Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break with
guest Amireh Al Haddad,
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we were talking
about the Reformation
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and a lot of
things that flow from it.
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And to start it off again,
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the reason that I
like this discussion
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is the
Reformation is so important
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for understanding religion
and religious liberty today.
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And yet 500 some years
ago it seems so distant,
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that there's a
danger that we'll forget.
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But not only the heritage,
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but the dynamic and
what was worked out there
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and what we've inherited.
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Yeah, that's always a
danger, especially when you get,
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you know, a couple of
centuries down the road.
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And look how different
we are as a society today
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than how they were then.
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And look at technology today.
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I mean, even the way
we do war is different.
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Yeah, now, it's a TV
screen 10,000 miles away,
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a video game and
you're zapping someone.
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Yeah.
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But, you know, even
the idea of the individual
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having rights and
being the sovereign entity
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both on religion
and political matters
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that came out of the Reformation
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that really
didn't exist before then.
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And you could
make a good argument
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of other advances,
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including printing and
the growth of philosophy
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and so on that were
not purely religious,
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but it all came
together with the Reformation.
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And that was the spark in
the tinder of a dead church
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that brought what we
know as religious freedom.
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Do you have the right to protest
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what your church is saying?
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Right.
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Want to talk about it.
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Even if you still want
to be part of your church,
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because Luther wasn't looking
to leave the Catholic Church
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when he protested,
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he was looking
to correct something
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that he thought was wrong.
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It's an interesting point.
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And let me rephrase it
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because I think
you're taunting me.
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The question is at what point
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does the
discrepancy or divergence
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of religious
opinion within a church
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become so intolerable?
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You leave or try to,
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you know, force the
overall entity to change?
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It's a very interesting point.
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And I do not have the answer.
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I don't have the answer,
but I think about it a lot.
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Yeah.
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It definitely is something
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that comes into
my field division
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as the Director
of Public Affairs
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and Religious Liberty,
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because this comes into play
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not only from the
religious liberty side,
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but also from the
public affair side
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and how you handle conflict.
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To say that
there's never going to be
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conflict within a church
is to say that, you know...
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Human nature has
ceased to operate.
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Yeah, exactly. We're all robots.
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We're all automatons,
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and no one will
be a free thinker,
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free, independent thinker.
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But, you know,
you kind of flip that
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with thinking that the church
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is still run by human beings,
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and human
beings are not perfect.
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And there are times
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when leadership styles
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are our
personality styles as well,
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and it's not you have to decide
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when is this
problem a personality issue
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and when is it
a doctrinal issue?
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I'm trying to think was,
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might have been
both Jesus and Paul,
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I think when they
were before councils
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said things and
then when they were told
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that this was the high priest.
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If I said, I didn't
mean to lot remember.
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Right, yeah.
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But how far do you
take respect for a leader
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of any given church
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that you see is
carrying on a wrong policy
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or maybe even
pushing consciously
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a wrong thing?
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Hadad, it's an interesting point
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because as you
mentioned, Martin Luther,
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there's no
evidence that I can see
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that when he first started,
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he expected to leave
the church little and leave,
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leave it not even at all,
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certainly not to
establish another church.
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He was wanting to reform
what he saw as the church.
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And I've listened recently
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to Roman
Catholic radio broadcasts.
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And there are
many Roman Catholics
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traveled to the extreme
about the ongoing sexual abuses
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that they see some of them
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as deriving from
structural problems.
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They're not just bad eggs.
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There's something that
they don't like, and yet,
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a lot of them are saying,
well, this is God's Church,
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you know, this is
sort of the punishment
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from the devil and,
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you know, will bear up
under it and will stay with it.
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But maybe with the
Protestant sensibility,
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you say, "Well, I can't,
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this is a sign of
too much corruption.
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I'll leave."
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So where does
that point, it's...
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I don't think you and
I can come to the answer,
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but it's...
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I guess the answer is somewhere
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in the matter of
conscience where you break.
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And Ellen White,
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who was one of
the Adventist pioneers
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had to deal with this.
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And she said,
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which very few of
our member seem to know,
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she says, "Some people may
have to wait make their way
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to the kingdom
outside the church."
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May be just so
contentious and disruptive,
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they may have such a bad deal.
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There may be such injustice
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in the
implementation of church order
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and doctrine and so on.
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That you have to get out,
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which doesn't mean the church
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for what it stands for is wrong.
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Right.
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And ironically,
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Rome was practicing a
wrong form of Christianity,
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but I'm willing to
grant not gonna give Peter's
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you know, the
donation of power the Peter,
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that's a whole thing.
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But I'm willing to grant
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that the Roman Catholic Church
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goes back to the
original early Christians.
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And at some
point, it's legitimate.
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Yeah.
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And it doesn't mean
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that because
you've left the church
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or your church,
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it doesn't mean that
you can't make it a habit,
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you know.
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This internal
conflict that we sometimes face
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is one of the reasons
why a lot of people say,
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"Well, this is
why I don't want to be
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part of an organized religion,
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you know, it's
off putting to people.
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And, you know, that's
an issue too because...
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Well, at the best it
doesn't definitively answer
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but the Bible does
say that not to forsake
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the assembling
yourselves together.
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Yes, right.
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So religion is not
a solitary calling.
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Yes.
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Of course, it can't be religion
without reference to God,
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but living here and now
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we have to join with
their fellow creatures
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and, of course,
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true religion is caring
for our neighbor, our brother,
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the widows and so on,
it's concerned with other so...
