Liberty Alert: “Religious Liberty Protection….It’s Never Been Better” With Kelly Shackelford

The following program is sponsored by Evangelical Life Ministry.

Welcome to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Sells, Sponsored by our friends at the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty here in Washington, DC a program that cuts through the chaos and confusion in the culture today by talking to Kingdom citizenship, bold, biblical principles for a robust public Christian life. And now your host, Dr. Greg Sz.

Good day. Good day, Washington DC and friends of the program all across the country. I'm Greg Seltz. Welcome to Liberty Action Alert. Today in our program, it, it's especially good to have back, uh, Mr. Kelly Shackleford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the largest legal firm in the nation, dedicated exclusively to protecting religious liberty for all Americans. Welcome back, Kelly.

Thanks. Happy to be on.

Well listen, just to start, talk about some of these cases that you, that you've won and that, you know, I mean, they've come to fruition.

Yeah. It's, uh, it's really beyond anything, um, that we've ever even imagined. Um, Right. We were already at a record number of wins and then something happened that, you know, 33 years ago when I started doing religious liberty work, if you would've said, Hey Kelly, why don't you come up with a business plan that results in you getting two cases at the Supreme Court in the same term? Right. Um, you know, there's 8,000 requests a year. They take 65 cases. Wow. I mean, that's like a crazy, I would've said, You're nuts. That's not a goal you can even accomplish through human means. Right. We didn't have two cases. We had two wins at the Supreme Court within six days of each other. Right, right. Holy God. I mean, it was so crazy that it was like, it was, Okay, Lord, you know, we know who this was.

Uh, and then to have both of decisions to be so far reaching, I mean, and people, your audience probably doesn't know this yet cuz most people haven't been told, but I mean, one of these cases is literally the biggest religious liberty case in over 50 years. Um, it, it's dramatic what happened and it's because people know kind of the facts or what the case was about, but they have no idea the implications of what was written internally. Mm-hmm. . And so these were huge, huge, huge, very, very, very positive cases for anybody of faith who cares about religious freedom. And most people have no idea.

Well, and and you know, when you said it's crazy because, you know, God is at work and I think he's, he's blessing the church. There's no doubt with protection here. But you said something and I had you back on in back in January, so it's been a while. And you said something on that program, and I think I pushed back a little bit. Um, you said, This is the greatest time in my lifetime for religious liberty protection for the church. And I said, Oh, come on, . You know, but the reality is legally, like you said, and I I, are you talking about the Bladensburg case? That was the, the big far reaching case? Or is there even more? Oh

No, the big case to everybody's surprise, I mean, both of 'em were really big and I could explain why, but the biggest of all was the Coach Kennedy case.

Oh, the coach, Yeah. I was just gonna say the Coach Kennedy case. So it was far reaching, too

Far reaching in ways people don't know. They just know Coach Kennedy gets to go back to school and be a coach and gets to go to a knee and pray. Right. They have no idea what was in that decision, which essentially my short, I mean I can go into it if we got a few minutes here, but the, the, the quick, the summary is the Roe v way of religious liberty was just overturned in the middle of that case. And that is a 50 year game changer. And, uh, again, most people don't know. And in fact, I'll, you mentioned Blasberg, I'll, I'll step back and explain to the audience. Yeah.

How did we get, how did we get here legally?

Well, what happened is, 50 years ago there was a case, right, two years before Roe v. Wade, the same, more liberal Supreme Court reinterpreted our establishment clause, which says, Congress shall make no law respecting establishment or religion. We don't want there to be a nationally established church. Right. They said, No, no, it means more than that. And they brought in things, they said it means separation of church and state. It means all these things. So if you wonder why our whole lives, we've seen nativity scenes being taken down and crosses being taken down and prayers being banned in religion, in school being kind of almost created it like it's some sort of horrible thing. Right. A student or, or somebody to bow their head over their meal or any of these things. You say, Is that in the constitution? Well, no, it's not in the Constitution, but it's all from this case called Lemon.

Perfectly named . And four years ago we had the Bladensburg cross case, as you mentioned, a, a memorial that's been up for a hundred years to honor those who gave their lives in World War I. And a lawsuit was brought by the American humanist to tear it down because they didn't want there to be, uh, a cross on government property that violates separation of church and state. And, uh, we went to the Supreme Court and we did something cuz we were looking and we saw Kavanaugh was on the court. Now in Gorsuch, we thought, you know, we, we might have five votes to get rid of this horrible lemon case. And so that's what we tried to do. And for the first time, really in a long, well for really ever, the court said, you know, we're not following lemon and five four, we won seven two, but 5, 4, 5 justices said not following lemon anymore.

And people don't know this never been a case on the rights of teachers, the rights of coaches with regard to their faith at school. There's never been one. Wow. This is big. So to, for us to go for the get rid of lemon in the public schools would've been like going for a grand slam that might have ruined the game for us when we could just get a bunch single and win. Right. And so we were like, we've gotta be wise and we've gotta go, this is already significant enough midway through the oral argument. So we didn't ask for that. Midway through the oral argument out of nowhere, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch start saying, you know, I think it's time to get rid of lemon. And we're, I mean our eyes are as like biggest silver dollars. We're like, whoa, what, what, what do they just say?

. Right. And uh, sure enough, if you read the Coach Kennedy opinion, you know, as you're starting along, all of a sudden you read, we have abandoned Lemon long ago. And then it points to the Bladensburg cross case and the descent goes crazy saying they just traversed lemon, they've just overthrown lemon. And so, I mean, I don't know how to get to this across people except this, uh, one of our more aggressive attorneys came running into my office a day later and he said, I need 20 million. I said, Whoa, what do you mean you need 20 million? He said, he said, Every case that sided lemon over the last 50 years has just been thrown over. We need to go back into every community in every state of this country. The crosses go back up, the prayer comes back in, you know, while, while Antifa was tearing down crosses, we're putting them back up.

And we need to go into every one of these. And sure enough, we've got a project we're starting right now called Restoring Faith in, in America, Everybody can do this. They could go to their own community and say, Hey look, you remember that memorial you wouldn't allow because it had a religious symbol that now goes back up. You know, that prayer you stopped that now needs to be put back in. So, I mean, this is a huge, huge shift and it's, wow, it's one of the first things where we can go in the offense now with this precedent and go into every community and bring faith back to America.

Well, you know, and that's so exciting and I do want to get to that last point about, okay, what does this mean for our voice coming back into the public square? But before I do that, this is the thing that really gets to me, which shows that it's gotta be even more than just, you know, you doing a great job legally to protect us and the Constitution doing that. But because even right now, this just happened in Maryland, a federal judge rules against our Lutheran schools in Baltimore that says that we have to, to abide by Title IX guidelines. But what's amazing is they're changing the guidelines, they're changing the meaning of the words. Now sex means sexual orientation. So just like it looks like when we win protection, they either say, they either don't abide by the rules or they change the rules, or they change the meaning of the words. So, you know, I'm gonna teach my people that we have to fight some of these issues. Yes. So we can serve, but how do we fight agents like agencies like this that seem to work outside of this good legal precedent in our constitutional protections?

Well, there's, there's two things going on at once, right? We we're living in a culture that's becoming more hostile to faith, to religious freedom, to our founding principles. At the same time though, I mean, this is a miracle. It's only God's hand that could do this. Every American right now has more religious freedom than they've ever had in their lifetime. And it's just gonna get better. Right? So all these, these attacks, like these attack on this Lutheran school that you mention, right? They're gonna get some bad judges below because, you know, all these judges aren't good. Um, Right. But guess what most of them are now and the Supreme Court is, and they're gonna file a constitution. So these, I would look at these losses below as opportunities for just greater press it cuz we're gonna be building on this. Now, we're, I mean this is, I I don't know, the visual I would give people is it's sort of like we've had a door and it's been kinda locked shut. Right? And God just bombed open the door.

Wow.

That's, and now it's time for us to walk through the door and we're just beginning. So thi this is gonna be, so don't be discouraged by the fact that the enemy is attacking, the enemy is desperate and they are on the run. And so we needed to flood the enemy. We need to go into every community and put up those crosses and put up those memorials and bring prayer back. You know, how does your school board start? Are they opening with prayer where they should is protected? Are they doing it in your city council? You know, faith, I mean, this is what America was about. We need to bring it back out instead of trying to hide it under a bushel. And, uh, and people can do it now and the protection is there. So I would just say we are in a battle. People need, if we don't stand up, we'll lose all our freedoms.

But

If we will stand up, we've got the protection now and we've got the momentum and God is doing a great work right now.

Yeah. And I think that's what I love about what, first of all, I love your energy and, and, and the joy that you bring to this because this is just, this isn't just asserting our identity back into our culture. These things protect everybody. Religious liberty protects everybody. Believing that you're created by God actually creates individual rights that the government can't take away from you folks. The Judeo Christian worldview gave you a lot of blessings. Even if you're not a Christian or a Jew. I mean, that's the, the part that people just don't seem to get anymore. I guess

Even you're a, even if you're a nonbeliever in anything, even if you're a, an atheist, you know, the, the founders called this our first freedom, right? Because they understood if you lose this freedom, you'll lose all your freedoms. And the best way I can help them understand that is to say, the one thing that a totalitarian regime will never allow are citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government. Right? So whenever that kind of oppressive regime comes in, you'll find the first flash point is almost always religious freedom. And if you lose there, you'll lose everything. And so it's why the founders put it as our first two clauses in the, in the Bill of Rights. It's why they called it our First Freedom. This is something that selfishly, no matter what your faith background, you better protect or else you'll lose all your other freedoms.

Yeah. I love, I think it was Dennis Prager that said, If you live in America and you want to protect your freedom and you don't believe in God, act like you do because your freedoms depend on it. Or I heard someone else say socialism is a never ending war against transcendence. And I think people need to understand that's what we're talking about, secular pietism. Secular progressivism. It's a new religion that just sees the state as the highest end. I guess that's what I'm saying. Does our church do our church people, are they starting to wake up, do you think? To the real challenge? Because I don't think, I still don't think that a majority of Americans are anti-religious or anti-Christian. But you know, you get to a point where you think, well, if the culture's going that way, I guess I've gotta try to be a good Christian citizen and just mind my Ps and Qs, are we waking up to the real issue and do we realize that the enemy may not be as big as we think?

I, you know, I hope so. But I mean the, the history of pretty much every country is, it's a small number on both sides who control the future. Okay. And, um, there, I, I don't think there are very many people who are really confused about the difference between a man and a woman. . I don't think there, right, there are that many people who are really confused about the difference between freedom and these, uh, communist Marxist, uh, ideas that are being pushed on our country. Mm-hmm. . But the, these things work like, you know, this sort of oppressive, authoritarian kind of marks, this kind of ideas work because they're counting on people not having the courage to stand up and speak the truth. Right. Right. And there's a great essay by, and I know Rod Dreyer wrote a book on this. It's, it's really excellent called Living Out By Lies.

Right. And the whole point of the book was, what do you do in these communist regimes? And what they say is, all these totalitarian regimes exist by forcing everybody to go along with the lies. But if enough people never, a majority, just enough people will stand and speak the truth. It collapses. And as Christians, that's what we're required to do, is stand to speak the truth, even if it costs us. And that's what we have to do if we're gonna keep this country and our freedoms. And every one of our clients at First Liberty are people that did that. Look at Joe Kennedy, Right. Seven years out of coaching. Wow. Can't tell you what the guy went through all those years. But you know what, he's now not only got a victory for him, he's got a a a precedent that changes 50 years of hostility to religion by the government that's gonna affect hundreds of millions of Americans. So we just need to be like the coach Kennedy. Like, I mean, this week we're filing in the Supreme Court a really important case on the rights of people who work. You know, we're in a woke cism now,

Right? In

This case that we're filing if we're successful. And I, I feel, feel good about it, it will protect every single person of faith in the workplace because we have religious freedom under federal law. And these, this woke is a, is it own religion trying to force you to violate yours? Well man, I want my kids and my grandkids to be able to get a paycheck and still have their faith. And so these are important fights that we've gotta fight, but it takes people standing up, they've gotta stand up and say, This is wrong. This is against our law. And, and if, if everybody is willing to speak the truth, you know, we'll win this war. But you're right, it takes, you know, the church to do that. Cause if they're not gonna speak the truth, who

Will? Who will. Yeah. And you know, and I always try to explain to our people, cause I even get this within our church, um, you know, they'll say, Well you're, you're making, you're getting involved in politics. You're, you know, we need to speak to the gospel. And I finally said to him one time, I said, We're not the ones politicizing this stuff. Our major thing is to push this stuff back or to deal with it, you know, Ally, like I can discuss, you know, these things about what it means that God created us male and female and we can de we can show the physiology, the sociology, the history. We can engage in all of that stuff. What we don't want is a government official to say your side can't speak. And that, and I said to our people, How is that, how is that us politicizing these things?

That's really us saying we're not gonna let this be politicized. And that's a battle that we, I think we have to win. You know, you reminded me of something, John, you know, here's a Lutheran saying, I I really admire John Paul, the Pope, you know, John Paul ii because when he was in Poland, I mean they, the, the communist tried to shut him down. They tried to make all the churches, museums or swimming pools or whatever, and John Paul would take a cross and he would plan it when he was a priest. He'd plan it in the middle of the city square and do mass. And of course they'd come grab his crosses and they'd grab everything. They, they wouldn't arrest him because he was such a figure, even as a priest. But he did it every Sunday, Bam, right in the middle. I'm not gonna, you're not gonna shut me up because this is not just who we are. This is who God is for everybody. And I think that's what our people better start to get serious about. Cuz it's God's truth that's under attack, not just us

And these churches and these Christian schools. And I mean, you mentioned the Lutheran case. I mean, gosh, you know what, if people are listening and they've got that Lutheran school or that Christian school or, and I don't care what faith it is, you know, call us. I mean, we'll represent you for free. We'll bring in the best litigators in the country. We've gotta win these cases. We've gotta stand, we don't need churches backing off their biblical principles because somebody's pressuring them. Right. I mean, we, we have got to stand and win. And, and what I wanna encourage people is all the wins are on our side. I mean, you know, God is moving right now and we're, we've got some great precedents already, but it's just gonna get better because what happened is we've got a Supreme Court now who thinks their job is to find the original meaning of the text, not to like do what they think is sort of social justice for the moment in the United States and ask like a, a legislator.

Um, they're like, whatever I believe is irrelevant. I've gotta go with what the Constitution says. Right? And guess what? Well, that takes us to a great place and back to what our founders were trying to do, full religious expression, uh, no government, you know, established church, which means everybody's free to live out their own faith. That is a big shift away from this hostility to religion by the government that we've had for 50 years. So these attempts to come in and tell, you know, church, schools, religious schools, you know, what beliefs they can have and if they can't fire somebody because they're opposing the beliefs of the church, we've gotta fight that and stand up. And I, I tell you, we're gonna win the every one of those cases eventually. Now you might lose lower court with some of these, but we've gotta fight and we've gotta stand. And I feel very confident about the future, uh, with the judges we have in place and the justices we have right now.

Well, again, and that's why I wanted to have you on, because I, again, our church, um, Hona Taber a foundational, I talked to the principal of Hona Taber just the other day about all this on our program, and she just said, you know, we just finally had to stand on the truth. Where else would we go? And then she winds up bec it's a precedent setting case as well. So our Lutheran church, if you put our back against the wall, we'll stand there. And I think to our people, listen, that's what we're talking about. And so one last thing that maybe just share with them our religious liberty protections, it's not that we, I mean it shouldn't be the foundation of our courage, but it really does encourage us to be more courageous Right. And more bold. Talk to our people and just say, The wind is at your back in a way that you've never had before. Kind of explain it to 'em one more time.

Number one, uh, the, you know, first from just a theological standpoint, imagine if, and this is true, God opened a door for the whole church in the United States and said, walk through with freedom and we all stand at the door and refuse to walk through.

Right.

Apathetic. Would that be? Yeah. Well that's, that's where we are right now. Okay. God just blew open a door that we haven't had open. I mean, most people alive have never had more religious freedom than they have right now. And it's just gonna grow. So if God has done the opening part, we just gotta be faithful now. Right? Right. But if to, if people don't understand what happened, Coach Kennedy case in the, in the middle of the case, they throw out this horrible case that's caused all this hostility to religion by the government for 50 years. The other case, as mentioned that we won, was the Carson case. This is a case outta Maine where it said, We're gonna let you parents pick any school you want. You can use your taxpayer money, you can pick outta state outta country schools. We don't care. Only one restriction.

You can't pick any school that teaches from a religious viewpoint. And Supreme Court said six to three can't do that in the United States of America. And so most people understand, number one, that's a huge victory for every Christian school in the country, every religious school in the country, every school choice program that exists, they have to be treated the same. They have to be allowed to participate. Parents have to be allowed to, to, to do that. But it's bigger the, the principle that the decision was decided upon, and this is Chief Justice Roberts not a right wing, crazy guy, right? Right. He said, when there's a government program where generalized benefits are provided to the public, you can never discriminate on the basis of religion, religious nature, religious ideas. Now think of what this means. If there's a program to get people off of drugs, you can't exclude the religious choices.

Okay? If, think about after Roe v. Wade, let's say you're a state legislature and you want to help unwed mothers or, you know, be able to adopt children. Now if they want to, you know, or, or you wanna help them with their children. If you have these government programs, or we're gonna see these, I guarantee you, all across the country in states that are more favorable to life, uh, can you exclude the religious scripts from those programs? Now you can't. Wow. I mean, your church can participate in helping people and help and adoptions and helping unwed mothers through these government pro, whenever there's an attempt to provide a solution and the government is offering these benefits, it cannot discriminate against the religious organizations individuals. So this Carson case is a big case for school choice, but it's, it's an example again, of how things are opening up for the church and for people of faith if they're willing to exercise their faith and walk into that freedom.

Well this, I mean this is, again, that's why I wanted to have you on so that, because it, you just said something that really got to me, Government, I always talk about how government's encroached, it's encroaching in the arenas of the church. You know, there's no such thing as a benevolent state. That's one of the reasons why we limited the state in our country. Well, they're now, they're doing all these benevolence things and they're encroaching into church in free people's areas. Well, now what you're saying is if they do that and we're in that area too, then the resources that are generally for everybody are also there for us. Right. And you can't then use those resources to then, uh, secularize our effort in the public square. And I think that, I mean, there's all kinds of ministries now that open back up to the church in a way that's been closed down because of this encroachment. I mean, that is, so listen in folks. I mean, you're talking about reaching your neighborhoods, reaching your communities. Now you have a, a way to get into those issues in ways you haven't had, uh, before.

Well, I, I'd encourage people, Greg, cuz you know, if they're not getting the info, make sure they're getting it. Like, I mean, you could go to First Liberty to spell out first liberty.org. I guarantee you 90% of what they see they wouldn't see in the newspaper. Uh, all they know is Coach Kennedy gets to pray again, but they have no idea what happened inside of that. And the freedom this gives them. And I think the more people see things, the more emboldened they get to be free and to open up and to speak the truth and to stand for the Lord cuz they see other people doing it and they see the protections that are there.

Kelly, it's been a pleasure to have you on. Again. Thanks

For

Having me. Thanks for tuning in today to get to know our lc r Ldc word, check out our website@lclfreedom.org. Till next time, God bless you Always. I'm Greg Sells. Have a great week.

You've been listening to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Sells, executive Director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington dc. This program has been brought to you by the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty.