God, Law & Liberty Podcast

History shows that the purpose of the First Amendment's religion clauses was to continue the reformation between religious liberty and religious toleration that ended in England with the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England's primacy. Recent arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court on religious liberty show that Christians in America have forgotten that purpose and providentially given...

This week the U.S. Supreme Court considered the application of the Free Exercise Clause to a public school "story time" curriculum that some Christians parents objected to. Perhaps Christians should consider why they want a clause expressly directed to Congress applied to the states. Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Easter is the perfect time for Christians to reflect on the providence of God in constituting our nation in such a way that a great gospel doctrine was placed in the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause. In the minds of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson it resolved a gospel debate that can be raced back to 16th century English theologian, William Perkins Support the show: https://...

The full text of John Adams’s letter saying “our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” has been forgotten. In the forgotten portion, he wrote “this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the world” if certain specific things happened. What were they? Did they happen? If so, what should we do? In the mid-1800s, van Prinsterer gave an an...

Today David examines Tennessee’s attorney general's defense before the U.S. Supreme Court of the state’s law prohibiting medical treatments for a minor’s gender dysphoria. It’s important to understand because it’s the same argument Christian legal and policy advocates are using around the country. Are the arguments based on a nihilistic or biblical cosmology? Listen t...

Today David takes quotes from the arguments made last week by the U.S. Department of Justice to the United States Supreme Court explaining why it thinks the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause is violated by Tennessee's law prohibiting the use of medicine to treat a minor's gender dysphoria. His analysis of them will show why Christians must take the prevailing nihilistic cosmology and...

Today, David looks at the Incarnation through the lens of excerpts from John Owen’s Christologia and Isaiah 61 to show its application to law and its relation to how Tennessee’s law prohibiting medical interventions to “treat” a minor’s gender dysphoria is being defended before the United States Supreme Court. Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for pr...

When Christians lose the metaphysic and cosmology of Colossians 1:15-20, we fall prey to the “empty traditions and philosophies of men.” David uses John Owen’s exposition of Hebrews 11:1, legislative testimony from the most prominent pro-life lawyer in America, and what the founder of a Christian law school said he teaches his students to show how a wrong metaphysic and cosmology turns making the...

Two weeks ago, David argued there were Fifth Commandment problems with the legal arguments submitted by Christians to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of Tennessee’s law prohibiting the use of medicine to address a minor’s gender dysphoria. Today David looks at the briefs submitted on behalf of four Christian organizations to explain why he thinks there are problems with the first three commandme...

Having explored the ways in which the arguments of a leading Christian legal advocate conform to the way the godless think about the world we live in, David raises two objections that might be made against his analysis. He answers them with the help of William Blackstone and a conversation between his friends at Choc Knox Unplugged. Getting a free copy of David’s short monograph, Toward Christian...

Is it a “legal strategy” or a Fifth Commandment problem when Christian legal advocates eschew common law and its application to current legal issues involving human sexuality? David uses an amicus brief recently filed by a leading Christian legal advocacy organization with the U.S. Supreme Court and William Blackstone to answer that question and shows how its rights-based legal argument conforms t...

A question about natural law from a lawyer-lobbyist about Christians embracing natural law provides a foundation for today’s look at the arguments made by Christian legal advocates to SCOTUS in defense of Tennessee’s law prohibiting medical interventions to treat a minor’s gender dysphoria. David explains how their arguments unwittingly embrace a subjective-oriented, relativistic understanding of...

This week friend of the court briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on a case out of Tennessee that is of civilization defining importance—whether bodies are essential to human meaning. David briefly explains the brief he submitted and compares it to one filed by the scholarly Ethics and Public Policy Council with its Judeo-Christian ethic. He explains why the latter’s brief seems to call...

Today David begins to look at a third group he now sees involved in politics, those he calls neo-Theonomists. The prophet Isaiah as well as the person who prepared the soil for Abraham Kuyper’s political engagement, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, speak wisely to those who with a Benthamite view of the Bible run to the Capitol to press for enactment of certain laws of God. Support the show: https:...

Today David offers a Biblical touchstone for improving on the church-state problems that contributed to our law no longer having a Christian foundation. Demonstrative of those problems are two historical situations that may explain why the Danbury Baptists may have sided with the Enlightenment-influenced, Gospel-averse Thomas Jefferson for President. There is “blame” enough for every stripe of Pro...

Who, in David’s terminology, are the neo-Baptists that he finds involved in politics and law? Is their engagement “better” than that of neo-Covenanters? Today, David discusses the distinction between Baptistic theology and that of the “old” Covenantors and how that theology worked itself in history. He explains how that led the Danbury Baptist Association to support Thomas Jefferson for President....

David takes today’s episode to develop a historical context for next week’s discussion of neo-Baptist engagement with law and politics. Without this context, the Gnostic nature of that form of engagement will be less clear. David uses the work of 18th-century Scottish theologian, Thomas Boston, and the Apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy to explain the role of law in non-Gnostic terms. Support...

Are you part of the neo-Covenantal tradition or the neo-Baptist tradition when it comes to law and politics? Today, David defines these two groups based on 30 years of dealing with Christians in the legal and policy spheres. In this episode, though, he explains why the neo-Covenanters are Gnostics and would have Calvin and Kuyper rolling in their graves. Support the show: https://www.factennessee....

David begins his examination of what he considers the two predominate views among Christians on law and politics, those he calls the neo-Covenanters and neo-Baptists, with how he realized he read the Bible like the legal positivist, Jeremy Bentham, and why reading the Bible that way is gnostic, not Christian. Is being a heretic easier than ever before? The answer may surprise you. Support the show...

Common law authority William Blackstone said that man “must in all points conform to the will of his nature,” and this will was called the “natural law.” Today, David explains how he overlooked the most fundamental law of human nature because he read the Bible like a disciple of legal positivist Jeremy Bentham. From his experience, David offers a proposition about the state of evangelicalism in Am...

Evangelicals of all stripes want to live in a country that has righteous laws or, we might say, law in accord with God’s law. And to that end the debate rages among those voting for Trump because they are evangelicals and those not voting for Harris because they are evangelical. The recent comments of David French and the formation of “Evangelicals for Harris” and the evangelical rejoinder to them...

This week David shares four statements by Jonathan Burnside, Professor of Biblical Law at the University of Bristol (England) Law School, about how the Bible presents “Biblical law” that came flooding back to his mind when, last week, he read a conversation God said Jeremiah would have with those of God’s people who did not like his prophecies. Would we, like them, say, “How have we forgotten your...

At a recent gathering of political and legal advocates from around the nation, most of whom were Christians, these questions were asked: “What keeps you up at night?” and “What is most urgent to you?” David uses an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory , an excerpt from John Owen’s Christologia , and Hebrews Chapter 4, to provide insight into what the questions and the way they were framed...

This week’s episode will spring from the relationship between Dionysius’s table depicted at the Olympics and common Christian wisdom about political engagement. David will apply thoughts drawn from observations made by Abraham Kuyper, John Owen, Jeff Shafer, Jason Farley, and the prophet Jeremiah to offer what he thinks should be the first step in a truly Christian response to the Republican Party...

After the events of the last 10 days, some Christian policy organizations are circling back to how Christians should respond to the new Republican Party Platform. Today, David uses Isaiah and John Owen to probe whether observations made by one prominent national organization go deeply enough in explaining how 45 years of work were, in its words, “wiped out in hours.” Support the show: https://www....