we faithful to the revolution? Or what have we missed? Or what have we allowed to slide? And I guess I would say by allowing government to grow and become bloated and out of touch with we the people. That's another way. So. So it can mean many things, but I didn't mean war, revolution. I mean revolution in a different sense.
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Did you by any chance catch any of Clarence Thomas, commencement speech at the University of Texas, Austin?
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Just bits of it, but I know that he said similar things only because they're true. It's not like, you know, he thought of it or I thought of it, or these things are just. They're there but much forgotten.
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One of the things he talks about is, you know, sort of the rise of progressivism in the early 1900s. And how. And he says. Well, in some ways, he says that you have these two systems that are opposing now and that they can't, and it's not possible for the two to coexist forever. What's your view?
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Oh, I mean, that's a fact. It's like, you know, first of all, Lincoln says, you know, Lincoln is quoting Jesus when he says a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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How is that a house divided against itself?
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Well, in other words, if you have people not buying into these basic ideas, you know, you can have a few people, but at some point, if most Americans don't buy into these ideas, freedom goes away. I mean, the Marxist view of the world is dramatically opposed to the American view of the world.
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And you equate progressivism with Marxism?
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Ultimately, yes. In other words, when we say progressivism you know, that can mean a lot of things. But I'm saying that we've watched it through the, through the decades become cultural Marxism. I mean, what, you know, when we talk about progressivism, maybe at another time we can quibble, but it's not yet rising to the level of an existential crisis. But when you have many Americans opposed to the ideas of our founding documents, you think, well then what's going to hold us together? What's going to keep us free? So unless I'm misreading what you're saying, I think that's what I think it's because there was a consensus in America that, you know, I often joke around that, you know, the Democrats are. No, it's no longer like Dick Gephardt and Dukakis and Gary Hart and Tip o'. Neill. I mean, we're now dealing with proponents of socialism and Marxism. And that's a wholethat's another level. I mean, if we're talking about Tip o' Neill's idea of the Democratic Party or John F. Kennedy's view of the Democratic Party, that's radically different. There was a great consensus in both parties that I think has largely gone away. We're dealing with something now. We're seeing what I would say are the fruits of, of progressivism and we're kind of seeing it for what it is. And the Democratic Party in the day of John F. Kennedy or Truman, it really was not anywhere near that.
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I mean the idea was right perhaps back in the day, unless you have it, you view it differently, that it's a complex society. We need these experts to basically be the intermediaries to understand the system and manage it.
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And sort of, to me that's a slippery slope. Like yes, obviously I don't need to be like a traffic engineer or I don't need to know how to design an aircraft carrier or how to plan a multi front war. We farm those things out. But at the end of the day, our government is supposed to be responsive to we the people, supposed to answer to we the people. And I think that if you're not careful, and I do think this has happened over time, you start acting like, well, they're the government and they're the professionals and I'm just over here mining my own business. And you think, no, no, no, no, that's not the way it works. If you want liberty, you are the government, we the people are the government and we elect people. And it takes a little work to know how should things work. Whom should I elect? Whom should I work against electing that really matters? And if you don't take a role in that, if enough Americans don't take that seriously and take a role in that, then we are being already governed by others. And that's effectively been happening in this country where the government's so big and so out of touch and it's a, it's, it's a bureaucratic class that is there no matter who is elected. That's how I think we've gotten into the mess that we've been in the last number of decades.
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So reading your book, I can't help but notice, and I mean I'll include myself in this, that a lot of these things that the founders understood, in some cases understood just as obviously we don't even know those things that well.
