Across America, live, this is Point of View. And now, doctor Merrell Matthews. And welcome to Point of View. I’m Merrell Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today, and we’ve got a good show for you. We’ll be talking about several different ministries out there.

1 targeting, Capitol Hill and the, elected officials and staff on Capitol Hill. Another doctor Alveda King, I believe she’s the, niece of doctor Martin Luther King Junior. We’ll also turn to Cody Wilde. He’s with, Chuck Colson’s prison fellowship. And finally, we’ll end up with Bunny Pounds with Christians Engaged.

We talked to her before. It is a time for our Christians to be, to get more active in politics and, of course, during the Republican Convention, that’s certainly happening right now and we’ll be talking to her about how Christians can get engaged and how she has been helping people do that. But we’re gonna start out with our first guest, Steve Emerson. Now if you’re familiar with the name, he is a world-class vocalist, a very just been in music for years. He’s got 250 musical compositions to his name.

He’s amassed 20 genre spanning solo recordings. He had his voice can be heard in over 175 feature films, television shows, and commercials, and he is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s prestigious Bob Hope Award for Excellence in Entertainment. But today, we’re going to be talking about a ministry that he’s involved with on Capitol Hill called Word on the Hill. Steve, thank you for joining us. Merrill, it’s great to be with you today.

Well, tell us about your background. I mean, you’ve you’ve been heavily involved in music, but you’ve you’ve at least made a partial transition over to this ministry. How did you decide to do that? Well, Merrill, you know, sometimes you just can’t argue with God. I don’t know if people are upset.

A good idea. It’s not a good idea. And you’re right. My background is in music. I grew up in the church.

My dad was a was a pastor. My mom led the children’s choirs in in the churches, and so there really wasn’t much of an option about, participating in music in the church. But, I sense God leading me in that direction. And after an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree, I, joined the staff of a church in California. I grew up in the Midwest Mhmm.

And wound up in California. My wife and I had been married a year, and we thought, we thought we’d go to California for 2 or 3 years and then then return back to the Midwest. And somehow we never escaped. And, from working on that church staff, opportunities to, sing in the studios in Los Angeles opened, that door opened, and I stepped into that. Then I began to travel and sing all across the country, with churches, orchestras, nonprofits, corporate events, and doing that.

But, Merrill, it was 10 years ago, an invitation came to help sing and give leadership to the 1st worship service back in the capital in 144 years. There were worship services in the capital from 1800 to 18/69. Oftentimes, they would be in Statuary Hall, there in the capital, with as many as 2,000 people in that room with the Marine band in the balcony playing for the hymns. But those services ended in, like I said, in 18/69. And a gentleman contacted me and said, Steve, we’re going to re up these worship services, these services for members of Congress.

They’re gonna be weekly services. Would you come and sing and leave in the first one that I don’t have any money to pay you, nothing for your flights, your hotel, anything? And, Merrill, it sounded like a great deal to me. And my wife and I went to, to DC, and the first service, back in the capital was on, July 30, 2014. And I sang and gave leadership.

And following that first service, the organizer said, would you come back twice a month? And so, Merrill, since 2014, next week when I’m in DC will be my 10th anniversary of giving leadership to the service. But it’s grown for more than just giving leadership to a worship service in the capital. And I’m glad to tell you more about that if you like. Well, you know, I, having been in the think tank world and running a trade association out of Washington DC for about eight and a half years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the capital and on the house and senate side and and sort of the the Christian spirit is not something you notice a lot of up there on the hill.

People are there that you’ve got egos, you’ve got, just people who are, moving power, all kinds of things happening. So this has gotta be a rich field for you trying to minister up there. Well, wait a second. Merrill, did you say egos and politics? Are you kidding me?

Ego’s money, every power, everything. Oh, Merrill. I tell you what, when I first started going to the Hill 10 years ago, I could smell the dysfunction. Mhmm. And after 10 years, I don’t smell it so much.

It’s still there. It’s just I’ve grown a little bit accustomed to the smell, but it’s still and it doesn’t mean that I accept it. But, you know, it’s you’re right. It’s a it’s a challenging place to work. If you’ve spent some time in the capital, our very first service and for several years, our services were held down in the basement in a room called HC5, which is a large caucus room where the majority party normally controls that room for their meetings and their gatherings.

Been there many times. Okay. Yeah. We started down there. And Merrill, now, our services are held up on the 1st floor.

They’re in room 122, which is the speakers’ private dining room. And, we moved there into that room. We were given permission to use that room on Wednesday night when we meet by Speaker Pelosi. And because they control obviously the House side and they control all the rooms on the House side. But Ms.

Pelosi gave us permission to use that room for several years and then Speaker McCarthy continued to allow us to do so and so has Speaker Johnson. So on Wednesday night at 7 pm, we’re in room 122 on the 1st floor of the Capitol, really just below the House Chamber. And on Wednesday night at 7 PM, we sing. We have, you know, sermons, given by pastors who might be visiting. Last week in our service, representative GT Thompson from Pennsylvania preached for us.

He’s he’s a recent, cancer survivor. And I I asked GT if he would just share what god has he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer back in November. And I asked him if he would just tell us the lessons that he’s learned over these past few months. And so GT shared and following each of our services, Merrill, normally we will go to the 2nd floor to the rotunda. We will stand in the center of the rotunda.

We will sing and pray and take the Lord’s Supper standing there at the Golden Circle. My, my, that’s is an amazing story. We’re gonna take a break here, Steve. And, when we come back, I wanna find out a little bit more about how people, the politicians, the staffers actually blend their Christianity with the struggles that they have in politics. Our guest for this, this segment, Steve Amerson, he is with Word on the Hill.

He is a world class world famous singer, especially in gospel music and so forth. And he, 10 years ago, he took on a mission on Capitol Hill, very challenging place. Stay with us. We’ll be back with Steve in just a minute. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

If you spend any time viewing social media, you’ve probably seen a few clips from notable experts on the dangers of alcohol. We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago. Professor Jordan Peterson warns that alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug. He understands why people would use it because of its anxiety reducing properties, but he argues that alcohol is really a bad drug. He says 50% of murders take place in an alcohol fueled environment, either the victim or the perpetrator or both is drunk.

It’s almost the sole cause of domestic abuse. It’s almost the sole cause of so called date rate. He also adds that it’s the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive. Alcohol can turn perfectly good people into impulsive and dimwitted monsters. Doctor Daniel Amen explains that he first started looking at the brain in 1991.

He found that people who drink everyday have a smaller brain, and when it comes to the brain, size matters. He reports that people who drink every day have more disrupted white matter in their brain. The white matter brain cells are the communication network. It’s the highway. People who drink even a little bit have more disrupted communication networks.

He also points to the fact that the American Cancer Society came out last year and said that you shouldn’t drink because any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of 7 different kinds of cancer. 6 years ago, I did a commentary on alcohol consumption based upon a study in the journal Lancet that concluded there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. Each year, we seem to be learning about even more dangers of alcohol. I’m Kirby Anderson, and that’s my point of view. For a free copy of Kirby’s booklet, a biblical view on loneliness, go to viewpoints.info/loneliness.

