Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider,
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before the break
with Tina Ramirez.
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We were talking
about journey to freedom.
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The part of your
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Hardwired program, right,
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for this particular
to educate young people.
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Yeah, it's a
really exciting campaign,
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I mean, so we've
been running this campaign
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for the past eight
months now and we've seen youth
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across the
country get very excited
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about religious freedom.
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And about having
real conversations
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about this right
with their communities,
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which is what we wanted to do.
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So every month they
get a different thing,
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it could be pitching
a tent in their backyard
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and having a conversation
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of what it's like to
be a persecute refugee,
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that had to flee
because of their faith,
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which happens
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to a large
percentage of refugees
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in the world, to having,
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you know, a Thanksgiving Dinner
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with a refugee or somebody that,
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somebody that fled here
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and to hear their
stories and to understand,
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you know, with all
the immigration debate
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going on in America.
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There are a lot of people
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that fled here
for religious freedom,
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you know, from many
different faith communities,
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and so to really personalize
what this freedom means
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for a lot of people
in America today that...
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You're right.
People don't realize.
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You might not even
hear their stories.
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I mean, it's a
few years ago now,
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but I'm sure even some caught up
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in this current
immigration disaster
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and not necessarily
the policy but, you know,
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the human
disaster that's ongoing.
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There's an area of...
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Yeah, southern
Mexico called Chiapas,
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used to be part of
where my wife comes
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from Guatemala,
but it's Chiapas.
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There was a grose
religious persecution there
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a few years ago,
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where Evangelical Protestants
or actually not Evangelical,
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they were
Pentecostal Protestants
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were being persecuted
in their villages directly
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by not necessarily
the Catholic Church,
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but people that
had Catholic identity.
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It was persecution
where they're rejecting,
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whole villages of
people were being cast out
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and sent to the wilderness,
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losing their property sometimes
they were physically set upon.
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So there was a huge wave
of them came up to the US,
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well, that's part
of what the president
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is trying to stop
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for legitimate
national sovereignty issues.
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But there's a huge
tragedy of people fleeing
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under threat of their very
life for religious persecution.
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People come to
America every year
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on the basis of
religious persecutions.
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One of the five reasons
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that you can get
refugees statuses
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on the basis of
religious persecution.
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Yes, I know that
but people forgot...
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So most people
don't know that...
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But you know, they think it was,
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you know, the pilgrim
fathers and others that came,
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but they didn't
stop there by any means,
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not even in World War II.
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No, and we are challenging
young people to go out
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and meet people in public life.
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I met a guy in Turgay
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when I was shopping
for Christmas stuff,
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and I could tell he
was Sunnis and he was...
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I think a Dinka,
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and it was so neat
because I could recognize
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that he was definitely Sunnis
and he had come here recently,
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so I asked him his story.
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Those are the kinds of
stories we want people to share,
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because he had
to flee his country,
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he's a Muslim that
flee because the president,
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even though the
president of Sudan is a Muslim,
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he's a dictator and oppresses
even his own Muslim community.
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So it was
really neat to meet him
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and to hear his story,
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and then to
share it with others,
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the people can have a
very different perspective
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of what
immigration is like in America.
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And I think that we,
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you know, as we
started the conversation,
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we are talking about the
fact that young people have
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a very narrow view
of religious freedom,
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because of how it
has been portraying,
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we want to
expand that conversation
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and really have a
real conversation about,
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it's much
bigger and it's global,
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and what we're dealing
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with in most of the world
its life or death for people
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that they might be homosexual,
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they might be
bloggers, they might be women
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or, you know,
artists, whatever they are.
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People that relate to
the people right around them
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and these are
people that are threatened
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because
countries and governments
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are attacking them
on the basis of religion
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or stifling their freedom
to express themselves simply
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because they
have diverse beliefs.
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You know, it's a
legitimate argument in the US
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about how many immigrants or so,
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and I don't want
to get into that,
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that's not right here.
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But I do want to only on
this program remind people,
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you know, I'm
from another country,
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I came, my parents brought me.
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My father transferred,
I didn't want to come,
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I was a 16-year-old.
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Why would I want
to leave my country?
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And to remind people
that all around the world
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there are countries
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some as rich as the
US, many much poorer,
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but generally
speaking even a poor person,
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people won't
leave their country,
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where they've got
an intact society,
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they have a place in it,
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it's not poverty that sends them
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crating across the border,
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it might nearby,
say, Tijuana, close by
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because it's just convenience.
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But people don't leave
unless there's civil war,
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unless their life
and limb is threatened,
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or they're
politically endangered
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or usually religious liberty.
