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Foreign. From the historic campus of Hillsdale College
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in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored.
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This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,
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bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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When you're looking to appoint a judge, some attorney who's really bright but willing to make $200,000 a year when he could be making or she could be making millions of dollars a year, where do you find somebody like that? It's the same kind of person who is such a cause person that they would actually donate their time like they do with us, to defend the First Amendment.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. That was Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute. We talked with him in depth about religious liberty and religious freedom today. Later on in today's program, Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale's English Department joins us to begin a brief series on Emily Dickinson. First, we're joined by Kelly Shackelford. He's president and chief executive officer of First Liberty Institute. Find them@first liberty.org A constitutional scholar, he's argued before the U.S. supreme Court multiple times. Also recently appointed by President Trump to serve on the Religious Liberty Commission. And we'll talk a bit about that later on in our conversation. Kelly, thanks so much for joining us.
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Oh, happy to do it.
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Having a conversation today about religious liberty, where we were, where we are, where we might be in the future in the country. For listeners who might not follow this sort of legal conversation closely, how do you define religious liberty in simple terms? And what does it protect in our everyday life?
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Well, it's the first freedom. Our country was built on religious freedom. It's the first two clauses of the First Amendment. And what I always like to start with on religious freedom is what if you're not religious, should you care about this? The answer is absolutely. It was called our first freedom because our founders understood that if you lose this freedom, which is really freedom of conscience, you'll lose all your freedoms, you'll lose your free speech rights, you'll lose your property rights. You name it, it's gone. And the best way I can describe why that is true is that the one thing that a totalitarian regime will never allow are citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government. So whenever that type of tyranny comes in, that coalescing of power, the first flashpoint will always be these people who won't bow their knee to the government. And if you lose There, you'll lose everything else. And it's actually interesting, as I speak, all over the world, really, but especially in our country, a lot of times I'll have people come up to me and they'll say they're from name the Eastern European country. And they say, I saw this happen. I'm thinking of a guy right now who came up and said, you know, I think that what you guys are doing is the most important thing anybody's doing in the country. He said, I'm not religious. He said, but I was in Czechoslovakia. And he said, I saw them take down the religious symbols, and within a month, we all lost our political freedoms. And he handed me a check. I said, I'm going to be supporting your. Your foundation for, you know, from now on. And he's not even a person of faith. He just understands its centrality to all of your other freedoms. And so it's like the thing that tells you whether you're in danger with all your freedoms. And so I think that helps. It's something everybody should care about and everybody should fight for, even if you're not religious.
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Let's talk about the Founders a little bit. What was the original design behind the religion clauses in the First Amendment? What did the founders think that religious liberty was for?
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Well, they, you know, they came from England and. And they had the Church of England. And of course, you know, there's. I think most people know a lot of the history. I mean, Tyndale was, you know, executed. And so they. They wanted religious freedom. I mean, the Puritans came over. I mean, we ended up having Quakers and. And, you know, Baptists and lots of different denominations that came to America for freedom. And so that's why they put in the very first two clauses of the First Amendment. You know, a good quiz for people is name your, you know, the five rights laid out in the First Amendment. And everybody knows free speech, but that's usually where they stop. But the first two are religious freedom. It's that, you know, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. They did not want a Church of England. They did not want a national church right or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. So they wanted the fullest, freest free exercise of religion that we could have. And they knew that if you had a national church, that that would take away from that, that they would start telling you what you had to do towards that church, that denomination. And so that's really what the Founders were after. So you saw a lot of religion in the Founders. I mean, they had A chaplain there that was paid out of the federal treasury. So it's not that they were anti religious. It was sort of a civic religion that we're all, it's okay to be religious. Religion is a good thing. But we don't want the government picking sides. And that's what they laid in place.
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Talking with Kelly Shackelford, who's president and chief Executive Officer of First Liberty Institute, first liberty.org how quickly or when did things begin to shift in America such that religious liberty became more contested?