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Look, that's kind of the point of my writing the book. I said we need to know this. This is not optional like every American needs. You know, this is on the test. This is not like it might be on the test. These are the basics and we are going to be tested and tried as a people. We need to know what we believe. So not everybody needs to know every little thing. But to be an American citizen, we need to know the basics. And that's why I felt this compulsion to write a one volume story that kind of puts it all out there because in my lifetime I've seen this not be taught in schools. This was de rigueur in another generation. If you took a microphone around any main street in America in 1960 and asked who are the sons of Liberty and who is Patrick Henry and who. Everyone knew this just as everyone today knows whatever nonsense we know from the world of entertainment. Everybody knows this or that. Everybody knew this. This is part of the American culture. And we are not really able to be a free people unless we take that seriously. And I do think we've kind of, we've kind of farmed it out. I mean, Buckley, the classic line is William Buckley. William F. Buckley said that he would rather be governed by the first 300 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard College. In other words, the faculty of Harvard College are out of touch intellectuals. The first 300 people in the Boston phone book. These are people that have to pay the bills and have to run a business or how to. They, they're forced to know how the world works to some extent. And we've kind of allowed, you know, community organizers and intellectuals in a sense to, to more and more govern us. And they are out of touch. I mean you see it far more dramatically in the EU that there's this kind of bureaucratic class that they're not, they're out of touch with the concerns of the average, you know, citizen in Europe. And that's, that is dangerous, I would say.
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And community organizers though, isn't this the, you know, isn't this the amazing thing about America is people getting together around shared ideas and figuring out how to, how to solve the problem together, building institutions around solving those problems.
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When you say community organization, I'm not being sarcastic.
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You're talking about something very sarcastic.
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I'm only talking about a certain president. But what I mean is people that aren't, that haven't had regular jobs, that haven't run businesses kind of more and more we've seen those kinds of figures take power and you realize that it doesn't go as well and that these expert, the expert class, the so called experts, they won't ultimately serve us well. They haven't served us well. And I think that that's why Buckley's famous line, he's like the so called elites, they're out of touch. But we've been sold this idea that they know better. You're just a, you know, you're just a shoemaker, you're just a shopkeeper. What do you know? And self government requires average people to be a part of the government. That's the idea. We the people, we are the government. And the moment we lose touch with the government and think it's them versus us, we are no longer the government. And then you know, you've ceased to be self governing, which is to say you've ceased to be free.
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So where do you stand when it comes to. Well, let me ask the question differently. There's some people who would agree with many of the things that you said. Well, you say, well we've actually kind of crossed this Rubicon. People don't actually know these things. They're actually uninterested. They're interested in the bright shiny object, not in knowing what the founders insights were and so forth. And actually. So this is why America is inexorably in decline and we need, we need something else. And because we're just totally out of touch with that. Just as you say, how do you respond to those?
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Well, there will always be people who don't give a darn. They existed in the revolutionary generation. They were Tories or they were people said I just don't want to even take sides, just tell me who's going to win And I'll side with them. These are people with no principles. These are people. I mean, I wrote about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There were people like that in Germany. Who's going to win? I don't really care about, you know, whether the Jews are butchered in camps or whatever. I can't be bothered. I just want to keep my job. And, you know, there are always going to be people like that. So the question is, are there enough people who actually believe in something to do something or not? And so I think we can always depress ourselves by focusing on the people who don't care. They're just concerned with the bright, you know, the shiny object or whatever it is, or how can I get what's coming to me? Those people existed, and this is fascinating in the research of the book, you realize they were there in the revolution, but they were enough, just enough people who really did care, who were willing to fight for what they thought was right and true and just. And we call them heroes, right? But they just felt we're just doing our job. We have to do this because our children and our grandchildren are depending on us. This is not just some intellectual idea that if I want my children and grandchildren to be enslaved, then I'll do nothing. And so that really has always been the case. And so I think part of writing this book is to say, look at some of these wonderful people that risked everything because they knew this is right and true. And those who did nothing get the benefit of their fight and their suffering. And I think, you know, part of writing the book is to say to us today, don't be part of that group that does nothing and that reaps the benefit. Understand that we have a duty to. To do something. We have a duty to try to be a part of, you know, the revolution after the revolution, to say, I'm going to fight for what is right and true. I'm going to advocate. I'm going to do my best. I'm not going to do nothing. And I think that when you do that, you create a culture where people innately sense, yeah, it is the right thing to do. I should be involved. I shouldn't just be sitting back. But there were plenty of those sitting around during the revolutionary era, but thank goodness, not enough to cede everything over to the authoritarian British. I mean, in the end, obviously, we
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know who won something that I've only recently fully become aware of through one of our actually major columnists. Jeffrey Tucker writes six times a week for us, astonishingly, but he's deeply into these questions, has a new book actually out about, again, sort of the spirit of America, if you will. And so the Declaration of Independence, it wasn't about how to do government, it was about the purpose of government, which is just. That's fascinating. Right? That was really drawing a line. I mean, again, it's kind of obvious the moment that you say it. Yeah, but how many of us knew that? I mean, I'm Canadian, so I guess I have an excuse.