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It takes some
extraordinary thing
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to have people
abandon their whole life,
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those that they
knew, their family,
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people forget that.
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Most people won't do that just
to get a slightly better job.
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Well, most and a
lot of the refugees
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that I know that have comments,
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it's very hard,
because we don't...
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Even then it's
a trauma for them.
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It is, it is traumatizing,
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so I think that
one of the reasons
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that Hardwired provides
education training in countries
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for local leadership is
because religious conflict
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is creating so
much of the instability
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that's causing
these refugee crisis,
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and so if we can
stabilize those countries
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we can make them safer
for the countrymen to stay
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and to not be
persecuted, to have a home.
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We have such a vibrant culture,
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so many vibrant cultures in
the world and people want...
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I mean, like Syria,
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you know, we shared
in our earlier session.
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Syria is a beautiful country,
I love traveling in Syria
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and it's so
disheartening to know that,
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that is gonna be
impossible for a lot,
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you know, for several
years until it re-stabilizes,
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I mean, the world is missing out
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on a cultural gem
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and not being
able to go to Syria.
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And I was trying to think,
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we would talk about
Boko Haram in one episode.
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And I remember seeing a program
in Nigeria where an American,
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a fellow that had lived
for a long time in America,
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a Nigerian origin,
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he had gone back to the
stronghold of Boko Haram
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to run a street side stall.
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He was living in poverty there,
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but he said he
owed it to his country.
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He wanted to go
back and they showed
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how the
fundamentalists were coming by
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and even
threatening him on camera,
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you know, you are doing
something that's Western,
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we are against and all that.
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And he say I want
to help my country.
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We should give
some credit to people,
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not their divided loyalty.
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The record is very plain.
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People that come to
the US, buy into it,
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the Japanese's cases study,
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never any case of Japanese
that turned against America.
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But still someone
that's left another country
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especially under duress,
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they have this
great burden to go back
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and help their country.
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And the US used
to understand that.
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Remember...
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Now I'm forgetting
some of the programs,
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but they were conscious programs
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of educating professionals
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and sending them back
to seed another country
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with democratic ideals,
religious freedom and so on.
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Well, so I think part
of the journey campaign
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is to reignite the sense
of what is religious freedom
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and freedom of conscience
for younger generations
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that aren't as close to,
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you know, the Vietnamese
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that have come
over fleeing persecution
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or the Iraqis or, you know,
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the different religious
communities over the years.
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We have that our ethnic
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or, you know,
countries like Burmese,
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you know, that have
had to flee persecution,
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people from the
former Soviet Union
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and we've had waves and waves
of this throughout our history.
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And those
stories are all around us
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and we want young people
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to share those
stories through this campaign,
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through our social
media, it's just either you go
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to any of the
Hardwired social media sites,
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you just hash tag I'm
Hardwired, and that's...
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And so that people can
really get a big perspective
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of why religious
freedom is so valuable,
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and a better conversation
can be had but that's some.
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So Hardwired is establishing
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representatives
on college campuses
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across the country to do this.
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We have church
youth groups doing it.
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So anyone that
wants to do the journey,
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they just sign up online
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and then or get in touch with us
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if they want to
do something bigger.
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And then at the end of the year,
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our goal is to
bring the students
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that have become these
ambassadors for freedom
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over the course of the year
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as well as people
in their community,
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they've engaged that
may not haven't really
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thought about it before together
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in Washington D.C.,
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where we can bring
leaders from around the world
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that from all
different perspectives
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are advocating
for religious freedom
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to really celebrate
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that this is for everybody,
it's universal, it's global,
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and it's something
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that we needed
younger generation
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that's gonna stand
and they gap for it.
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Yeah, we need that.
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You know, I love
history and in English history
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there was the period
of religious civil war
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and, you know,
religious dictator
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Oliver Cromwell.
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And he wasn't as bad as
history has painted him.
00:08:58.47\00:09:01.20
But, you know,
it's a classic scene
00:09:01.24\00:09:02.70
where toward
the end of his rule,
00:09:02.74\00:09:04.94
when the whole revolution
00:09:04.97\00:09:06.54
and the religious
fervor was dying away,
00:09:06.57\00:09:08.78
his chaplain friend
comes before parliament
00:09:08.81\00:09:11.11
and he says,
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"Take heed, that they
arise not a generation
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that knew us not in
the time of our distress."
00:09:15.68\00:09:18.52
He says "To whom the whole thing
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is a story of
that which is past,"
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where in they are not concerned
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and that's the challenge
I think facing us today.