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Well, I would say, I mean, and I would say behind all of this is what was going on in our country culturally. Right. It wasn't that the law should have changed. I mean, it's just all of a sudden you had judges start to reinterpret things in the Constitution, almost like a pastor would reinterpret the Bible to make it a little more convenient for what they wanted.
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A living Bible.
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Exactly. Just like the living Constitution, which of course there's no such thing. And what I would say is, if you looked at the cases, it would start in the 1940s, okay, they laid the groundwork, but it was just some, some, some words that I think were, it's in the Everson case where in that case really what was going on. And it shows the danger why you should never use religious freedom to sort of almost take away religious freedom from another religion than yours because it will come back to haunt you. What was happening in that case is most schools in the United States were, you know, public schools were really somewhat Protestant. They would have prayer and, and so there were other schools form, you know, private schools. They were typically Catholic as a different place. And this in New Jersey they had, they paid for, they said, we're going to reimburse you for your busing to private schools. And the argument was, you can't do that. And again, these are mostly Protestant people pushing this. And the result is this opinion. It actually upheld the practice. So it didn't sort of go into this really dangerous sort of hostile fundamentalist separation of church and state, meaning anytime the government touches religion, you squelch religion. But, but the language they laid out was really sloppy. And it allowed when they got to the 60s where there was much more sort of hostility to religion at that point and a cultural shift. You had the situation where they started banning having a scripture reading at the beginning of the day and banning having even a really, really bland prayer that Jewish that everybody could kind of say, yeah, I'm okay with that. And that was all of a Sudden unconstitutional. And it really came from. And so some really bad case law that wasn't based upon what the founders said. What the founders did was put in place, and Lemon was sort of the chief case of this. Lemon is aptly named. It created a test that sort of tried to create this fundamentalist wall of separation between religion and government. So religion, wherever government is, religion can't be. Well, of course, number one, that's not what the founders said, but the government is everywhere. So this is a way to push religious expression into the corners of society. So, you know, those of us who are older, remember when we used to have nativity scenes at Christmas and menorahs at Hanukkah, and it's actually a great thing. It reminds us of our religious heritage, our background. We're not a Marxist country with a naked public square with none of these sort of moral principles that are in place. And. But most people, certainly Hillsdale students, they've never seen that before. Fortunately, we've won a number of Supreme Court cases in the last few years, and one of those was the Coach Kennedy case. The coach who was.
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He's been on the show, by the way.
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Oh, great. I'm so sorry for you. He's a crazy man. He's a lot of fun. He likes to poke the bear. But Coach Kennedy, what a lot of people don't know is, yes, he won his case. Yes, he has a right to go to a knee by himself after the football game. But within that decision, the Lemon case was reversed. 50 years it's been in place, over 7,000 citations by federal courts to squelch religious freedom through that. Well, it's gone. So what that means is everywhere that a cross was taken down, it can come back up. You know, Ten Commandments that were pushed in the closet, they can come back out. Nativity scenes at Christmas are okay. You know, menorahs at Hanukkah are okay. And we're just starting this process. There'll be more cases because people don't understand what the decision really said. But we're already. I was at an installation recently of a Ten Commandments outside the courthouse in Tarrant County, Texas. The state of Kentucky just brought their Ten Commandments back to the lawn. Indiana has started their process of doing the same. This is going to start to happen across the country, and I think it's going to be really good for our country to be reminded of the historical bases, the vestiges. I mean, there really is almost nowhere you can go at a capitol or a state or even in the U.S. supreme Court and not see an image of the Ten Commandments. I mean, it was a part of our legal, cultural, sort of moral heritage. And even if you don't believe in any of that, it's part of our history. And you don't understand America if you don't understand those things. And so it's really poor education. So you're seeing a number of states requiring that they put up like a poster or things of the Ten Commandments to teach the kids. And then there are people saying, oh, you can't do that. And it's like, look, I understand if you want to change the country from what it was founded on, that's your freedom to try to do that. But to not teach kids, I mean, it's like reading Shakespeare. There's over 1200 references to the Bible and Shakespeare. If you don't understand what those things are, you're really missing out a lot on what you read. So I think there's a pretty significant change occurring. And that Lemon case being overturned is one of the big changes in just the last three to four years. But there are a number of others that we are in the midst of a really unique time. As a guy who's done this for 37 years, we are seeing a shift in favor of religious freedom that is undoubtedly greater than anything we've ever seen in this country. There are numerous 50 year precedents that are going down that were bad case decisions that were being used to suppress religious expression in the workplace and in other places. So most people don't know that they don't live in this arena. But it's significant what's happening right now. And I think we're really just at the beginning of this.