That’s viewpoints.info/loneliness. You’re listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. And we’re back with our guest, musician and singer Steve Amerson, and he is a musician, but we’re talking about his, ministry word on the hill where they minister to, elected officials to, hill staff and others there on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. And Steve, you know, the the those of us in the evangelical slash conservative slash traditional Christian movement, we see people who come to church on Sunday and they are Christians on Sunday. Once they leave the church, they’re back in the business, world the next week or so forth and they seem to lose a lot of those values that they had just on Sunday.

They just don’t live that Christian life. Do you see that? I mean, it in Washington, we I I saw a lot of people who would claim to be Christian, but I did I couldn’t recognize that from a lot of things that they, that they from what they did. What are you what are your thoughts on that? Oh, Merrill, that’s a great question.

Hey. And by the way, as we’re chatting, people can learn and learn more about what I do and see some videos of members of Congress. They can go to the word on the hill dot org. The word on the hill dot org and they can learn more and they can see some of the stories and and and actually, kind of address the question you’ve just asked. It’s interesting.

One day, Merrill, I was in the office of a representative. We chatted for a bit, and I I had a prayer with her. And, I said, you know what, ma’am? I’d I’d love to speak with you sometime about how your faith intersects your vote. And she looks at her watch and says, yes.

We’ll have to do that sometime. Mhmm. And, you know, we see that from our president, Joe Biden, who claims to be a a a very committed Catholic yet on several social issues. He is far away from the Catholic church. Merrill, I think there are look, whether you’re on Capitol Hill, whether you’re in the workplace, wherever you are at, I think many of us are going to have to answer to God for some positions we’ve taken, for some things we’ve said, or some things we haven’t said.

And you’re absolutely right. DC is such a seductive place. The power, the prestige, the if it’s not the members of Congress make roughly around $180,000 a year. And now that’s a lot of money, but it’s not necessarily a lot of money when you’re having to have 2 homes, have a place to live in D. C.

And have a place to live back in the district. But the potential, what I’ve seen Merrill is the potential of once they have left the Hill, the potential to make some money is pretty significant. And quite honestly, I think there are probably some folks who have made some money that’s probably inappropriate while they are on this. Yes. But my purpose there, Merrill, is my purpose is one of encouragement.

And what I do every trip Merrill, before I go, I write 200 notes, handwritten notes of encouragement to members of Congress. And I deliver those to those 200 offices. Each trip and I do this twice a month, each trip, I will deliver those notes. I walk between Tuesday night and Wednesday before we do the service, I will walk about 15 miles in the House office buildings, the Senate office buildings and the Capitol. And members have learned they know that I’m not a reporter, I’m not a constituent, I’m not a lobbyist, I don’t want anything.

And one day I’m walking down the hall and, in the Longworth building, Longworth House office building, and a member of Congress from Florida sees me and he says, the great encourager. Oh. Merrill, that what that meant to me. And my attitude my attitude is that I wanna love people until they ask why. Just loving people and eventually also my attitude is, I don’t have to, in terms of sharing my state, I do it in as natural way as possible.

My job is not to close the deal. Sometimes my job is to open the door. And typically what I will say to a member of Congress, to a staff member and by the way Merrill, folks may not know this, There are 18,000 people work on Capitol Hill. That’s my congregation. And typically, I’ll just say to folks, what do you need God to do for you today?

And most of the time they say, what? And I’ll repeat the question. What do you need God to do for you today? Merrill, the responses I’ve gotten have just been staggering. One evening within the capital was when our services were down in HD5 and I was taking the elevator down and I was going to the basement And just before the doors closed to the elevator, a member of congress stepped on, and she was going to the sub basement down to take the tram over to the Rayburn building.

And the doors closed, and I said, ma’am, it was just the 2 of us. And I’m very careful on the hill, Merrill, not to it’s not I don’t wanna embarrass people or whatever, but I just said, ma’am, what do you need god to do for you today? And without hesitation, she said, I need prayer for my adult son. Mhmm. And I began to pray for her there on the elevator.

I missed my floor on the basement. We kept talking the doors opened and closed. We kept on going to the sub basement. And that when I when I finished my prayer, she go she said, god puts you here for me today. And I said, ma’am, I’ll be back in 2 weeks.

She goes, please come see me. Good. I walked into the office of one member one time. He sees me, you know, motions for me to come to his office. He shut the door and he said, I am so lonely.

Mhmm. He said, I’m lonely here and I’m lonely when I go back to the district. So, Merrill, my my purpose there while I want to speak look, I’m not void of my own political ideas and thoughts, but my purpose is to be an encourager. And then when they say, Steve, what do I what do I need to you know, I’ve got this vote coming up on Israel, or I’ve got this vote about abortion, or what about debt, or and and when then they asked me because they trust me because I’ve not come after them pointing my finger. And so I’ve got a great open door there.

The the the thing about Capitol Hill is you’ve got high pressure. A lot of the staffers have to work long hours. You you get broken lines up there from members of congress who have to be away from their families for long periods of time and also from Hill staff and working long hours and not being able to sort of stick with a marriage and other things. You you just have some broken people. It’s Merrill, it’s a tough place.

I remember one time I was getting on a flight, and a member of congress was on the flight with me. In fact, I see them all the time on my flight. Mhmm. And a member was getting on. I just, you know, greeted him and and, I said, tell me about your family.

And he told me about his family and he said, yeah, I’ve got a 4 year old daughter. And she said to me today, she said, daddy, if I promise to be good, can you stay home? And Merrill, I just don’t think the average citizen now look, this is not true of every member of Congress, but there are men and women on the Hill that feel like being there is their mission, it’s their calling. And the sacrifice that their families are making, the toll that it takes on them, the physical toll, especially for members that fly from the West Coast like I do, I live in Los Angeles, that’s a brutal flight there and back. And so my purpose is to be an encourager to these people.

Merrill was about probably it’s about a year ago. I’m leaving the capital one night. It was about 8:30. Here comes some of the young bucks that I know that work, worked in the speaker’s office. And there was a young girl with her with them, and and they introduced me.

She goes, oh, I know who you are. You leave notes for my boss. Mhmm. And I said, yeah. I do.

And she goes, there’s one note that you’d left that after I gave it to her, I kept it because it meant so much to me. And I said to this young gal, I said, oh, god loves you so much. And she looked at me, Merrill, and she said, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Steve, thank you so much for this ministry. It is an amazing ministry that you have there in a very challenging area. And, we will have a we have a link to, the word on the hill on our website pointofview.net. So if people want to go there, they can see they can find out how to reach out to you. They’ll also see those videos if they go to yours and, speaker Johnson has one up there where he mentions those notes and you can even see a copy of the note.

Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thanks so much for your time. God bless you. God bless your listeners and God bless America. That’s Steve Emerson with Word on the Hill.

When we come back, we’ll be going to doctor Alveda King and talking about her ministry. At point of view, we believe there is power in prayer and that is why we have relaunched our pray for America campaign, a series of weekly emails to unite Americans in prayer for our nation. Imagine if 100 of thousands of Americans started praying intentionally together on a weekly basis. You can help make that a reality by subscribing to our pray for America emails. Just go to point of view.net and click on the pray for America banner that’s right there on the home page.

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Let’s pray together for God to make a difference in our land. Point of view will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of the station. And now here again, doctor Merrill Matthews.

