Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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We're with guest Melissa Reid.
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We are giving our
overview and analysis
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of the current religious
liberty situation in the US
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and this might better
be like a two or three
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our program but, you
know, it's quite sure.
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But I think we can hit
some interesting points
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that we already have.
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And I didn't expect
it but you threw up the
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example of Justice
Scalia, a very erudite justice
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but, but perhaps blinded by his
own biases to make statements
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that are just
historically not true.
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And this seems to be
more and more the problem
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in not so much religious
liberty but the proponents of it
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how they define it.
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And there's so
many precept positions
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that are getting in
the way of plain facts.
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Yeah.
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It's interesting I
mean we see a lot of--
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I think as working for a
magazine where a journalist
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or you know working
in the journalism field
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where it seems such a
change in what is reported.
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I think the journalist
themselves and the profession
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as a whole held us
up to particular level
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of a particular standard.
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You know you have to
have your sources, you know,
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your facts and all these
sorts of things had to line up
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and you had a particular
personal integrity too
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and that might even
just sort of the day
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and age that
we're living in now.
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But as I have seen that
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the emergence of the electronic
communication and media
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you no longer have that level
of either personal integrity.
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It seems like people are
going more for the ad dollar
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or even on the internet they
are not accountable to anyone.
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They are not
accountable to an editor
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if you're just writing a
blog on your own or whatever
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you can pretty much
say anything you want.
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Accountability is going
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but then there is
another structural thing
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and then I'm glad
you brought it up.
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People seldom remark on it
but I think everybody knows it
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or could deduce it like
all the traditional print media
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or free full they've
been bought up sold off,
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collapsed, moving
into online stuff.
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The byproduct of that is
there are not so many reporters
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doing what you've said
investigative journalism.
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More and more what we read
and you can read more of it
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in different places
but lot of us derivative.
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It's not primary researched
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they're being
fed the information
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by special interest groups
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or even in the
case of the government
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by government spokesman.
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They may be fulfilling
their duty as they see fit
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but over the long
hold American journalism
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might take that story
but then go and check on it.
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They're not
checking on it anymore.
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Well, I'd been interested
you will see on, on you know
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on mainstream news channels
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you will see a
now a segment from,
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you know, sponsored
by this hospital chain
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or this, you
know, health services
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and I think well its not a
certainly a bias for them to,
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you know, do health reporting
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and its just interesting
to see but its common place.
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So and then you
have the fact, you know,
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so either there is not the
same level of accountability
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or it doesn't even
make it in the news
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because some sensational,
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you know,
something is happened with
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something in the
entertainment industry
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that's completely irrelevant.
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Well, now you're
getting on to a social.
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Yes.
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Cultural bias. Yeah.
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And our cultural is tilted
highly toward the frivolous.
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Yes.
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But and it's somewhat
to be expected even though
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I'm gonna say something
that probably get let us on,
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I don't really think that
the US as an-- as an empire,
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it's directly
parallel in anyway with Rome.
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We shouldn't say in anyway
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but in any
general sense with Rome.
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But there is phenomenon I
think that we have in parallel
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probably for the same reason.
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In its decline when Rome
had sort of conquered the world
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and got a good
standard of living
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the populist
descended easily into crowd
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pleasing activities
the gladiators and so on.
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It got quite bloody and so on.
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I think we are
in the same thing.
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We celebrate much more
the football games the,
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you know, the
voice and all of these
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reality shows and everything.
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That's become reality of most
people and its not that they
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people have no
right to be entertained
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but we've gotten to the point
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we have confused
that with real news.
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Yes.
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I see many times but
that's on the headline
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and you know it's in another
program we are talking about
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millions of Christians in Syria
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being directly
attacked and killed,
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you know, in large numbers.
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It's a little
subtext after this all.
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Yeah, yeah and to bring
it back to United States
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you know we
have continued to see
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the equal employment
opportunity commission.
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Note that year after year
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religious
discrimination in the workplace
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continues to grow more
than any other category.
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Absolutely.
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You know that the CTEX, you
know, that monitors and yet,
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you know, it's a headline
that I see once year come out
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when the report is listed
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and that's the only
time I see it seen it
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and its only you
know a small blurb its not
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no one is
crying outrage over it.
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Well, what you've seen
there is one example of
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what I believe has happened.
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The change is already in place.
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Why that's
suddenly revealing itself
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is we're in another
tightening job market
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its stretched out
they call it a recovery
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but I call it a
stretched out recession.
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Yeah.
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And the true
recovery hasn't come.
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So the attitudes
that shifted a while ago
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are revealing themselves
more and more is basically
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an intolerance for religious
practice in the workplace
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because it gets in the
way of making the money
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that really is not a
willing and we know this.
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You know, you know very
plainly that the employers
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when they're legally tested
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charter once may give
accommodation by and as
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but when it's legally tested
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they are not held to account
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and they don't want to
give the accommodation.
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Right and I always
think of the individual
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who is asking
for the accommodation
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and they know
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what and that is not
an equal playing field.
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They know that the
employer, you know,
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has ten other people
lined up they can do that job
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just as easily or--
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It's perhaps always
been that way and, you know,
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I'm not live long
after note that I,
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I know now you get the amount
of justice you can afford.
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Yeah.
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And we see that in
large political cases
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but we don't think about
it in all cases including
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a legal challenge to
someone who is not granted
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what you are titled
under the constitution
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for religious accommodation.
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Right, right absolutely.
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So there has been a shift.
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But I, you know, I
wouldn't really like to say
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that open persecution is
the norm in the US, its not.
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No.
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But I think structurally
attitudes have changed,
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I think precedence
have been set that signal
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whether its big business
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or whether its
even government itself
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this is not that
automatic difference
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to the rights of
religious minority.
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The rights of religious majority
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I think are not
threatened today.
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Right, I agree with you on that.
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And it's
interesting I think you probably
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heard of this
term nuns non-catholic
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N-U-N-S but you know N-E-S
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this generation
that now doesn't--
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They don't check
any of the boxes.
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They don't, they don't spouse
to any particular faith group.
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They refer to
themselves as spiritual
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and not religious
sort of things which
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but it I think as we
see our American population
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become less and less
committed to a faith group
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or you know a
belief system you will see
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our religious
freedoms continue to erode.
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If something is
not sacred to you
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you're not gonna fight for it.
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For others much
less to yourself.
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I mean or excuse me if
you have more to guess.
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I'm just thinking
to bringing that point.
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I have never really
made that here but you know
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Seventh-day Adventist
just take the example that
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we you and I
know best part of it.
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Seventh-day
Adventist to some degree,
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what the US is not as
testing an environment
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in a classical
sense say as Pakistan
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but to some degree the
kickback is going to be
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in greater proportion as
say Seventh-day Adventist
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more truly
exemplify what they hold.
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When we are a
group that while we say
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we believe in the
Seventh-day Sabbath
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if a large
proportion of the members
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are pretty loosey-goosey
they know how to keep it.
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No you don't have
persecution. Yeah.
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And so I think we're confusing
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some of the lack of
harassment in all the rest
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with a better religious
liberty situation when actually
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we are not requiring it
as much as we were before.
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Absolutely, that I can
really agree with that.
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And Jesus says in the Bible
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"All who live a godly
life will suffer persecution."
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Yes.
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And I think that's true whether
it's in the west, United States
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or Pakistan or certainly
Saudi Arabia or in anyway.
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It's the difference that
the same dynamic is at play.
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Yes.
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Yeah, I know I have
remembered reading in
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both Spirit of Prophecy writings
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and also in the
Bible you'll hear,
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you know, of course,
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first of all you pray
for those that persecute,
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you know, that
are persecuting you
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but if you are not
seeing your faith challenged
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or you're not feeling
some sort of adversity
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because of your
religious beliefs.
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Not that God deliberately
throws things in your path to,
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you know, to make
things miserable for you
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but if you don't
see-- if life is just,
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you know, a box of
chocolates or bowl of cherries
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or whichever in
reference you want to use.
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And they're probably soft
centers not hard centered faith.
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Then you may want to
take a look and see, you know,
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what's going on, why
is this because, you know,
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Satan is not gonna test those
that don't need to be tested.
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You're right.
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I think a lot of times when
we make this parallel between
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the Hebrew boys in Daniel
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and the test
that they went through
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the small test of faith
before they're sort of large--
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It showed where they would
be when the bigger test comes.
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Exactly and it's interesting
because they, you know,
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Satan did not put the gigantic
test in front of them first
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because that's the obvious test
and whenever I hear that story
00:10:04.26\00:10:06.86
as a Seventh-day
Adventist I always think of
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you know the Sunday
laws sort of practice.
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But that's not the way it
happened for these young man
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it was the small test of
faith because you just make that
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small compromise one
or two times and then
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its that much
easier or more natural
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to make that big
compromise at the end.
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Not too long ago
I watched a video
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a debate between
late Christopher Hitchens,
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an apologist for atheism
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and secularism and
a Christian leader.
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It's was an interesting debate
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and you'd have to watch
it yourself to see who "won."
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But I was very
taken with the poem
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that the Christian
apologist quoted in
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Matthews Arnolds, "Dover Beach."
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And he quoted the
lines there where Arnold says
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the sea of faith
too was once at the full
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but now I just hear its lonely
melancholy withdrawing roar.
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When I look at the United States
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and you might think
I'm misquoting this,
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I see too a
withdrawing roar of faith.
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Plenty of religion,
plenty of secularism
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and those forces of battling
each other after the death
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but what we truly
need is more faith.
00:11:23.74\00:11:26.55
I think faith in the goodness
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and idealism of the
United States itself
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and will faith in the God
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that we worship
those of as Christians
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and I would recommend to others
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but as a Christian faith in God
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to see us and
their country through.
00:11:39.75\00:11:43.68
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:43.71\00:11:47.18