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That's Kelly Shackelford of First Liberty Institute. More with him in just a moment. But first, you need to know about a brand new Larry Arn show that's out right now. Dr. Arn sits down for an in depth conversation with Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, the last part of his Four Clerics series. Rabbi Soloveitchik is the rabbi of the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Also director of the Stratus center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and and a senior scholar at the Tikvah Fund. Just like in previous episodes with Bishop Robert Barron, Pastor Kevin DeYoung and Bishop Julian Dobbs, Dr. Arne talks this time about the crisis of the west, freedom and God, with an emphasis on natural law and religious freedom. It's a conversation you don't want to miss. Hillsdale President Dr. Larry Arne and Rabbi Rabbi Mayer Soloveitchik now on the Larry Arn Show. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu, wherever you get your audio, and also at YouTube. We continue now with Kelly Shackelford. He's president and CEO of First Liberty Institute. First liberty.org for more. Kelly, some of these arguments that we hear these days, and you reference this, and it's one that's old as time, this idea that, hey, it's right there in the Constitution, separation of church and state. And we've talked on this show previously with guests about where that comes from and how it sort of got gotten, got sucked into this, this, this argument. So when people say that, make that argument, what do they really mean, even though they're not referencing a correct thing? And is there any sort of backing, Is there a leg to stand on for that type of argument?
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Yeah. I mean, number one, of course, people need to understand it's not in the Constitution. There's an establishment clause that we didn't want the government to establish a national church. The concept, separation of church and state. And the reason I mentioned some of those cases, that Everson case was one of the first cases that really brought it in on the side of the establishment clause as a way to discuss it, which again, was sloppy because it's not a very good tool. The concept, though, was back to some of our founders who what they were saying is the separation of the institution of the church from the institution of the state. And that is they didn't want the government controlling the church, and they didn't want one church controlling the government. And so that's fine. I think most everybody would agree with that. The problem is that's not how they use it. They'll say the term. The average American will say the term. And then take Coach Kennedy will say, in fact, I mean, one of the justices or a few of the justices in the dissent said this is a horrible decision, allowing him to pray by himself. This is a horrible decision for separation of church and state. This is a justice of the Supreme Court. And you're like, okay, let's sit down a second here. Okay, please tell me where the church is. There's no church. It's Coach Kennedy in his private expression. So this is a total. Even when they use the term, which is not in the Constitution, but they mangle it horribly, because what they do is they create a separation of religion and any government. And of course, government's everywhere, which means religion gets pushed into the corners of society.
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And it also Extends to my next question, which is there is an argument that also goes essentially like this, which is, hey, you're free to believe what you want to believe. That's your freedom of religion. But the moment you begin to act on it or live your life consistent with those beliefs, that's when we should jump in and start, stop you from doing so.
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Yeah, there are actually judges who have said that in their opinions and I find it incredibly embarrassing for them, you know, because when I'm in those oral arguments or whatever with a judge, I'll usually respond, you know, I wasn't aware that it's the free belief clause, it's the free exercise clause. I mean, the First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion. The founders were very specific. You know, they weren't saying, we're just going to protect your right to believe something, we're going to actually protect your right to live it out. And that's really what religious freedom is all about in this country, is not just some right to, you know, for you to have some government that can force you to do whatever they want you to do, even if it violates your faith. And that's one of the changes I've seen in the 37 years I've been doing this. I'd say in the beginning, a lot of the cases where somebody's doing something, the government says you can't do that. And they're saying, but I'm doing this because of my faith. And then you would fight that out in court on where to draw that line. Now what's happening is the government is trying to tell people, we want you to do this thing that violates your faith and we want to force you to violate your conscience and your faith. And you, you nurse, you have to do this abortion right. You know, you Christian school, you have to allow boys on the girls team. Even though it violates your faith. You. And it's, and a lot of times it's not necessary in a lot of the cases even for that person to do it. I mean, take a nurse. There's plenty of nurses that don't have a problem. But it's really important for them to force right that the citizen to violate their faith and conscience.