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As a matter of
history of the US experiment
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and the principle
of religious liberty;
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we got to get by,
from the new generation,
00:09:32.87\00:09:35.14
for them to
think it's Jefferson,
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and Madison, or
Puritans, that's not good.
00:09:37.41\00:09:42.08
And you can't
separate freedom of religion
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from the trafficking
problems in the world,
00:09:45.31\00:09:47.12
or the poverty
problems in the world,
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or the sexual slavery.
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Not when you talk
a religious right...
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I mean, human rights...
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Or even racial
problems around the world.
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I mean, you cannot separate
it when you have a massacre,
00:09:56.29\00:09:59.49
a genocide against a
Yazidi community in Iraq,
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based on their religion
being treated as infidels
00:10:02.56\00:10:05.57
and allowed to be,
00:10:05.60\00:10:06.94
you know, have 6,000
women sexually enslaved
00:10:06.97\00:10:08.80
because of it.
00:10:08.84\00:10:10.17
Completely
impoverished, traumatized,
00:10:10.21\00:10:12.34
you just you can't
separate those two issues.
00:10:12.37\00:10:13.74
No, it's true.
00:10:13.78\00:10:17.65
Just before we finish,
00:10:17.68\00:10:19.28
what is the essential difference
00:10:19.31\00:10:20.72
between the Yazidis
and Islam generally?
00:10:20.75\00:10:24.69
What is the...
00:10:24.72\00:10:26.05
Well, the
Yazidis are not Islamic.
00:10:26.09\00:10:27.42
I thought it was a
spin-off from Islam originally.
00:10:27.46\00:10:29.36
No. They are different.
00:10:29.39\00:10:30.73
They are almost descendants
of like Zoroastrians,
00:10:30.76\00:10:32.36
so it's like...
00:10:32.39\00:10:33.73
Oh, okay, then
that's the connection.
00:10:33.76\00:10:35.10
Now you're
doing a wonderful work
00:10:35.13\00:10:36.46
and so the
future is bright, right,
00:10:36.50\00:10:39.30
you see that young
people gonna to respond...
00:10:39.33\00:10:41.57
Yeah, I think
that the time is now
00:10:41.60\00:10:43.74
for younger
generations to really see that,
00:10:43.77\00:10:46.41
that freedom of conscience
00:10:46.44\00:10:47.78
is one of the most
important justice issues
00:10:47.81\00:10:50.05
that they have,
00:10:50.08\00:10:51.41
because without the
freedom of conscience
00:10:51.45\00:10:53.25
they can't fight
for anything else.
00:10:53.28\00:10:54.92
And it's so intertwined
with all the other concerns
00:10:54.95\00:10:57.52
that they have in the world.
00:10:57.55\00:10:58.89
So we are excited, we
hope that they will sign up
00:10:58.92\00:11:01.42
and join the campaign
00:11:01.46\00:11:02.79
and join us in
Washington in December,
00:11:02.82\00:11:04.56
so that we can
together have a united front
00:11:04.59\00:11:08.13
for religious
freedom in the future.
00:11:08.16\00:11:09.66
Journeys, it's worth remembering
00:11:13.03\00:11:15.34
that all of the great tales
00:11:15.37\00:11:17.27
of human
endeavor involve journeys,
00:11:17.31\00:11:19.67
traveling from
somewhere to somewhere else.
00:11:19.71\00:11:22.71
The odyssey of Ulysses,
00:11:22.74\00:11:26.82
the journey
establishing the empire of Rome,
00:11:26.85\00:11:30.85
the Exodus from
Egypt to the Promised Land,
00:11:30.89\00:11:35.32
and for us in the modern era,
00:11:35.36\00:11:37.43
the progress from an
age of limited knowledge
00:11:37.46\00:11:40.66
and poor understanding
of the human potential
00:11:40.70\00:11:43.33
through to an
age of enlightenment,
00:11:43.37\00:11:45.73
at least they used to say that.
00:11:45.77\00:11:48.07
There is a spiritual
reality that evil lingers
00:11:48.10\00:11:50.77
and will one day
reveal itself fully,
00:11:50.81\00:11:52.57
but why not,
00:11:52.61\00:11:53.94
when we are talking
about religious liberty,
00:11:53.98\00:11:56.04
realize that we are journeying
00:11:56.08\00:11:57.75
toward a fuller knowledge
of what God has created
00:11:57.78\00:12:01.05
in each of us.
00:12:01.08\00:12:02.42
A yearning toward
the freedom to worship
00:12:02.45\00:12:05.75
and to understand the divine
in a way that's inhibited,
00:12:05.79\00:12:09.66
and unrestricted
by other human beings.
00:12:09.69\00:12:13.09
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:13.13\00:12:16.40