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Well, yes, I think that nothing is more important than this idea of what is government? Why does government exist? Who is government? What is my role? I mean, this is basic stuff. And when you start thinking. Thomas Paine writes about it brilliantly. And I write a chapter on his brilliant, extraordinary pamphlet, Common Sense. I don't think there was any writing ever more powerful in changing the world than that 47 page pamphlet. But he talks about, you know, what is the role of government. Now, others have spoken of it before him, but he puts it in a kind of common language that anybody can understand. And it's not complicated. And, you know, we say it in the Declaration, our rights come from God. God created us equal in his image. And so government exists to protect those rights because there are always going to be challenges. Somebody's going to say, I have more power than you do. I want what you have. I'm going to take it from you. Government exists to make it difficult for people to rob each other of their liberties or of their property or that kind of thing. But this is basic civics. Every single American should know this because we're all participating in the system. And if we don't know it, we're not going to elect people that understand this. And there are many senators today who don't have a clue about the most basic stuff. I mean, the other day I was almost laughing out loud. I was interviewed by National Public Radio,
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and
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the young woman journalist said, did you know that Pete Hegseth, who's speaking at this event you're speaking at, he believes their rights come from God? You know, she sort of said it cringing. And I thought, I don't think that idea is original.
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With Pete Hegseth, you should have said, do you know who I am?
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No, it's so. But it's comical because you think everybody in America used to know that our rights come from God. That's the whole basis of everything. And here you have a journalist who seems to think of this as some fringe idea. So you think, okay, so if our rights don't come from God, where do you think they come from. Does the government dole them out as favors? Then you can maybe you want to live in China.
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That's the old system, right?
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Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. That's corrupt and it's wrong. And we fought a revolution. I should write a book about it. We fought a revolution because we said that's wrong. And our rights really do come from God. But it is a dramatic idea in world history, which is one of the reasons I say that our revolution is such a big deal. Because, you know, it took until 1776 for this nation to come into being. It's not like it happened many times before. It didn't.
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There are quite a number of religions now in America. Yes. And you know, and a lot of deeply convicted people in those faiths and many who are not as well, of course, and many who are agnostic or atheist. But so, you know, at the beginning of our conversation you talked about how, I mean, of course they were a Christian. Like that's kind of, to me, that's kind of obvious. Right. Because that's why they came here. Right?
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Yeah.
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Or at least they're, in some cases they're. But how does that work for a more. Let's see, a more. I use this word in the very precise, exact meaning that it has a more diverse society.
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Well, this is, to me, the beauty of the American Revolution is that they were forced to think about this because for them we can kind of mock the diversity of times. Well, they're all Christians. Well, they didn't see it that way. I mean, a Church of England Christian was dramatically different from a Quaker. They persecuted the Quakers.
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Right, exactly.
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A
Bitterly, brutally, and persecuted the Congregationalists, of whom Samuel Adams was one. I mean, it was bitter. And so they were forced, I think in part by the French Enlightenment, which was very secular, very anti clerical. They were forced to think more deeply about, okay, what do we all really believe? What does the Bible really teach? And what came out of that was they thought, well, the one thing that we all can agree on is this idea of religious liberty, that you cannot coerce faith, you cannot coerce religion. If you convert by the sword, you are doing something antithetical to the teachings of the Bible. Religion has to be free. Now there are plenty of examples in the case of the Christian church where they didn't yet get that, but by 1770s they get it. And that's amazing to me. And so they thought. So we've got this paradox because we believe that what the Bible says is true and that the God of the Bible gives us certain inalienable rights just by dint of being born. But we also believe that if you don't believe that, we won't persecute you. You can be a good citizen if you don't believe what I believe. And we will allow you that freedom. We have religious liberty, and we believe that religious liberty comes out of Christian faith. That's, to me, an extraordinary paradox that they said faith has to be free. And so if you want to be an agnostic or an atheist, as Thomas Paine becomes, or you're Jewish or Muslim or whatever you are, it's a free country. And you can do that up to a point. Now, when I say up to a point, you know, if somebody says my religion is, you know, killing people who disagree with me, well, we say, well, religious liberty doesn't extend to. You can kill people who disagree with you or doesn't. You know, there are limits. Every