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That's the entire Jack Phillips case in Colorado where they keep going back again and again and again to the same person to drag him back into court. He won't bake the cake.
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And we've got one right now with a whole fifth grade class who was ordered by the school to read a book called My Shadow is Pink to their kindergarten buddy, essentially forcing their kindergarten buddy to pick which gender they want to be. And, and when the parents went to the school and said, hey, number one, you need to notify the parents, but number two, our child needs a religious exemption, the response from the school, and this is just, this is a case going on right now in the United States. The response from the school was parents don't have a right to be notified. And number two, we're not giving religious exemptions. So they want to force this fifth grade boy, this 11 year old boy to do something that violates his faith and his conscience. So we didn't used to see that this is the ultimate in tolerance, is not only having a conflict about what somebody's doing, but actually saying, no, no, I need you to be an instrument of the state to do this thing that violates your beliefs. That's really, I think, the most extreme you can get when it comes to a violation of religious freedom.
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Kelly Shackelford with us from First Liberty Institute. First liberty.org on the topic of schools. We have this new federal tax credit scholarship program that was in the big beautiful bill which is now law. And some governors have opted in, others are still considering. There are some governors, one in particular in Illinois who have sent text messages to other members saying we shouldn't do this. I'm very worried because some of these schools teach things that we don't agree with and perhaps we shouldn't be funneling money or helping funnel money to those schools. What's case law say about this? Are we headed back to court, perhaps back to the Supreme Court over this federal tax credit scholarship program?
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No, we wouldn't. I mean if we are, it's an easy win. We had a case, First Liberty had a case just a few years ago called Carson vs. Macon. The state of Maine had a school choice program, has had it for like 130 years. If you go to Maine. Most school districts do not have a public school. So what they do is they give the money the parents and they say pick whatever public or private school even. You can even pick an out of state private school if you want. But then after like 100 years, they decided they'd make one change. But we're not going to allow you to pick any religious schools. And we took that case to the Supreme Court and won six to three. It's uncle. It's religious discrimination and it's unconstitutional. So I think it's very clear at this point that in any school choice program that exists in the country, the parents have a right to pick the Christian or the religious school if they so choose. So it really, this argument by you mentioned the governor of Illinois, it's such an incredibly, I mean, I think it's an arrogant argument, but it's a foolish argument. It's, it's not like somebody else is picking what's best for their kids. And what he's really saying is, you parents, I know better than you for your children. I mean, the arrogance of that is unbelievable to me. You don't even know my children. Leave me alone. I mean, that's kind of the response. Even the most well intentioned bureaucrat will never love and care for their children like their parents. And so giving the parents the authority to make the decision, I mean, I know with my own children, we put them all in different schools at different times based upon who they were, what they needed, what the situation is. The centralized government can never do that, you know, and it's sort of the difference between socialism and capitalism. You need the decisions made not, not at some central location, way away, but by the people who are actually involved in whatever transaction that is to give parents the right to will actually not only be the best for their kids, but will actually improve the schools. Because when consumers are able to make decisions, then it changes. But if you got a monopoly like a public school and you could just do whatever you want, and you're not even having to compete over the taxpayer money with the private schools, why should you improve things? So school choice is, I think one of the biggest issues for changing the quality of education and really freedom in our country. And it's really somewhat of an anomaly because if you look, I mean, the Democratic Party is the one that's typically more against that. I think one out of every three, one out of every four of their national delegates are members of teachers unions. But if you look at their constituency, I mean, African American inner city schools, et cetera, those people want school choice. So I always tell people we've always had school choice. It's just been for people with money. And what the school choice movement is about really is letting every parent make the best decision, creating competition, improving all the schools.