And welcome back. We were talking with, Steve Amerson. He is with, Word on the Hill, and that’s an organization, a ministry where they, reach out to members of, congress, elected officials, Hill staff and others. So it’s an amazing ministry and it’s a very, very challenging one. He’s been doing that for 10 years.

But if you get a chance, go look at point of view dot net. You’ll see his, his, website address there and you can see both, speaker Mike Johnson and senator Marsha Blackburn. They both have short clips there talking about how beneficial it is and how useful that ministry is. It has been a tough ministry though for them just because of all the power and the things that go on there on Capitol Hill. So I’d encourage you to do that and joining me now, Doctor.

Alvida King and she is the, she’s the chair of the America First Policy Institute Center For the American Dream. She’s also the guardian of the King family legacy and, she is the founder of Alvida King Ministries. She was a twice elected to the Georgia State House and has been involved in just several aspects. Doctor, thank you for joining us. Well, I’m so glad to join you today.

I hope you can hear me. I apologize for the background noise. I certainly can hear you. Tell us a little bit about the Center For the American Dream. The Center For the American Dream with America First Policy Institute is joined by many other, centers, and we all work together at America First Policy Institute to advance, a better quality of life, America First, putting America First, not America only Mhmm.

But America First. For some restoring America, and then for me bringing America America to become her very best under God. You know, you also, are the creator of the Alveda King Ministries. What is that about? In the 19 nineties, I launched a nonprofit organization called King For America.

Over the next several years, it would become more and more evangelistic in outreach. And so today, I’ll be the king ministries as part of King for America. And so we work to enhance the lives of people spiritually, socially, physically, economically, relationally, and we use all of the gifts and talents that God collectively brings to us. For instance, I’ve been a singer songwriter since 19 seventies. Mhmm.

Many people don’t know that. An actress, a producer. I’ve been elected to political office and appointed to political office. And there are so many life experiences. I have an earned PhD from Aiden University.

I have an honorary degree. So all of those are life all of those life experiences and me with my affiliates and associates, we work together collaboratively to advance the kingdom of God. Now you are the daughter of AD King and the niece of doctor Martin Luther King Junior. Do you feel like, one of the big issues that has happened over the over the past few years is we’ve made a lot of racial progress, still got ways to go. Do you think, doctor King would be, pleased with the kind of progress that we have made, albeit recognizing we still got a long ways to go?

We are one blood and one human grace. And based on Acts 1726 of 1 blood, God made all people to live together on the face of the earth. And so that led my grandfather, Martin Luther King senior, reverend doctor Martin Luther King senior, my daddy, reverend doctor AD King, my uncle, reverend doctor Martin Luther King junior. Martin Luther King Junior’s famous quote, we must learn to live together as a brother and I had a sister and not perish together as full, comes out of the truth. It’s it’s biblically true and it’s scientifically true that there’s one blood, one human race.

Now we have different ethnicities. And so for us to be fighting over skin color and we’re fighting what’s called race wars and one of the best examples I can give you, if you look at Abraham, he had several sons. He had first Ishmael, then Isaac, and then he had several sons with Keturah. Now they are still fighting today over land and heritage and property. However, they’re not cousins.

They’re not neighbors. They’re really brothers with one dad. So we can stop fighting over racial issues and unite as the human race and begin to know that we should all repent, that we should all forgive, we should all love each other. And that is going to be the solution to the race issues that we have faced, in my opinion, for far too long. You know, in the Republican convention on Tuesday night, they had a, an African American woman from New York, if I remember correctly.

I don’t remember her name, but she just gave a powerful speech about, I think, her, her son had been killed, the crime that was in the neighborhood, and, it it was just a very powerful speech about the problems with liberal district attorneys who might let them let out let criminals off without really punishing them and so forth. What what are your thoughts in that area? I believe, certainly, with the issue of prisoners and people in jail and people who have committed crimes, some people can become repentant and return to society and live productive lives. Some cannot. But we are taught by God in the Bible to visit those who are imprisoned and those who are sick, to take care of the widows and the orphans.

And so we cannot possibly lock up a whole continent of people, a whole society of people. So we’re going to have to make society better. I believe that that is done by the grace of God with God our father, God the Holy Spirit, God Jesus Christ coming into our lives and transforming us. So I do know that sometimes there is a need for prison. And I don’t even argue over whether or not we should have the death penalty.

My thing is this, if somebody is in prison and they’re going to be, executed by the death penalty, please give them a chance to be evangelizing, accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior because that eternal life is even more important than this human life we live on the earth. You know, one of the things I noticed is is that you’re a coproducer of, the the Vision TV. And when I looked at that the other day, I I saw the I think it’s 5 women there, and it looks like this is sort of an evangelical response to, The View. Tell us about Vision TV. Vision TV.

We have a male house too, Brian Casagius. And that so there are other ladies, and Brian joins us as a guest host sometimes. And so several years ago, early in this century, Dave Gardner, one of our cohosts, and I, we were watching the vision TV, and we both said, that’s enough. That’s just too much. Let’s let’s come up with the vision.

We’re watching the view. We’re watching the view. Mhmm. And we said, well, we need the vision. You know, humans have the view.

God has the vision. I like that. Yeah. We did a pilot, and it sat on the shelf for a while. And then Destiny Yarbrough, my co executive my co executive producer of the series, Destiny says, you wanna do a TV show?

I said, yeah. What about the vision? And so we’re about to stop filming our 2nd season. We’re getting towards the end of the first season, and we’re about to film that second season. And it’s being aired on Christian TV everywhere.

It’s on YouTube as well. I think Facebook and Instagram, and we have a website, the visiontvshow.com. Yeah. Well, you said you remain so busy and engaged in so many things. What’s what’s on the, agenda for you?

What are you looking to doing in the next year or 2? I’m always always amazed and astonished by God. As soon as I do a song and I say, okay. This is it, I think. Then another song keeps coming.

I may be working on another book, a devotional, because I’ve always wanted to do a devotional. So these things are in place. I’m not doing as much politics. You’ll notice if you see me on social media and on Fox News and places like that now, I’m praying for America, for humanity, for president Trump. I thought that that was astounding, that that attempt on his life.

And yet, I I heard him say recently I think he tweeted it. He says, hey. God is with me. And I’ve seen I have prayed with the president myself, and I’ve seen him pray with others. So the answer is going to be to pray, to love, to forgive, to repent no matter who we are and no matter what we are facing.

You know, it’s interesting because president Trump, former president Trump has not been as an especially religious person, but he has attracted evangelicals and Christians of strong faith. And it may be when with this, with this attempted assassination that, that God got got a hold of him and maybe shaking him up and having him face his mortality a little bit, and that may change him in some ways. It may. But let me say something very shocking. Yes.

He’s attracted to Christians and the evangelicals. In an earlier meeting, right before he was elected, the first time, he was saying, you Christians have the answer. Why don’t you speak up? He says, elect elect me, and I’ll I’ll take that muzzle off for you, and he did. But guess who else he’s attracting?

It’s the strangest thing. He’s attracting the drug addicts and the lesbians and homosexuals and everybody. So they’re waking up and say, wait a minute. Something’s different. That life needs to be better.