liberty is going to be limited. We know that free speech, you know, the Supreme Court says, yeah, you don't have permission to scream fire in a crowded theater. You know, that there are limits. But that's, to me, the genius of the founders is that they were able to assert these ideas. And at the heart of these ideas is the idea that we can't force people to believe these ideas. That's really something that is beautiful and fragile. And it's one of the reasons, I think, that everybody needs to understand these things, because you can't have a civil society unless everybody gets that idea. And I think mostly in America, we've gotten that idea until fairly recently. I think that these ideas are being pushed out. And I think it's important that we, you know, reassert them and debate them and understand them, because you cannot have the free society that we've been privileged to have without most Americans understanding that
- [38:26]
B
the right to conscience, the right to believe what you want to believe,
- [38:32]
A
I
- [38:32]
B
think it's our fundamental right. And I believe this actually before I really understood as much as I do today about the founding, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the amendments, and so, you know, epoch times. We were actually founded to challenge a really big narrative. That narrative was that China was liberalizing, right? And we knew it wasn't. Actually, it was very clear we knew it wasn't because what we call the First Amendment here, right. They were very specifically, they were literally killing people for exercising what we call the First Amendment here, right? So that can't be. That's kind of a deal breaker. You're not liberalizing. If people can't assemble, speak, believe what they want to believe. Right. And I find it fascinating that this is, in a way a difficult concept or has become somehow a difficult concept.
- [39:29]
A
Well, yeah, it can be depressing when you think about it, because we, you know, we've known this for, you know, for centuries now, or we should have known this. I mean, the west has known this. It comes, I will say it again, it comes out of the Bible. You see it with Martin Luther. I mean, I wrote a biography of Martin Luther. When he says, you know, here I stand, I can do no other. He's basically saying, look, I believe this. My conscience leads me to believe what I believe, and I have no choice. I can't just back down because you're bullying me. And so that idea, I would say, comes out of the Bible. Now, the thing is, even if you don't know that it comes out of the Bible, it's still true. In other words, you know, I could argue that, well, you know, the God of the Bible says that one plus one equals two, but you may never heard of the God of the Bible and you know, that one plus one equals two. Truth is truth. And I would also argue that because we're created by the God of the Bible in his image, everyone, whether they're conscious of it or not, innately knows these things or that we have the ability innately to know these things. I mean, Socrates, who was certainly not a Christian, innately knew that there seems to be this thing called the truth. And if I pursue it, I think I can find it. And he spent his life doing that
- [40:46]
B
one way that's been described as a natural law, for example. Right. You think that's findable?
- [40:54]
A
Well, I think yes. And I think. I mean, I would argue that it's God's will that we look for it and that we care about it. There are some people that don't. But I do think that truth is. Is true for everybody. It's not a parochial thing. And I would argue that anybody who's interested in truth genuinely will find it, that it's God's will that we find truth, that we seek for truth, but we have to do it with honest hearts. Because there are always going to be people that throw terms around like truth, or just as China throws terms around like, you know, we're having a. We're opening things up and they're doing no such thing. They're just giving the appearance of it to shut someone up. But in fact, they're doing what they're doing. So. But, you know, if our hearts, if we're honestly looking for truth, I think that because of how God has made us, that we will move in that direction.
- [42:00]
B
So you've called our current time period the third existential crisis.
- [42:05]
A
Yes.
- [42:06]
B
So facing the west, what were the first two and what makes this moment, in your opinion, so uniquely dangerous?
- [42:15]
A
I don't say facing the West. I say in American history, the first existential crisis is the revolution, of course. The second is the Civil War. And the third, I think for the first time since the Civil War, we have in the last few years been facing the loss forever of liberty. I mean, if you go back to 1980, you go back, there's always been contests of ideas and ideological conflicts, but it's never been existential. It was existential in the revolution. If they didn't win, it's over. They become enslaved by the British effectively. And they knew that in the Civil War, if the union doesn't win, whatever we had won in the revolution effectively goes away. I think because of the threat of globalism, Marxism, and now Islamo Fascism, we, if we don'tif we're not awake to these threats, and if we're not awake to the answer, what I would see as the answer to these threats, we can lose everything. I mean, you know, it's not. I didn't think I'd ever live to see it, but in the last number of years under the Biden administration, I was staggered by, because of the ignorance of many Americans to what our liberties are and how things work, they seemed all too willing to maybe to say, well, whatever, I'll go along with it. Just as I've written about the Germans, many Germans in Germany just said, I'm just going to go along with it. I don't want any trouble. I just want to be able to keep my job and I don't want to be demonized by anyone. So I'm just going to go along with it. And I think that that's in the case of Germany, we see where that led. And I think that we're now in a season where, and I think we will prevail.