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Kelly Shackelford with U.S. president Chief Executive Officer at First Liberty Institute. First liberty.org Tell us about First Liberty Institute. There are a number of great organizations that do First Amendment work and religious liberty work. So why does First Liberty Institute exist? What gap was it trying to fill? Is it trying to fill?
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Yeah, we, I mean, First Liberty is the largest legal nonprofit in the country that all we do is religious freedom. So we have synagogue cases, we have church cases. We have, you know, have represented all faiths. And, and I'd say one of the secrets to how we're different is, is our model of how we do the cases. Every other nonprofit legal group in the country, and I don't care if they're left wing or right wing or what their issue is, whether it's a Sierra Club or a property rights group or whatever, they have the same model, which is raise money, use the money to hire attorneys, put them in an office in DC or LA or New York, and then fly them around and cover the cases. That's not our model. Our model is there's all these people of faith who went to law school because they wanted to stand for what was right. And 30 years later, these are the best litigators at the best law firms in the country. And they've done honorable work, but they've never gotten to do a case for their faith or their country. So we go and sit down with them and we say, look, if we bring you everything you need on our staff, are top of their class from all the best law schools, and all they do is religious freedom. These are always media cases. We have a whole media team that'll come around you, we'll pay all your out of pockets, your expert fees, everything. If we bring you everything you need, are you willing to give your time and bring your law firm? And they're like, man, I've been waiting my whole life, you know, sign me up. And the result of that is Fairly dramatic. Number one, average case, every 10,000 we spend, we get 60,000 donated. So it's a real multiplication resources. But more importantly is the win loss ratio. If you look at legal nonprofits, they are created to fight big problems, industry, government. If they win a case, it's a big deal. If they win like 40% of cases, that's really, really great. Our win rate now, every single year for 26 years in a row has been above 90%. And that's, I mean, that's God's favor. But it's also the, the method of how this is done. I mean, when we have a case in, you know, Idaho, our attorney is from the best law firm in Idaho. You know, this is one of the best litigators in the state. And our team comes along with them. And so when they go into court like that attorney looks at the judge and they, that was like a classmate, they lost a tooth together in first grade, you know, so that's very different from flying somebody in from across the country who's a foreigner. So this method is what's one of the things that's really different about First Liberty. We, we always have these unique teams of our attorneys with wherever jurisdiction, we are the best people there. And that sort of resulted in some other things. Like one of the things we do, we have the most extensive judicial vetting operation in the country. We vet all the federal judges. We just want to make sure that people don't go on the court who are anti religious freedom. And so we have a lot of data. We have more than anybody in the country. And guess what? When you're looking to appoint a judge, some attorney who's really bright but willing to make $200,000 a year when he could be making, or she could be making millions of dollars a year, where do you find somebody like that? It's the same kind of person who is such a cause person that they would actually donate their time, like they do with us, to defend the First Amendment. And so a lot of our people are becoming federal judges and have become federal judges across the country. Of course, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used to be one of our attorneys. So you can see how the cause people that are willing to not make the money, but actually fight over the issues, they really care about that there's an intermix with the way we do our cases. So a lot of our people right now are, you know, the chief lawyer for the department of, you know, you name it, in the government right now, because they're willing to actually go in and do that when they have an administration that philosophically is aligned with them. So it's a really unique background and it's why we have, you know, the highest win rate of any group in the country. And all we do is religious freedom. And it's fun to represent people all the time that, you know, I remember the, the Jewish synagogue. One of the Jewish synagogue cases we did, you know, they looked at us and they said, well, you know, you're. You're like a Christian organization, you know, and this is a rabbi telling me, he said, and I, I was talking to our people, we were making this decision. I said, why would you. Why would you go to the Gentiles? And his answer was, because they're the best. And I was like, that's what we want to hear, you know, and we love helping those people. We love standing with them. And when they win, we all win. And that's the way religious freedom works is if you're not willing to stand with, you know, the minority faiths or whatever, then you'll lose your freedom. Because they won't start with the powerful political groups. They'll start with the groups that don't have as much power.