Maybe I should vote for him. They need to accept Jesus too. Thank you, doctor Alvida King, for joining us. We’re on a break. You’re listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

And we’re back on Point of View. I’m Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today, and we just finished our discussion. We just had a short discussion with doctor Aveda King. She is the niece of doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and she mentioned talked a little bit about, crime and, people who are in prison. And when we come back at the top of the hour, we will have on Cody Wilde.

He is with, Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship to get an update of what they’re doing, they’re in at the Prison Fellowship Ministries. And I thought I would take since the, Republican Convention is going on, it’s been going very well. The general assessment when I’m watching on CNN, Fox and others, they’re just the the the commentators there are very impressed with how well this, this particular convention has come off. It has conveyed a system of unity. You have people who were not Trump supporters, Nikki Haley being 1, former governor Nikki Haley.

Nikki Haley was on last night. People who have not been strong Trump supporters, speaking as well. So it’s gone just very well and orchestrated very well and it’s presented a a very, I I think in a sense positive view of what Republicans want to do if they are if Donald Trump is reelected. And incidentally, they’ve been very critical of the Democrats and the Democrats have had struggled now because of some of the things that are happening there within the party and president Joe Biden. So I thought I just update you a little bit because this is just out from Politico.

And the reason is it’s the it’s been, it’s been kind of up and down for Joe Biden. A week or so ago, it looked like he might be forced out as there is a growing democratic momentum to try to get him to step down and not run for president. He seemed to overcome that, then it seemed to come back a bit, then he seemed to overcome it again. And and the sense over just the last couple of days was with the attempted assassination of president Trump that took his his Biden’s challenges off the front page and they thought maybe they had bought a little bit of time and they were just going to kind of wait this out to see if they couldn’t get past, the headlines and maybe just get on to, the Democratic Convention and that maybe he had just dodged a bullet there, so to speak. But in fact, that’s back today and it’s, several things are happening.

A number of major Democrats have come out and are now calling for him to step down. And I’m just looking at political here, says John Karl, ABC’s John Karl. Scoop the world news tonight that senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told Biden in person that he should end his reelection campaign for the good of the country. That’s a big step. Speaker Nancy former speaker Nancy Pelosi told the president that he can’t win and is dragging down the party, jeopardizing potential majorities in the congress.

Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff played a big role in the attempt to, impeach present president Trump. He is running for senate in California. It’s Pelosi’s longtime protege became the latest hill democrat to publicly call on Biden to step down, arguing that he has serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump. And then, entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, he’s part with Steven Spielberg as a producer of films and so forth.

He confronted the president about new financial woes telling him that big donors, skeptical that he can win, have all but stopped writing checks for the Biden reelection campaign. So, senior Democrats are coming out. They just released something from blue blue rose research, which found that, quote, just 18% of voters and 30 per 6 36% of people who voted for mister Biden in 2020 believe he is mentally fit and and able to become president, fill fulfill that job. This is a major shift that’s going on here, and we’ll see if he can sort of weigh this out now. President Biden announced yesterday he had contracted COVID.

He is, stepping aside and recovering for a couple days, so he had to cancel his various events that he was going to be doing. So he’s isolating for a couple days with COVID. We understand it’s a mild case, of it, not, not serious for him. He has apparently, mentioned recently that if his doctors came up and say, to tell him that he really he’s got a medical issue or something and he shouldn’t continue, then he might step down from that. My guess is something like that will probably happen.

That’s just a guess. No idea if that’s gonna happen or not. But there’s also been new, evidence out there about Kamala Harris where more and more Democrats are saying they would run with they would prefer running with Kamala Harris on at the head of the ticket than Joe Biden. So this thing is still in flux. They were going to have a virtual a a virtual nomination by July.

In July, they have apparently tried to push that back. I heard yesterday that Kamala Harris will be debating, JD Vance as the vice president, on I think it said August 11 about a week before the Democratic convention. But it may be that, by that time, Kamala Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee as opposed to being the vice presidential nominee, and she may end up, having to name somebody. So it’s in complete flux and we don’t know where this is going to go right now and it’s making it both, interesting and unsettling because we’ve never been in this area before. We thought for a while that, president I wrote a piece for the Hill, oh, in February, the most important vice presidential nomination ever.

And the part of that was that you had, Joe Biden’s health was a major concern and that essentially a vote for Joe Biden was a vote for Kamala Harris. She would likely become the, next president president if Joe Biden would win fairly soon because he’s just the the president has some medical issues. Donald Trump is not a young man. I think he is 77 or 78 now, 3 or so years younger than Biden. So even him, even though he seems to be the picture of hell, seems to be vibrant.

The, assassination attempt points out that something can always happen that you don’t expect, but even so being at his age, he could have a medical condition and that would end up meeting the vice president would become, the acting president for a while if the president was just out or would become president if the president could not return. And so we’ve got JD Vance as a possibility now, so we know who that is. And, he is, of course, essentially, he was very critical of the president initially, several years ago. He is now very much in the mold of, Donald Trump. So, if we were to lose Donald Trump for a health reason or something, JD would probably step in and continue with that agenda.

But we don’t know what we’re going to have in November right now just because of all the questions that are swirling around Joe Biden. Will he be able to be nominated? If he’s nominated, does he have a medical condition between being nominated and the election? If he isn’t nominated, he wants to step down. There are issues.

He’s got several, several $100,000,000 in funds. My understanding is that only after he is nominated and then if he steps down in, then those funds could be handed over to Kamala Harris to finish the, the race. But if he is not formally nominated, he can’t hand those funds over and that means they would have to go and raise funds for, her if she will become the Democratic nominee. And my sense is given how, short time frame we have here, there are people in the wings, of the Democratic Party who would like to step in, but given the short time frame and given the fact that, I pointed this out a few days ago in the hill that by the time the Democratic Convention comes up, you’re just 1 month away from the early election. The 1st date starting early election is not much time to try to get out there if you’re an unknown face and get the attention.

So a lot of things going on there. We’ll we’ll be the, convention, concludes tonight and president Trump will give his acceptance speech. So we’ll be watching that and of course point of view, we’ll be back tomorrow with weekend edition to cover all of these things. When we come back, we’re going to turn to Cody Wilde. He is with Prison Fellowship and that’s the Chuck Colson Group and we’ll be talking about what their work is.

They’re reaching out to prisoners around the country. So stay with us. We’ll be back on point of view. In 19th century London, 2 towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon.

London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him warning of socialism’s dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth, it is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today?

Get the light you need on today’s most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the viewpoints commentary at point of view dot net slash sign up. Every weekday in less than 2 minutes, you’ll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It’s free, so visit point of view.net/signup right now. Point of view.net/signup. Point of view will continue after this.

Across America, live, this is POINT OF VIEW. And now, doctor Merrell Matthews. And welcome back to Point of View. I’m Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today. And now we’re going to turn to Cody Wilde who oversees prison fellowship correctional program in approximately 1200, prisons across all 50 states.

Now prison fellowship was the organization created by Chuck Colson and he’s been involved with that for a little while. He has also been, prior to that, he was head of the he served as academy director of the Lin O’Lakes Correctional Facility and he was also in the army and I’m curious to see I mean, anxious to hear from Cody about what the prison fellowship is doing now. Cody, thank you for joining us. Hey. Great to be with you, Merrill.

So tell us a little bit people heard have heard, with Point of View, they are familiar with Prison Fellowship, but go ahead and give us a little bit of background, how it got started, when it got started so everybody’s up to speed. Yeah. Sure. So, we are getting close to our 50th year of of being in existence. The Prison Fellowship was founded in 1976 by Chuck Colson, who is a member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet and went to prison, for Watergate related, crimes.

And so, he came to know the Lord during that time. I went to federal prison and had this just profound and radical encounter with Jesus and a change in his whole perspective. And he met some people in there, who said, remember us. And Chuck always he kept his word. And, after he got out of prison, he found a prison fellowship.

And we’ve been trying to live into the Hebrews 13:3 text to remember those in prison ever since. You know, on our first interview today, we had Steve Emerson with, with Word on the Hill and that is a a ministry he’s been doing for 10 years where he goes on Capitol Hill. They have weekly meetings with people. They, he hands out notes. He prays with members of congress, elected officials, hill staff and so forth.

But it’s interesting because it didn’t cross my mind, but with with, Richard Nixon and Chuck Colson, you had that that issue of people on the hill who were not living in faith and who, at least for Chuck Colson, eventually comes to faith. And, of course, Steve Amerson is trying to bring that to them now to try to get in especially try to get them to live their faith a little more for those who claim a faith to live it more, on Capitol Hill. But tell us about the, the the prison fellowship. Now you’re in 1200 places out there. How many staff do you have and what what does it take to do that job?

Yes. The prison fellowship, we have, you know, around 300, you know, full time staff members. We have thousands of volunteers all over the country. So it’s really the the volunteers, really the lifeblood of the organization. As far as our in prison work goes, we have a a several different things that we offer to prisons and to those who are incarcerated as well as to those who work in prison.

Really, our cornerstone most intensive in prison program is called the Prison Fellowship Academy. It’s a 12 to 14 month full time program, that incarcerated men and women, go through, and, get to learn about, a new way of being, 6 core values to help them become good citizens. That whole program is rooted in a biblical worldview, so it’s open to men and women of any faith and no religious preference. But we’re really there to, view those who we thought were at the center of the problem is really at the center of the solution. Not only can they change, but they can change prison culture and change their neighbors.

But what we know is that it’s not enough to just equip and empower those who live in prison. We also have to do something with those who work in prison. So we have another program called the Wardens’ Exchange, and we take the same six core values and have hundreds of prison wardens around the country go through this reimagine prison as centers of restoration. Additionally, we do yard events, evangelistic events in prisons all over the place, all over the country, provide a message of hope, and really try to bring the church on the outside and the church on the inside closer together to encounter Jesus with one another to really transform, what prison is. I’ll just say our our largest program is actually a program called Angel Tree, which is one where a parent who is incarcerated can sign up, to have a Christmas present delivered to their children on their behalf at Christmas time.

And that’s where we partner with thousands of churches all over the place, who purchased the gift, delivered it to the children with a note from mom or dad, and really with the hope of starting a relationship with the families of those who are incarcerated. You know, with with so many people going to prison who have come from broken families, a difficult backgrounds, drugs in the family and other things and and they they drift off into crime. My sense is that that being able to come and bring values to them is is is something they have not heard and is something that they that they embrace? What what what how do they respond to the values aspect? Yeah.

It’s interesting because most of the 6 like, how a lot of, you know, correctional institutions define success is the reduction of bad things. Fewer people came back to prison. Mhmm. Most criminal thinking went down. Fewer infractions.

What we wanna say is that what the Lord is really interested in is human flourishing. And so if a person our six core values, it’s, positive community, affirmation, productivity, responsibility, restoration, and integrity. And so if a person’s doing those, they’re replacing old ways of thinking. And for a lot of people, they just think that where I came from, that’s just who I am. That’s just what I do.

And when people, volunteers, and staff members come in and say, I believe something more for your life, and I’m gonna walk with you and equip you and train you and come alongside you, it inspires people. And I I just really believe that as individuals, as, people who bear the image of God, like, we long for somebody to call those things out of us and to really aspire to something that is truly great. I I don’t know if this is correct, but how has, how has the prisoners, how have prisoners sort of changed over time? Do we, are you seeing a different type of prisoner than you might have 10, 15 years ago? Are they more violence, more, is there more drug abuse?

How how’s the prison congregate the the prison group changed over time? You know, everything that you see in culture today exists in prison, but in a pressure cooker. So whatever you see outside is just amplified in in prison. And so that’s really where there’s this tremendous opportunity. Rather than me going in and thinking that I’m going to change prison, what I’m going to do is I’m gonna come alongside those who already live them live there and equip and empower them to be the change agents, to be have this exponential impact that somebody who was living this violent life in prison experiences this radical transformation, and guess what?

They have an infinitely more credibility with others who live there, that this person who was this way is now this way and others are saying, I want that. The my guess for this, for this and the next segment is Cody Wilde. He is a senior VP of Prison Fellowship and, we’re talking about their efforts with, with prisoners and to bring values and Christ into the prison. This is something started by Chuck Colson, I guess nearly 50 years ago and, they’ve been tremendously successful. We have information about them on the Point of View website so you can go to pointofview.net and you can find out information about Cody and also about Prison Fellowship.

When we come back, we wanna find out a little bit more about some of the things that they are doing and the recidivism rate, the return rate and whether or not they’re seeing a better approach on that and just whether or not, the impact they’re having on the country. Stay with us. We’ll be back on Point of View. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. If you spend any time viewing social media, you’ve probably seen a few clips from notable experts on the dangers of alcohol.

We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago. Professor Jordan Peterson warns that alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug. He understands why people would use it because of its anxiety reducing properties, but he argues that alcohol is really a bad drug. He says 50% of murders take place in an alcohol fueled environment, either the victim or the perpetrator or both is drunk. It’s almost the sole cause of domestic abuse.

It’s almost the sole cause of so called date rate. He also adds that it’s the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive. Alcohol can turn perfectly good people into impulsive and dim witted monsters. Doctor Daniel Amen explains that he first started looking at the brain in 1991. He found that people who drink every day have a smaller brain, and when it comes to the brain, size matters.

He reports that people who drink every day have more disrupted white matter in their brain. The white matter brain cells are the communication network. It’s the highway. People who drink even a little bit have more disrupted communication networks. He also points to the fact that the American Cancer Society came out last year and said that you shouldn’t drink because any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of 7 different kinds of cancer.

6 years ago, I did a commentary on alcohol consumption based upon a study in the journal Lancet that concluded there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. Each year, we seem to be learning about even more dangers of alcohol. I’m Kirby Anderson, and that’s my point of view. For a free copy of Kirby’s booklet, a biblical view on loneliness, go to viewpoints.info/loneliness. That’s viewpoints.info/loneliness.

You’re listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. And we’re back with Prison Fellowship’s Cody Wyle talking about their ministry there in prison. And, Cody, there are you’re involved in Prison Fellowship is in a lot of prisons. Are there other Christian groups that are coming in, whether they’re either sort of national groups or just local churches sending in people and if there are, do you, are you able to work with them? Do you sort of coordinate things?