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And not just ourselves.
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Yeah, but back
to the Reformation,
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or at least proper.
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I don't know if
you thought about it,
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but it's troubled me greatly
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in the view of
recent developments
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that a major thing
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that came out of the Reformation
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immediately was
religious warfare
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probably for 30 years I think,
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in Europe, but
at the end of that
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all of the warring factions
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which are roughly
divided between Catholics,
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Catholic and
Protestant principalities,
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got together at the
Treaty of Westphalia,
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and made the modern
world, the world as we know it.
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Before that it was
empires and little duchies.
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And, you know,
pretender of this, or that,
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or travel group.
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It was not till the
Treaty of Westphalia
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you had what the modern state is
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with defined borders
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may not be all the one people
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but it's under
the one governance.
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They have borders they defend
their rules within the country
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and respect
from other countries.
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And I see that breaking down,
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and maybe I think
differently than other people.
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I see that breakdown
as running in parallel
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and in some ways,
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enabled both ways
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by the breakdown of
religious sensibility.
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Today, you're saying today.
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As the influence of
the Reformation dissipates,
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it's affecting
attitudes of religion,
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it's affecting
the very structure
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of the modern
world, it's collapsing.
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I'm not sure that I
agree with you on that, but...
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Well, I'll tell you one evidence
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of the breakdown
of borders and so on
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that you refer to it,
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the whole idea of drone warfare
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and had the killer teams
that in the middle of the night
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go into other
countries without telling anyone
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and snuff out a
few people here there.
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Borders don't
mean what they used to.
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That's true in terms
of physical barriers.
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And in one country or
a coalition of countries
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taking police
action in other countries
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that that goes against
the spirit of Westphalia.
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So I'm still kind of questioning
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the border issue.
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I think
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where we're
breaking down the borders
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is more in technology
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than, you know,
protecting the borders.
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Sure we can protect the borders.
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But I think that technology wise
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and with social media
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and with the changing attitudes
that we're experiencing
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among all of our society,
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it does create a more difficult,
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you know, or different.
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It's harder to keep a
population under control
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when information
bleeds in from outside.
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Always. Soviet Union found that.
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Any number of
dictators have found that.
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That's been the problem
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since the beginning
of the printing press.
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Yeah, so, but
on a certain level,
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I think borders
are becoming untenable.
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And yet, they're
creating the backlash
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where they're being
defended more aggressively.
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So I don't know
which way it'll go.
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I used to see,
say very vigorously
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that national
identity was failing
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and it was
religious or tribal identity.
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That's still somewhat true,
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but nationalism is
on a radical upsurge
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at the moment,
there's no question.
00:10:03.23\00:10:05.23
And, you know, it
goes back to this question
00:10:05.27\00:10:07.14
that we started off
00:10:07.17\00:10:08.84
with in the beginning
of the segment about how,
00:10:08.87\00:10:14.18
how we relate,
00:10:14.21\00:10:15.74
you know,
through the Reformation
00:10:15.78\00:10:18.08
and it's outgrowth
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and how that
internalizes to the way
00:10:19.48\00:10:25.02
we as church
members of whatever group,
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we're a church member of
interacts with leadership,
00:10:29.76\00:10:34.50
or doctrine,
00:10:34.53\00:10:36.36
or any of those
issues that we tend to,
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personalities, we tend
to have conflicts with.
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And again, it kind of to me
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just brings it
all back to the issue
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of whether or not
00:10:47.38\00:10:48.94
there's religious
freedom within those groups.
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And in our
church, we always say,
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you have lots of
religious freedom,
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but this is a
closed membership club.
00:10:57.62\00:11:01.36
And if you don't believe
00:11:01.39\00:11:02.82
what the
membership standards are,
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then you make it us to leave.
00:11:05.69\00:11:07.43
So that's religious freedom
too within the church boundaries
00:11:07.46\00:11:12.20
when you're
talking about boundaries.
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There is an incredible and
very significant difference
00:11:16.81\00:11:19.34
between religion
and spirituality.
00:11:19.37\00:11:22.48
And I think the
Reformation itself
00:11:22.51\00:11:25.05
showed that distinction.
00:11:25.08\00:11:26.48
There was a lot of religion
00:11:26.51\00:11:28.08
at the time Martin
Luther got his understandings
00:11:28.12\00:11:33.56
of righteousness by faith
00:11:33.59\00:11:34.99
and the powerful internal effect
00:11:35.02\00:11:39.16
that the truth has on
our mind and our heart.
00:11:39.19\00:11:43.16
We need to
rediscover that in our age.
00:11:43.20\00:11:46.13
In many ways, we're
living in a time of revolution.
00:11:46.17\00:11:49.80
As the Bible says,
00:11:49.84\00:11:51.17
"All of the powers that
can be are being shaken."
00:11:51.21\00:11:54.91
But as the Reformation showed,
00:11:54.94\00:11:56.81
when people go
back to the Word of God,
00:11:56.85\00:11:59.35
study and
internalize the great values
00:11:59.38\00:12:02.85
and spiritual truths
that are found there,
00:12:02.88\00:12:05.65
then that will by
necessity change the world,
00:12:05.69\00:12:10.53
change the world around us
00:12:10.56\00:12:12.29
and prepare
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those who are
receptive in this world
00:12:13.70\00:12:15.90
to travel to the world to come
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to borrow a phrase
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from John Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress.
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Yes, an age of revolution,
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but the greatest
revolution that can ever be
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is the change in
the individual heart.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:32.78\00:12:35.65