Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000377A
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00:25 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:28 This is the program 00:29 that brings you news, views, information, discussions 00:32 on religious liberty events in the US 00:34 and indeed around the world. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine. 00:40 And my guest on this program is my son Christopher Steed 00:45 who really is not a new comer to Liberty Insider. 00:48 Many, many years ago 00:50 when you were, I think 10, 12 or less, 00:55 you came on and gave a little cameo 00:57 and promoted Liberty 01:00 and I got some great response from people, 01:02 especially a few old ladies and said that, 01:03 "Wonderful, that dear boy." 01:06 Well, that dear boy is back and you are a young man now 01:09 and I wanted to use you as a test case, Christopher. 01:12 You are a teenager still, a young man, 01:16 and too few of your age group of the newer generation 01:22 I think really give time to sort of analyze 01:25 what is religious liberty 01:27 and there is no wrong answer to this. 01:30 What to you is religious liberty? 01:32 Well, in my eyes I see religious liberty 01:35 as the right for each individual 01:37 to worship one, 01:39 who they want, two, where they want 01:41 and three, how they want 01:42 without the government telling them, 01:44 "Look, you have to worship on this day, 01:46 this time, this is how you do it, 01:48 and if you don't this way, you either get prison time 01:50 or worst case scenario, you know, get killed. 01:54 Absolutely, in some parts of the world 01:55 in the Middle East at the moment, 01:57 Christians are being killed 01:58 just because they're Christians. 02:00 Just because we're Christians. 02:01 And not necessarily from the government 02:02 although there are some governments 02:04 in North Korea 02:05 if you identify yourself too openly as a Christian, 02:08 you might lose your life 02:10 because I don't think they care about Christianity, 02:13 but you're supposed to worship the state 02:15 and the state rules so by being a Christian, 02:18 they think the loyalty is divided, 02:20 that's true. 02:22 But I think you would agree 02:24 that the basis of Christianity is not legal, 02:27 not with the government, where does it come from? 02:30 Well, in my eyes I believe it stems 02:33 from individual religions 02:34 wanting their own individual day 02:36 to worship, to pray, to do whatever they do 02:40 and when I remember hearing stories 02:43 from history classes throughout my high school 02:46 and middle schooling, 02:48 where people in religions decided 02:51 to branch off and create their own. 02:53 I guess that for me 02:54 that's where I see religious liberty coming from. 02:57 Well, you know, this last, 02:59 this would probably be broadcast in 2018, 03:03 we're filming this at the end of '17 03:06 and all of 2017 03:09 has been a celebration of 500 years. 03:12 Now, many of our viewers might know this 500 years 03:16 since the Protestant Reformation, 03:19 that's not when religious liberty was invented 03:22 but in the modern era, 03:23 that's when religious liberty in the minds of most Christians 03:27 really was worked out 03:29 and lot of the principles were numerated 03:32 because the different reformers 03:35 like Martin Luther and Zwingli and Calvin 03:39 and so on. 03:40 They were restricted both from the Catholic Church 03:43 that didn't want doctrine deviance 03:45 and from the governments 03:47 who thought it was their duty to support 03:49 the church and the faithful. 03:52 So the manner of conscience was central, wasn't it? 03:55 It was. 03:57 You know, when you... 03:59 What you are doing in life, it's very important to you 04:01 to have a sort of and inner compass, isn't it? 04:04 I mean, right now, I'm not really in college, 04:07 I'm looking to go back to college 04:08 but I need to find what I want to do 04:12 and that is basically my central compass, 04:14 and for me religion is a big aspect of that. 04:19 I want to do something where I can not only, 04:22 you know, help people but as well I can say, 04:24 "Look, this is what I believe, 04:26 you know, if you have any someone to pray with 04:29 or you need someone to talk to about anything, 04:31 you know, I'm here, 04:32 you can talk to me, call me, text me, 04:34 do whatever you need to do, 04:35 I'm willing to pray with you, pray for you, 04:38 you know, read the Bible with you 04:39 and everything like that. 04:41 Right. 04:42 And, you know, a lot of people 04:43 even that support Liberty magazine, 04:46 I do believe they think religious liberty 04:48 is sort of a legal construct 04:50 and they forget that what you just described 04:52 is where it all derives, 04:54 I mean the power comes from God. 04:55 Yeah. 04:57 But religious liberty is about your conscience 05:00 and your sense of why you do things, 05:04 not just because it's expedient 05:07 but you are driven by your inner values 05:11 to behave a certain way. 05:13 Now there's one good thing in the US 05:17 on religious accommodation 05:19 that most people don't seem to realize, 05:21 like many Seventh-day Adventists 05:23 need to have be accommodated 05:25 so they don't work Friday night and Sabbath in the workplace. 05:28 And in working with employers for that, 05:32 often the employer will say, 05:34 "Well, can't your church 05:35 give you a dispensation or something, right?" 05:38 Or many of the Adventists think, 05:41 will I get a letter from my church saying, 05:43 "This is what my church believes." 05:45 In reality it doesn't matter what the church believes, 05:48 the state has understood 05:50 that even if nobody else thinks like you do, 05:52 if your conscience says, 05:54 "I want Sabbath off," 05:56 then you should be entitled under the rules that we have, 05:59 that your religious conviction should be respected. 06:02 You're right on that one. 06:03 You're comfortable on that one, 06:05 aren't you, as a matter of personal conviction. 06:07 I mean even in my work history, I told them, 06:09 "Look, I cannot work Sabbaths due to my religious beliefs. 06:14 And I've had some people looked down their noses at me, 06:17 I have one lady, I remember I applied for, 06:19 I believe it was a hardware shop in Hagerstown. 06:23 I had one lady ask me, "Why Sabbath? 06:26 Why not Sunday? 06:27 I mean, I go to church on Sunday, 06:29 so why don't you go to church on Sunday?" 06:30 I said, "Well, in the Bible, 06:33 and she says, "Well, don't quote the Bible," 06:34 I mean, well, it's interwoven, 06:36 I believe personally from what I've heard 06:37 from my parents, 06:38 and what I've heard from people, 06:40 from what I've heard growing up 06:41 that God said Sabbath is the day 06:43 that we worship, it's the seventh day. 06:44 It is the seventh day. Yeah. 06:46 And she says, 06:47 "Well, what if you count the week, 06:49 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 06:50 Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that's the seventh-day." 06:53 But in the Bible it says, 06:54 "God studied the first day as a Sunday," 06:56 it doesn't say as Sunday, 06:58 but he said the first day and your seventh day 07:01 which will be Sunday to Saturday. 07:04 Very good. 07:05 You've thought that threw in all. 07:06 And this is one of the deceptions 07:09 that's even been thrown into the mix lately 07:12 under so called calendar reform. 07:13 A lot of people have noticed I think, 07:16 but not sort of thought what it meant, 07:18 that some of the modern calendars 07:19 have the day ending with Sunday. 07:22 Yeah, I've noticed that. So it's the seventh day. 07:25 So for people that don't really go for biblical truth 07:28 and what was originally meant by the seventh day, 07:30 now it's all been shuffled, 07:32 well, now you keep the seventh day, 07:33 but it actually happens to be... 07:36 The first day. The first day. 07:38 I don't know if you've heard of the Emperor Constantine, 07:41 he was one of the powerful Roman emperors 07:44 who united the empire 07:45 after some pretty heavy fighting 07:47 and he inscribed the success to Christianity 07:50 but it's obvious 07:51 he decided to use Christianity to support his rule. 07:57 There's no evidence 07:58 that he ever became a Christian. 07:59 There's apocryphal stories that he converted on his death 08:02 but I don't think so. 08:03 I've heard the stories of... 08:05 I remember one story especially 08:06 in one of my world history classes back 08:08 when I was eighth, seventh or eighth grade, 08:13 I can't remember exactly what grade it was. 08:14 You've studied in there. 08:16 Yeah, and they said, "Well, on his death bed, 08:19 he confessed to one of his priests 08:20 that he wants to become a Christian." 08:23 And I mean, I had my doubts 08:26 but, you know, it says in the history book, 08:28 so I thought it was true. 08:29 Well, it's in the history books but not as a pure fact, 08:31 they say this is the story. 08:33 And remember, the priest 08:34 would have gladly spread the story 08:35 because he was the godfather of Christianity at that point. 08:39 But there was no open evidence he ever became a Christian. 08:42 But anyhow, the point is Constantine, 08:45 he was the one that designated the day of worship as Sunday, 08:51 the venerable day of the sun. 08:54 So it's an easy thing to prove that the Sunday, 08:58 that most Christians worship on now came about 09:00 through a pagan influence on Christianity 09:04 where biblically if you go 09:06 by the Bible thing, there is no question, 09:08 it's the seventh day Sabbath. 09:10 And you probably heard me talk a few times lately, 09:13 there is a document out of Rome called Laudato si. 09:18 Remember, you've heard about the environmental document... 09:21 Environmental, yeah. 09:22 Was behind Pope Francis's speech 09:24 actually to Congress. 09:26 And in that, I think it's very telling 09:28 that on about four occasions in a long passage each time, 09:33 they say definitively, 09:35 "The God lay down the principle of rest 09:38 on the seventh day, Sabbath." 09:41 And they quote the Bible text that it was the Saturday 09:44 and they say that this is a principle, 09:46 part of the principle 09:48 for recognizing God's creatorship 09:50 to save this planet from extinction. 09:52 Unfortunately at the end of the document 09:55 they say that, 09:56 "In celebrating the Eucharistic Sunday, 10:00 we fulfill it." 10:01 Well, that's their saying, 10:02 but there's nothing for the Bible to say that. 10:04 But anyhow, back to the religious liberty, 10:08 in the principle of religious liberty 10:10 I would have to acknowledge a Roman Catholic 10:13 in the workplace saying, I want to worship on Sunday. 10:16 I think it's doctrinally wrong, 10:18 but as far as their conviction, it's right. 10:20 And this is something that people have a problem 10:23 with religious liberty. 10:24 They don't understand 10:25 that religious liberty is liberty 10:27 for you as well as for me, 10:29 not necessarily for the same thing. 10:30 I've also seen in religious liberty 10:33 as, for example, the Muslims with the Burkhas, 10:36 and their head gear and the Sikhs with their, 10:39 I can't remember what their... 10:40 The turban. 10:42 The turban with their head coverings. 10:44 And their dagger, ceremonial dagger. 10:46 I remember you telling me a story about, 10:49 I don't remember when this was, 10:51 but you were telling me how in public schools now, 10:54 I think in the US 10:55 how they're asking for the young children 10:57 to be able carry their dagger. 10:58 The kirpan, yes. 11:00 Which is for them a symbol of a strong fighting sense... 11:04 It's a religious ceremony 11:05 that used to be their warfare, yeah. 11:06 Yeah, so I mean, that is pushing religious, 11:10 for me I say is pushing religious liberty 11:12 a little too far. 11:13 There's no, I mean, 11:14 whether it's probably not good for you 11:16 and I to say that that is too far. 11:18 But the lawyers understand and everyone 11:20 that works on religious liberty, 11:22 religious liberty is not an unlimited right 11:26 because this is just saying in its extreme form, 11:28 if I have a religion that says 11:29 that I'm gonna sacrifice babies on an altar. 11:34 I don't have a right to go kill babies 11:36 because society in large 11:38 has to protect against my religion. 11:40 Yeah, you're right on that one. 11:42 So there are certain civil constraints, 11:45 but as far as what you believe and worship, 11:48 you know, the way you go 11:50 about worshiping and even proclaiming, 11:52 talking to other people about your faith. 11:55 That really shouldn't have limits. 11:57 No, for me, I've heard people telling me, 12:00 "You're Seventh-day Adventist, 12:01 I don't want to talk to you anymore, 12:03 you know, like, 12:04 you believe in something different than me, 12:05 I don't want to hear it." 12:07 And that's even beyond religious liberty, 12:08 that's close mindedness and prejudice there... 12:11 That in its many manifestations including, 12:13 that it bleeds over into racist attitudes, 12:15 that leads to great violence 12:17 and disruption in societies is not good. 12:19 But then on the flip side, the other side of the coin, 12:22 I've had people just come over to me and say, 12:24 "I've seen you going into the Willowbrook Church, 12:27 or I've seen you at the Hagerstown Church. 12:28 I've seen you carrying that little Bible 12:30 you carry around with you sometimes. 12:33 Why do you go to church on Saturday 12:35 and why do you believe this. 12:37 I mean, I've been grown up believing, 12:39 you know, they said me earlier 12:40 on how I've been told by my father, by the priest, 12:44 who we call father 12:45 that Sunday is the best day to worship, 12:47 why do you believe differently?" 12:49 And I'll tell them, 12:50 "Well, do you mind quoting the Bible." 12:52 Actually I even ask people, 12:53 do you mind me reading the Bible to them, 12:55 most people are 99.9999% of people 12:59 that I talk to are like that. 13:02 That's good. 13:03 You just explained the very natural way 13:05 to witness for your faith. 13:06 And Paul says that talk about women, 13:08 but he says, 13:09 "They'll see your godliness and that will convince them, 13:12 that's its own witness." 13:14 And if people asked question about your behavior, 13:16 that's the most natural way to project to someone else. 13:21 Let's take a break. 13:22 We'll be back shortly with Christopher Steed 13:24 and his father, me, Lincoln steed, 13:29 talking about religious liberty. 13:30 We'll be back. |
Revised 2018-03-07