And then the other point I’d like to ask is, are there other religions such as I’m thinking of Islam or something of that nature who are also there trying to evangelize in some of the prisons even as you’re working in there? Yeah. So to your first question, there are other organizations that operate in prisons. There’s a lot of local initiatives, a lot of churches, that come in, and, you know, they might be doing a bible study in their congregation and are coming in on a Tuesday night and and providing those services. And so we try to work with a lot of different organizations that offer complimentary, you know, resources.

We work with organizations like Alpha USA, Celebrate Recovery, The Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation centers, as well as other content providers, and then a number dozens of reentry organizations on the outside, so that we can really lean into the space that we’re best at on the in prison side, which is providing, you know, holistic values based programs rooted in a biblical worldview, and then work with people that offer those complementary functions. And so we do that again all over the place in the country. And then, what remind me, what was your second question, Carl? The second question was, are there are there other religions such as Islam that are also trying to evangelize, which would be at cross purposes with maybe not the goals but with the faith? Yeah, there are definitely other faiths that are represented in there.

And typically, like a religious coordinator or a chaplain at a facility will work with members of those other faiths, to be able to provide those services, you know, because religious liberty is something that’s, you know, very important. It’s important to us. And so, those that definitely, you know, exist there, in in prisons. Like I said, prison is a microcosm of society as a whole. And so everything that you have, not everything, but a lot of things that you have on the outside, you’re gonna have in some, you know, manifestation inside of of a prison.

So that yeah. Absolutely. Can you work with people in solitary confinement also, or does it have to be in a a larger group setting? Yeah. So, typically, our programs you know, we have 3 key, dimensions to, you know, any of our in prison programs.

So if you imagine a cube, 3 dimensions, height, width, and depth, all in equal proportion to one another Mhmm. We have 3 key dimensions, which is curriculum, coaching, and community, and this goes for all of our offerings. So our curriculum is always gonna be holistic in nature. It’s gonna cover, you know, the whole range of the human experience from relationships, addictions, to financial literacy, boundaries, you know, issues like that. But what we know is that it’s not enough to just drop, you know, really good content in prison and expect optimal results.

Who’s facilitating it matters just as much. And so we have coaches, you know, our staff and volunteers who come in and facilitate that content, and they get to model not what perfect looks like, but what healthy looks like, what it’s like to be a little bit further along in the journey and to have that life on life interaction. But then, you know, really to your question, the 3rd dimension is community. All of our programs are cohort based. And so it’s just really important for us that the men or women on one’s left and right are going through that same experience, and they get to be a part of one another’s change journeys 247.

So that upon completion of a program, they’re really commissioned, to go out and be change agents, not just people who don’t do bad things, but people who promote good prosocial positive community. So so to your question around, you know, those who are in solitary confinement, we don’t have any programs that are specific to that. But people, you know, if you go into, you know, segregation, most people don’t stay in that. And so that becomes a part of their journey. They come out and they get, you know, they fold it back into a prosocial community, a community of peace.

Tell us about some of the prisoners that you’ve worked with. Do they do do some come out and say I you were such you were so meaningful to me. I would like to be involved in in witnessing and working with prisoners myself even though even now that I’m out. Absolutely. You know, nearly half of our staff who work full time in prison are formally incarcerated Really?

In the systems that they work in. And so we have people who’ve done decades, you know, of time behind bars who had this profound encounter with Jesus while in in prison, and that the Lord is just impressed upon their hearts that, you know, this grace the Lord has shown them, they wanna pay that forward, and they come back in and oftentimes to their own surprise. Like, hey. I I was looking forward so much to getting out of here. Like, lord, why are you calling me back?

I was like, look. I’ve given you the you’ve had this experience, and I’ve equipped you for this great thing. And we have that all over the place. And so it it truly is amazing. We have a, a group of people who are just ambassadors, people who who advocate for, you know, different reforms, who, a lot of them are are formally incarcerated, a lot of our volunteers.

So, yes, it’s definitely a phenomenon, you know, that that we we see. Now you mentioned, I think, that nearly half of the employees, but what about the, volunteers that you have out there? I assume that many of them, were from prison at some point. Yeah. Either they themselves were in prison, had a family member in prison, you know, a friend.

You know, 1 in 3 Americans have a criminal record. So it it’s it’s never far from anybody’s individual experience. You know, one of the most interesting questions that, you know, we ask ourselves, as members of the prison fellowship family is, so how did you get started doing this? And the typical response is, well, how much time do you have? Mhmm.

You know? Because our stories weave, you know, sort of circuitously, together, but almost everybody, you know, has had some sort of either, you know, firsthand lived experience or, you know, know somebody has a family member, who went through that. And that’s really reflective of, you know, our society as a whole. Most people, that’s also true of. Given the fact that you are are so involved with these, prisoners and learn so much about it, do you ever is there ever a sense in which you go to Capitol Hill and say to, members of Congress, you know, we’re involved in here and here are some changes we think you could make that would make prison life better, address these issues better.

Do you ever do something like that? I mean, you’re the people who are there. Yeah. Well, actually, just last month, we had dozens of, our staff members who have firsthand experience go to Capitol Hill and get to meet with staffers from the state that they live in Mhmm. And advocate for, the passage of the prison oversight, bill, which just passed the senate, passed the house back in May, which is just to provide greater transparency and accountability, within the Bureau of Prisons.

Because at the at the federal level, that really, you know, is kind of a culture shaper for what happens at the states, but most people in prison are in state prisons, not federal prisons. What’s the biggest challenge that you have in your ministry? Oh my goodness. You know? And it could be laws, it could be, prison guards, it could be, prisoners responding, aggressively.

I mean, just just what’s your biggest challenge or maybe 1 or 2 of them? Yeah. You know, the the vision of prison fellowship, in this current era of the organization is to encounter Jesus with those impacted by incarceration. You know, when you you fast forward to the very end of the bible, in Revelation 21 and 22 Mhmm. There’s this eternal scene of the nations come together and they worship Jesus forever, that there’s unity and and diversity, and we’re all, you know, looking in the same direction.

And so, you know, we’re really trying to, embody that now of having the church on the outside and the church on the inside come together in the hopes and in the belief that the lord is gonna spark revival and that, you know, because in the the economy of the kingdom of god, the world always turn or the lord always turns the world on its head, that we really believe that revival in this country is going to be sparked from inside of prison and go out. And so we wanna have the church on the outside get proximate to the church on the inside because the lord always uses the weak things of the world to confound the strong. And where else? Where’s the most forgotten place, in this country? It’s it’s it’s in prisons, and we we see this this thing that the lord is doing.

And so just wanna call upon, the church in America to really be attentive to what the lord is doing. What is the lord asking of us and what can we learn from those, who perhaps had a very different, you know, life experience than we did? My guest for these two segments has been Cody Wilde. He is with, fellowship prison fellowship and we’ve been talking about their efforts that they’ve been doing for nearly 50 years. We have a link to, prison fellowship on our website at pointofview.net so you can go there and find out more about Cody and about their work and I would encourage you to do so and maybe even donate to the group because it’s a major force out there working within the prisons.

Cody, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks a lot, Merrill. And when we come back, we’ll be going to Bunny Pounds. She has been a longtime political activist, but she started some, little while back Christians engaged where she tries to help people just learn how to be more engaged in political life and have an impact there. Now that we have the Republican Convention coming on, a Democratic Convention coming up next month and, politics is all around.

It’s a good thing to discuss. Be back with us on point of view in just a minute. We live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics.

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You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now here again, doctor Merrill Matthews. And welcome back to Point of View. I’m Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today.

And now we’re going to turn to a long time friend of mine, Bunny Pounds. She is president of Christians Engaged and just two and a half years ago, she started this organization. But since then, they’ve served over 100 churches and had over 150 people involved in their efforts to educate the body of Christ on the importance of their biblical call to America. And, this has been a growing organization, but we’re also going to mention today that, she had a strategic, merger with the Family Policy Alliance. So, Bonnie, thank you for joining us.

Oh, it’s great to be with you, doctor Matthews. Always an honor. Now tell us a little bit about we’ve had you on a cup few times, but tell everybody about Christians Engaged, and then tell us about this new alliance that you’ve, developed with, the Family Policy Alliance. Yeah. We actually started Christians Engaged four and a half years ago, and we yep.

We built, we built 3 major things. We built a get out the vote system for Christians. So every Christian around the country that’s listening to us right now can go on our website at christiansengaged dotorg. That’s christiansengaged.org, and take the pledge to pray, vote, and engage. And what that does is we send you prayer videos and prayer scriptures to pray over our nation every Monday.

We send you voting reminders for every election in the country so you never forget, a primary, a proposition election, a local election, or a national election ever again. And then we also help Christians through on demand video curriculum. We’ve built over $200,000 at classes to teach Christians civics and biblical worldview. So we were pioneering. We were, going into churches.

We were, you know, building all these programs, and, Family Policy Alliance Foundation approached us. They were started by doctor James Dobson. Used to be focused on the family action. They approached us and said, listen. We’re really good at education and advocacy.

We’ve got 41 state policy councils across the country, but we have not figured out how to mobilize Christian voters and how to do a church outreach program. Is there a way that we can become family? And, you know, it was a it was a crazy 3 or 4 months as we navigated this as, our 2 boards and our leadership. But at the end of the day, we felt like it was extremely good fit. And, and so our boards merged, and I’m now also not only the president of Christians Engaged, but the senior vice president of Family Policy Alliance.

So it’s a fun day. Where are they based? They’re in Colorado Springs. Mhmm. Oh, sure.

Yeah. And they have yeah. They have, they have 41 state policy organizations here in Texas. That group is Texas values led by Johns and Saenz. There’s ones in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, all of all of the states.

Most of the states have one. But they’re the boots on the ground that are actually advocating for pro family, pro life, and religious liberty. And so we’re able to outreach to churches and Christians, and now as leaders rise up, move them towards, actually doing this stuff with the family policy council. So how do you see the 2 organizations complementing each other? It’s an incredible complement because, we actually kinda doubled their programs overnight.

We had a young adult program. We have a national conference. We have the voter mobilization communications. We have all the curriculum. So we have a lot of things that they had some of that, but they didn’t have the full package like we did.

So we kinda doubled their programs, and they gave us a network that we it would have taken us 20 years to build. To put this in in perspective, they between the national organization and all the state organizations, they have about 400 employees and a $55,000,000 budget a year. Mhmm. So that’s a massive network that would have taken a lot of resources and personnel for us to build to be able to build state to state on the ground. And so it’s a it’s a beautiful marriage actually and and we’re really, really, really thankful for them.

So let’s talk a little bit about Christians and their, Christians don’t always vote and when they do vote, they haven’t always voted their values. And you’re trying to address both of those aspects, aren’t you? We are. You can’t drive Christians to the polls unless you teach them the bible, and that they align their their biblical values with what’s happening in government and politics. So it’s a really, really difficult, you know, space to operate in.

But every Christian, should be talking to god about what’s happening in our nation and praying for their elected officials regardless of political parties. We need God to move on our officials, and we need to have godly people elected. But every Christian should be able to print off their ballot, research their ballot, take 30 minutes. That’s what we do at Christians Engage is we give you a 5 step guide to do that for every election. So you go in 98% more prepared than everybody else.

We don’t tell you what political parties to vote for or what candidates, but we give you the tools to do your research and to go in and pray and ask God for wisdom to navigate these things. Because, Merrill, as you know, we’re picking between imperfect people. Jesus is not on the ballot. And even our political parties, you know, we saw even the last week, the Republican party platform getting watered down in a lot of ways. These political parties are not perfect.

The candidates are not perfect, but we have to make choices, and we cannot sit on the sidelines and do nothing. Now you and I were at a dinner some months back sitting next to each other, and the person sitting on the other side of me was listening to us talk and and she sort of weighed in saying, you know, we’ve got this wall of separation between the church and state. And my sense was she just felt like you were overstepping that wall by bringing Christian values and other things into politics. Tell me, how do you respond to somebody who says, look, we we we’ve got this wall of separation. You should not be involved in bringing Christian aspects into politics.

Well, I know that Kirby has detailed out this many times on this show, and I’m sure you have too. But Thomas Jefferson was writing that letter to the Danbury Baptists that they were concerned that they were Baptist. There was Catholics in Maryland. There were Quakers. There are all these different colonies who are operating, related to their denomination of their faith, and they were concerned that the government would come in and tell them they all have to be Quakers, they all have to be Catholic, or they all have to be a certain strain.

They were saying there’s a separation the government cannot infringe upon the church. It’s the opposite of what the culture and secularism has said about this. And so let me break that first. Secondly, excuse me. Secondly, we should be Christ followers wherever we go.

We have this idea that some things are sacred and some things are secular. This is a fallacy. And, you know, going into your city council, going, to your Chamber of Commerce, being the president of your homeowners association, these things are godly things. And, buddy, how can people hear the gospel if we’re not going into our communities and meeting people and sharing Jesus and loving our neighbor? And so, you know, politics in and of itself is not inherently evil.

It’s the people that are controlled by the enemy that are corrupting it. So if righteous, godly people that love Jesus have a biblical worldview go in as leaders, we can walk with God and intimacy with him and make a difference in our communities. We have a situation now where a lot of Christians, evangelical Christians don’t vote, do they? Yeah. There’s really no difference between the general public and people that call themselves, born again Christians whether they’re protestant or catholic.

George Barna showed in 2016 that there was, like, a 2% bump between that that group, of us Christians that got out to the polls, but that went down 4 points in 2020, from the research I’ve seen. So we have got to be consistent, and we can’t just vote in presidential elections. You know, it really is a a thing of loving your neighbors well. We are not perfect people. We all know that as Christians.

We’re only here by the grace of God. But at the same time, God has given us wisdom and discernment based on us renewing our minds to the word. And so who better to make those choices to put in righteous people in their city, county, and state government or federal government than the body of Christ. And that actually is a loving thing. We are loving our neighbors well because Proverbs 29 2 says, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice.

When the wicked man rules, the people groan. And so in reality, when you’re electing righteous leaders, they’re not perfect, they’re just have a biblical worldview and they can discern right from wrong, that’s actually loving your community well because the people, even if they don’t vote, are gonna thrive and they’re gonna have liberty and they’re gonna be protected based on those leaders that we’re putting in office. My guest for this segment is Bunny Pounds. She is president of Christians Engaged. You can go to point of view dot net and find out more about her and find out ways to reach out to Christians Engaged.

And, of course, they just, announced recently announced a merger with Family Policy Alliance, so the 2 of them are working together. When we get back, we’ll look more at what Christians can do in order to affect the political atmosphere. So stay with us on point of view. You’re listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. And we’re back with Bunny Pounds, president of Christians engaged, and we’re talking about how you as a Christian can get engaged.

And so, Bunny, let’s say I’m a Christian, I’m looking at the country, I’m concerned about the way things are going right now. I don’t like it, and I want to get involved somehow. What do I do? What where do I start? Well, we’ve built the road map for you.

That was what cod called me to do is go find the Awakening Church and plug you into habits of prayer, voting, and engagement. So go first to christiansengage.org and take our pledge to pray, vote, and engage. You’ll start getting our prayers. You’ll start getting our voting reminders. And then our step 2, Merrill, is for people to go and check out our classes.

We have an on ramp to civic engagement class. That’s our signature class. It’s an amazing class on political parties, advocacy, issues from a biblical perspective, how to share the gospel, how how to walk with God in this space. It’s an amazing class. And we kinda move people from, the pledge to pray, vote, engage to our classes, and then we start trying to help them navigate what is the burden of their heart.

Where do they wanna go? And I kinda like to put it in 3 different buckets for people. Number 1, get involved in campaigns. Adopt a candidate. Become a candidate yourself.

We will help you. We have a full campaign school to help people run for office and how to get involved with campaigns so that we can elect righteous people. Secondly, if you have a issue that you really care about, you’re, like, worried about some legislation getting passed that you wanna kill or you wanna pass good legislation, get involved in what we call advocacy. And that’s where our friends at Family Policy Alliance and our state policy groups can help you to advocate for godly legislation, and we’ll help you connect get connected to them. Thirdly, some Christians are like, oh, I don’t wanna do either one of those, but I can register my friends to vote.

I can mobilize Christians to start praying, voting, engaging. I can start talking to my pastor about getting involved with Christians engaged or getting Christians more Christians to get activated. We have a whole area leader program to help Christians do just that, and hundreds of people are finding their voice, just helping this ministry day to day. And, you know, we’re gonna try to reach a 1000000 Christians, so we need all hands on deck to help us. When somebody is saying, you know, I I’ve seen these things and I wanna get involved and maybe even run for office myself.

You know, I think some people sometimes think, but you know, I I can’t run. Running for congress is such a big deal, but there’s lots of offices from school board to, city council. There’s lots of things that people could start with and sort of learn the process. There is. And we absolutely need a bench of leadership. You know? Buddy, I ran for congress in 2018. I really didn’t wanna run for congress, but, there was nobody else that knew the people in 7 counties that could raise the money, the new federal public policy. And and so, you know, I felt like we didn’t have a bench of leadership in that district. And so we need to build Christians in city council places.

I’ll I’ll share one couple stories with you. We had a a young father, him and his wife, and their daughter came to our DC trip last year to Washington DC. And Jonathan Reeves stood up and he said, you know, I’m here on this trip because my motto in life is pray, vote, complain. And I’m hoping this changes it to pray, vote, engage. And we all laughed and chuckled because we’ve all been there.

Right? Mhmm. And, he came home from that trip, and we had 3 pastors in that city that are strategic ministry partners with us. And they recruited, Jonathan to run for city council in a special election. He won a a runoff in December against a very progressive leftist in Rowlett, Texas.

And the beauty of this is they shifted the power of the the city council. So now they have 4 conservatives to 3 liberals. Well, what happened was they got busy, and Johnson led the charge just a few months ago to get rid of the diversity, equity, inclusion program in Rowlett. Mhmm. And they got rid of it.

They passed it. And the next day, it was off the website. That’s one Christian saying yes to Jesus, making a step to go to Washington DC, then running for office, then doing the hard work of what it takes in a city. I have to think though if you’re speaking out at city council meetings, the school board meetings or something of that nature, some people are gonna step up and say, you’re trying to impose your values on us. Stop trying to impose your values on us.

How do you answer that? Everybody is pushing their worldview. Everybody is pushing their values on us. Has anybody been on Twitter lately or x? I mean, you’re everybody’s all they’re doing is spewing what they believe.

And so the reality is, there’s a there’s gonna be a vacuum. If if Christians are not out there in the public space, there will be a vacuum that somebody will fill. And we’re seeing that as cities flag gay pride, flags, you know, from their flag stands right next to the American flag or their state flag. We need to be speaking up and saying, you know, that’s not something that we want in our city. We love everybody.

We receive everybody. Everybody can live their lives in freedom, but we don’t wanna be celebrating or promoting what God says is sin. So, you know, we have to, just navigate that, buddy. But we can walk in these places and be strong and courageous and bold, but at the same time, carry the Sermon on the Mount. Be merciful.

Be loving. You know, push being hungry and thirsting for righteousness, being poor in spirit, loving those who persecute us. So we we can do both. We should be people that people are attracted to, not that are, like, running away from us. Right?

We should be the ones that are, like, running and going, I wanna be like that person because they love me. We’ve got a presidential election coming up, so it’s a very important time for Christians to be engaged. Take about a minute to explain what what you’re doing over the next 3 to 4 months, if there’s anything different that you’re doing. Yeah. Well, we’ve been building for 4 years.

We’ve got 265,000 Christians in our database now activating them to vote in every election, but we are putting the gasoline on that. And with the help of people that are helping put money into this project, we’re going to go after a 1000000 Christians and get them into the system by the presidential election. We wanna have them in the system before early voting, happens if we can. So we’re actually able to reach a Christian online for 50¢. So the the beauty of this is that we are actually got donors that are are doubling and tripling people’s gifts right now.

So people wanna help us reach Christians online, in churches, through social media. We are able to find that Christian, get them activated, and get them in to vote in every election. And that’s our goal. So we’re really working on that. We have an amazing biblical platform comparison that’s on the home page of our website, that people can download, and we’ll be updating that as soon as, the Democrat Convention happens and their platform is approved.

As the new platforms are approved, we’ll be updating that. But we’re helping people just navigate this and figure out how to vote. But I wanna encourage people. Don’t just vote for president. You wanna vote all the way down the ballot.

Mhmm. Vote for your member of congress, your state representative, all the way down. It is critical that you print off your ballot, research your ballot, and we’ll help you do that. My guest has been Bunny Powne. She is president of Christians Engaged and, of course, they have just merged with Family Policy Alliance.

And I would encourage you to go to point of view.net. You’ll find a link to the website there and find out more about them and go and get engaged. You get involved in this and, follow what their directions are because that this is the time to do that. Bonnie, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you so much, doctor Matthews.

Just love the point of view audience and let’s go. Let’s go team. We’ll get you back soon sometime. And joining me back, Kirby will be back tomorrow, and we’ll be doing the weekend edition. I’ll be here, and I think Holly Randall will be here.

So say come back tomorrow. The Christian the Republican National Convention will be over, and we’ll that will be a major topic. Thank you for joining us on Point of View. Tells us not to worry, and yet there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today. Thankfully, the Bible doesn’t stop at telling us not to worry.

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