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There's been a number of wins at the Supreme Court level the past decade or so. You mentioned the Lemon precedent being overturned. There's the Coach Prayer case, there's the Phillips case. There's the case, I think it was an Iowa school getting funding for the playground. But they were religious. So all these are wins at the Supreme Court. Should we feel good about things? Are we in a better place than we were 20, 25 years ago? When it comes to religious freedom and
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religious liberty, it's sort of twofold. The attacks are more vicious than they've ever been. We had 491 cases last year. You know, 10 years ago it might have been. We had, you know, 150 cases. We could have more if we had more resources. We just do what we can. But the good news, even though the attack and people can see how vicious the attacks are, the good news is, as I said, we're in a really unique moment in time. We are expanding religious freedom. There are cases that we are overturning right now that when I was in law school, I thought, and rightfully so, I thought, there's no way we'll overturn that case in my lifetime. We can pick a way at it. It's bad and it's harmful, but it's just had so many citations to it, and it's such an entrenched precedent that, you know, it won't be overturned. And we're just, we're overturning them. And I'll tell you an example of this to help people understand. On average, about 6,000 requests a year at the U.S. supreme Court to take your case. They took 56 last year. So your odds are not good for them to take your case. We just argued a case in December that we just won last week, two days after that argument, we won another case at the Supreme Court. A few years ago. We, you know, they didn't just take one. Again, think of it, 56 out of 6,000. They didn't take one of our cases. They didn't take two. They didn't take. We won four cases at the U.S. supreme Court in 13 months. And there were huge precedent shifts. So we are really, I mean, I, I have been of the belief now, as somebody who's lived in this arena for the last four to five years, that this is way beyond human, humanly possible that this is. God is doing something here. God is increasing freedom. And I've been struggling with why that was. I was like, is it just going to get so hostile that we're going to need the protection? Or is like a third great awakening coming where this is the precondition for that? And Charlie Kirk was a dear friend of mine, and the last time we were together, a few months before his assassination, we both had come to the same conclusion on our own, which was that we really think that we were at the beginning of a third great awakening with the young people especially. And it just totally made sense to me now what I'm seeing happening, because I feel like our job at First Liberty is to sort of open the gates because the young people behind us are coming. And I think that's why we see such a dramatic opening of freedom that's going on right now. And again, I don't think we're through. I think we're in the middle of this process. The first time ever, the Religious Liberty Commission. We've never had a president make a Religious Liberty Commission. We've got one right now. There's just a lot of these things happening that we've never seen, and that could change the future for the next generation. And I think it's exciting to be alive right now. Hostile, yes, but some pretty good things are happening.
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Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty Institute has been appointed to the Religious Liberty Commission by President Trump. What's the purpose of that commission? What kind of work are you doing?
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It's a little unusual. Most commissions are created to report to an agency or a department or maybe Congress. You think of the Social Security Commission, and they do their study and they report. Our charter tells us to report specifically and only to the President of the United States. Our job is to take testimony, get the evidence together, find out what all the problems are, and then give to the president a list of recommendations of what we're asking him to do that would protect and advance religious freedom into the future. And so we've had hearings. They've been really powerful. Some of the most powerful testimony I've ever seen. And it's like 10 people in one hearing. Just like, bang, bang, bang. You just can't believe what you're hearing. So I. And I would tell people they can go back and watch those anytime. The. The DOJ not only carries those, but they actually, you know, they're. They're taped and they're online. You can just look for Religious Liberty Commission and watch any of the hearings. And, and I, I am convinced that I know we have a lot of really good things we can suggest, some which will be immediate and some which, and this has been the challenge. I'm one of the few lawyers on the commission. I mean, it's Franklin Graham, Cardinal Dolan, you know, Ben Carson, I mean, Dr. Phil, some different people, but they all love religious freedom and they're for it. But my challenge is I was like, you know, I want to make sure we do some things and have the, because I think the president will do what we ask that last. I don't want an executive order to be everything we do and then three years later it just gets changed with the next president. And there are things you can do. I mean, the president can ask the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit on blah and create a precedent that then will last with all the future presidents. And that's, I just, I really think that in the next few months we have the opportunity to, to change the future for the next generation and the kind of freedoms that they're going to have. So it really is a unique time and opportunity. And so it's happening on the Religious Liberty Commission, it's happening in the courts. It's happening in a lot of different ways than I'm seeing.
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Kelly Shackelford is president and Chief executive officer at First Liberty Institute. You can find more@firstliberty.org Kelly, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Happy to do it.
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Up next, a different Kelly, Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale's English department on Emily Dickinson. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the genesis story alongside the Robertsons.
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Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being and we can help with the Hillsdale dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale Eduardo. That's Podcast Hillsdale Edu, or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.
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Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to check out more audio from Hillsdale College on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network or wherever you find your audio and your podcasts. Older episodes of this program, plus other great shows like the Larry Arn Show, Imprimis, the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, and brand new Hillsdale on the hill as Hillsdale NDC faculty help walk you up to the 250th anniversary of our country Hillsdale Audio from the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu, or wherever you find your podcasts. We're joined by Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin, Associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Franklin, thanks for joining us.
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Hi, Scott. So glad to be here.
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Starting a brief series as we look at three poems from Emily Dickinson and one in each of our discussions. We begin with a poem called Death Sets a Thing Significant, and it would make sense for you to read the poem before we discuss it.
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I'll twist my arm. Okay, well, all right, I'll read it. Death Sets a Thing Significant by Emily Dickinson. Death Sets a Thing Significant the eye had hurried by Accept a perished creature and treat us tenderly to ponder Little workmanships in crayon or in wool. With this was last her fingers did industrious until the thimble weighed too heavy, the stitches stopped themselves and then twas put among the dust upon the closet shelves a book I have a friend gave whose pencil here and there had notched the place that pleased him at rest his fingers are now when I read, I read not for interrupting tears obliterate the etchings too costly for repair cares. I like that poem.
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All right. For listeners who might have heard it for the first time, how would you describe what's happening here? What's the basic situation Dickinson is presenting?
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Yeah, she starts with something that in a way a lot of us have experienced when someone we love dies, the things that they leave behind, maybe especially the things that they made, become precious in a way that you didn't expect. As we record this, I'm wearing these rainbow colored socks that my late mother knitted, and those are in some ways more precious because she's passed away. And so Dickinson is sort of meditating on that fact that we have that experience of these things left over, these things left behind, especially little craftsmanships. Yeah.
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She focuses on these very small, ordinary objects, like perhaps rainbow socks, crayon drawings, stitches, and a thimble. Why do those little details become so powerful after someone dies?
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Yeah. I think she deliberately picks those seemingly unseen, insignificant things. Right. They're things that the eye had hurried by. You might not notice it. I think it's because that, in a way that highlights the transformation of the object by. When the death happens, when we lose someone, then even the most insignificant things, you know, a crayon drawing, by the way, in the 19th century, it's not. It doesn't mean that a child has died. Crayons were used by everybody is just sort of like those pastels. Right. So. But any kind of little drawing, a sketch, a doodle, something that was knitted or spun, I think it helps highlight the importance of the person and highlight the transformation, because these weren't important things until the person died.
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Dickinson doesn't describe this deceased person or persons directly. So we only see them or picture them through these things they have left behind. How does that shape the emotional impact of this poem?
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Yeah, I mean, there's this really great moment, you know, at most we imagine, okay, well, here is somebody's fingers. Here was somebody's pencil. Here was somebody's thimble. Right. You get these little glimpses of the person, but the person is gone. And she makes this happen in the poetry in a really amazing way between the second and the third stanza. So we've got that line. This was last. Her fingers did industrious until. And then there's a dash, and then there's a line break. And then there's a stanza break. We sort of pause, it's interrupted, and then all of a sudden, it's thimbles and stitches are the subjects of the verbs. Now the thimble is weighing and the stitches are stopping. The human agent is gone, just completely vanished from the poem. So I think that's really. In a way, there's a sort of goosebumps moment because of how suddenly death comes. And then these. These little objects are all that's left. The thimble is going to drop by gravity. The stitches will not move because of inertia. The laws of physics take over because the human's gone. Yeah.
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Talking with Dr. Kelly Scott Frankfurt about Emily Dickinson's poem Death sets a thing significant. Dickinson writes with these dashes. They are Everywhere in this poem, does it do something in particular for us?
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She's a very idiosyncratic writer. She's got idiosyncratic punctuation and spelling and capitalization. I think that the dash is a kind of paradoxical punctuation mark because it always interrupts, but it always suggests continuance. So there can be a kind of stop and start feeling. It's not hard and fast closure like a period. So I always think when Dickinson uses a period after a statement, like, hello, heads up. We got to notice that because she's declaring that definitively. But I think she has this kind of interrupted pausing movement that's not a full stop. And it's also just a quirk. She's a really quirky writer. That's what the manuscripts give us, these
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EM dashes by the end in death, such a thing. Significant. The speaker says, now, what I read, I read not. What is Dickinson suggesting here about grief's effect on reading or thinking or living on an everyday basis?
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Yeah, she starts with this. I would call it an aphorism, like a received statement of wisdom. Or almost a cliche. Like, in a way, everybody knows this. Once someone dies, the things left behind become important. But we get to that fourth stanza right before, when she's reading and reading not. And she's making now a personal confession of loss. A book I have. So we've been sort of thinking about, yeah, this is true generally. And then she confesses, and then we move away from those kind of received words of wisdom, which can at times kind of explain away our grief. And she says, no, I have a friend who died. And scholars think that this may be a guy named Benjamin Franklin, Newton, who died in 1853, 10 years before she wrote this poem. So the anniversary, they think maybe she's. And he gave her a copy of Emerson's poems, and so they think maybe she's leafing through that book and thinking about it. We don't really know. But. And then that last stanza begins right. Now, when I read, I read not. We began with words and even words of wisdom, but we ended with tears. We ended not with reading, not with. Not with speaking, but just with physical manifestations of grief. And, you know, the tears, either they. Either they just blur her vision and she can't read, or maybe they're splashing on the page and, like, washing away the little pencil marks which are irreplaceable. He's dead now. You can't call him up and have him re. Annotate that text. And so they really Are. They're obliterated. And that word means to erase. To. To against the letters. Right. And. And they're. They're too costly for repairs. They're too precious. Those little tick marks that. The places that pleased him in that book.
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I wonder if the seeing things too demands a confrontation of sorts. We can push emotions aside and there are other things to do in our life. And when we. When we. Something, then we have to make a choice. Do we move it? Do we use it? Do we throw it away? Do we keep it? But there's. There's a confrontation that has to happen at that point with that item and our. Our emotions.
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That's beautiful. Yeah. It's almost as if our grief requires. At times, requires prompting. Sometimes it comes on us unprompted. But as we grieve, do we have to set aside some time to confront those. Those objects, those places, those photographs and memories and letters to. To help the processing that we have to go through? That's beautiful.
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I love that we're in an age where much of what perhaps one leaves behind is now going to be digital as opposed to physical. You have to go through a Kindle and see the notes someone's made in a book as opposed to the pencil marks. Why might this poem still resonate with readers today?
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This is. It's a good question. It's a great question. She uses a really amazing word in the poem to describe those little things of those little crafts. Right. She says that uses the word workmanship. And what's amazing about that word is it contains the word work and the word man, like the physical thing made by the person contains something of themselves. And I think. I think that could be true of words typed as well. There's something of the soul in what we type. Right. But there it seems like she's meditating on just those physical objects that we made. We refashioned something in nature, some raw material, and we put ourselves in it. And I think that that's how she thinks about those little physical remnants of. Of the beloved dead.
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Talking about Emily Dickinson, her poem Death sets a thing significant. Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College. Dr. Franklin, thanks for joining us on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Thanks for having me.
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That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour are thanks to Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty Institute and Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale College. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast, Hillsdale, Edu, or wherever you get your audio. Until next time. Next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.