- [44:21]
B
But, but what is it that you think we need to research? Is it going back to the Declaration, the Constitution? What is it to be re certed?
- [44:30]
A
Well, yes, it's all of that. In other words, I think that it's understanding what is liberty, you know, even in determining, as you ask me, the question, what's the existential crisis? You know, to ask the question of what is America? Because we can always have America in Name right. You can be, you can turn it into North Korea and call it America. What is America? What does it mean to be free and self governing? What does it actually mean? We would say, in part it means I believe in free speech and freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. And that even if you disagree with me, I have the right to say what I think. I have the right to question things. I have the right to question the election and to say, is that fair? I think it's important that we have fair elections. Let's open the books, let's look at this. I have questions about, you know, a vaccine or some kind of a mandate. I have questions. In America, we've had the freedom to question. This has been fundamental. But during the Biden administration, I was stunned to see the abrogation of those freedoms. We're seeing it in spades in Europe right now. It's unbelievable that in England or in Germany you could say the wrong thing and get in huge trouble. I think, wow, you know, that's, this is fundamental stuff. People have died so that we have freedom of religion, so that we have freedom of speech. This is as basic as it gets. And we are, you know, for the first time in this last, as I say, you know, five or plus years, really seeing that there are people that don't agree with that and they would be all too willing to seize power and to take it away. And, and so if we the people don't stand up and don't educate ourselves about what does it mean to be free, what does it mean to be self governing, we will lose it. So I'm actually very hopeful that a lot of people have woken up, a lot of people were pushed too far and said, wait a minute, I've got questions. And a lot of people that we would think of as politically liberal have stood up as well. So I think it's, I think we are in a healthy place right now.
- [47:00]
B
So as we finish up, what does that look like? What does your best case scenario look like?
- [47:12]
A
Well, I think that we came into being as a free nation because there were a lot of people who freely chose to live out their Christian faith and understand that. So again, that cannot be coerced. But I think that that is a part of how we have liberty. And again, liberty for all, liberty for people who are not Christians. That's the whole idea.
- [47:43]
B
Sounds like you're saying for the people who are Christian, they should reassert their Christianity.
- [47:46]
A
Well, I think they should know. Do they really believe this or is this some kind of identity, some tribal identity, or, you know, I'm not Jewish. I'm not atheist. I guess I'm a Christian. Well, not really. You know, you really have to understand, do I really believe this? Is this really true? Would I die for this? You know, because throughout history, people have died for their faith. Like, do you really believe? Is this actually true? I think what sometimes is called revival, that is what led in the 18th century because of the preaching of George Whitefield and others. That's what led really to. To the American Revolution. That's what led to the birth of America. I don't think that's really deniable, but I think that what it leads to is liberty for all. So again, there's the conundrum or the paradox. I should say that if Christians live out their faith, it's better for non Christians, it's better for Jewish people. It's better for anybody because we all have liberty and we all acknowledge that that is our right to believe what we like, and so on and so forth. So that's a big part of it. That's not the only thing. I think civics education is huge. It's why I wrote the book, because I think that we've got to know. We've got to know our story, we've got to know our history. Otherwise we're just adrift. And people can tell us what they think is what and compel us to believe it because we're not going to push back very hard. So we really do need to understand these kinds of things. And it would be my hope, not just that America, that Americans would get this, but that people in Europe would wake up. I think of the people in England right now. I think that there are many people there are finally waking up thinking, what has happened here? We've got to, you know, we've got to get serious about it.
- [49:37]
B
Well, Eric Metaxas, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
- [49:40]
A
My pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [49:42]
B
Thank you all for joining Eric Metaxas and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellogg.