| Time | Text |
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The Protestant Reformation Created America
00:04:21
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| Thank you so much for really making the time to be here with us, and you got a lot to say. | |
| Yeah, the central idea of this book is that America is a Christian country. | |
| I say this as a Jew and an agnostic. | |
| I'm a kind of witness from outside. | |
| 98% of the people who settled this continent and created America were Protestant Christians. | |
| Every freedom that we cherish, every principle that we hold dear, originated as an idea of Christians who were Protestants. | |
| The Protestant Reformation is the creator, really, of America. | |
| For example, one of the central principles of the Reformation was the idea of the priesthood of all believers. | |
| Before the Reformation, you could only get to heaven if you went through the Catholic Church and its priesthood as the true church. | |
| Wow. | |
| And then there were established churches, as in England, the Anglican Church, which persecuted Protestant denominations that weren't Anglican. | |
| This is a revolutionary idea, the priesthood of all believers. | |
| What it means is that each child of God faces his or her maker one-on-one without the intermediary of a church or of a priesthood. | |
| This is a radical idea. | |
| The priesthood of all believers makes everybody equal and includes, for example, black slaves. | |
| And that's how America, led by Christians, freed the slaves and abolished slavery. | |
| Americans should not be ashamed of their slave past. | |
| We inherited slavery from the British. | |
| And of course, slavery was a normal institution for 3,000 years. | |
| But when America was created, Jefferson put into the birth certificate, all men are created equal, because that's the priesthood of all believers right there. | |
| And had a right, an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | |
| And I, as an agnostic, ex-leftist, when I looked at the, you know, because we as leftists, we wanted inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | |
| But inalienable means they can't be taken away. | |
| If government gives you the rights, government can take them away. | |
| So the only way you can have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is if there's a God. | |
| Of course, that was an obvious idea, but a difficult one for an agnostic to embrace. | |
| The conclusion I came to is that you have to have respect for the belief in God and most importantly, for those who believe in God. | |
| If you want your freedoms, that's the basis of all of our freedoms. | |
| And it's the reason that the religious liberty or the freedom of conscience is the First Amendment, the most important freedom we have. | |
| Because if you can't have freedom of conscience and you can't articulate and express those views, you can't defend any of your freedoms. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| And we see now, for example, the attack on Chick-fil-A, banning them from airports. | |
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Pence Attacked By Buttigieg
00:00:41
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| That's not because they make bad chicken. | |
| That's because their charitable arms funds an organization that promotes Christian ideas. | |
| And we saw Vice President Mike Pence, who is probably the most decent man in politics, attacked by a vindictive bigot named Pete Buttigieg, who's number three in line for the Democratic nomination. | |
| Pence was a true Christian when he was governor, and Buttigig came out as it revealed that he was gay. | |