Ri’ck Green
Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. You found your way to Wall Builders. Yes, wall Builders that comes out of Nehemiah, arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. It's all about rebuilding the foundations, folks, and you are a part of it by listening, but also by taking action. Whether you're making contributions so that we can reach more people with Wall Builders you can do that at wallbuilders.com. Or maybe you're getting some of the materials. Maybe you're becoming one of our Constitution coaches, hosting a biblical citizenship class in your community.
There are so many ways to get involved. I always tell people just look at that long list of ways you can get involved and pick something that fits for you, pick something that you know you can do easily and then, after you do that, find something else and just keep adding. You don't have to be president of the United States or a member of Congress or governor to make a difference. Every single one of us can make a difference. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, serving alongside David and Tim Barton. David Barton, America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton's a national speaker and pastor, and he's president of WallBuilders. All three of us thankful that you're here with us.
Thanks for being a part of WallBuilders. Again, be sure and check it out today at wallbuilders.com. All right, David and Tim. Our friend Jody Heiss will be with us a little later after the break and of course Jody's been, you know, congressman pastor, engaged in the culture man. I remember speaking at Jody's church when he was a pastor Back when I first got my bus. His church was one of the first places we pulled into in the middle of the night. Anyway, Jody's been in this fight for a long time and a great friend of WallBuilders. Looking forward to catching up with him on his new book.
David Barton
Yeah, the new book is dealing with really something that's concerned a lot of Americans since the last election, and that's election integrity. And the reason that Jody's good on this is not only was he a pastor, but then he ran for Congress. He served in Congress for eight years, but he's out of Georgia, and when he saw what happened in Georgia in the election there in 2020 and all the shenanigans that appear to be going on, he said that's unacceptable. So he left Congress to run for secretary of state. He ran against the current secretary of state did not win, but he definitely is into election, election integrity, election security, and so he's got a book out on what can be done. What can an average person do to make a difference with election integrity, election security? You know it's interesting. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had John Graves on and found out hey, one of the things you can do is you can call your county commissioners and say what machines are you using and do you have a contract with them to make sure that they have closed encryption, and so there's things that citizens can do, but sometimes it takes a little bit of information. That's not stuff you're going to get in the mainstream media or in newsletters or whatever, and so Jody, as a pastor, knows how to really break things down in a simple, easy way, and that's what he's done in that book is give us something to look at on what we as individuals can do with the elections.
Tim Barton
And this really is important for us to have this conversation, because there are a lot of people whether you happen to be one of them listening right now or it's your friends that you know that are not interested necessarily in voting, because if it's rigged, why does it even matter? Why should we even vote? And it's important that we recognize that we have to be faithful to do the right thing. It goes back to the John Quincy Adams story. That is one of our favorites around here, where John Quincy Adams, after fighting year after year after year against slavery as he was a US congressman and as he's fighting against slavery in America, one day a reporter came to him and said Mr. Adams, how do you stay motivated when you really haven't been successful, when you haven't stopped slavery, if slavery continues to exist, how do you stay motivated? And his response was quite simple. It was based on what he wrote was his life motto. He said his life motto was duty is ours, results are God's. He said to the reporter it's only up to me to do the right thing. It's up to God what happens after that. And this is the sentiment we have to have toward elections it's our job, it's our responsibility to do the right thing. That's part of the stewardship that we have in this nation of America. We have the ability to vote. Therefore, we have the responsibility that we need to vote. Our voices need to be heard. But if there are questions about can we trust the elections and I would say it definitely makes a difference what state you are in as to how much confidence I would have in some of the election process it shouldn't determine whether or not you show up. You need to show up.
I think President Trump has oh, what's the slogan? Guys, you'll have to help me out with this Too. Is it too big to rig? Or something of such nature? Right, he needs to win by so much that they can't rig. It is the idea behind it.
I don't remember what he said from the speech that I saw, with that all kind of encapsulated it comes back to.
There really are things we can do to help uphold the laws that are already in place, and there's some really good strategies of things that we are now learning that, even if there were just people, if we had some eyes on in some areas, that we could see what was happening, it's one of the things that we might remember from school.
For those of us that were in a classroom public school, Christian school, private school, whatever it was I mean maybe even homeschooled right, if you have a teacher or a parent who is watching you take the test. It's a little harder to cheat when you are under scrutiny, when you are being watched, and there are things we can do to have better eyes on this upcoming election to make it harder for people to cheat and to get away with it, and this is part of what Jody's identified. What are some practical things we can do to make a difference in the upcoming election, to give us greater confidence, to know that not only should we vote, but we can vote with confidence, knowing that our vote will be counted and it can make a difference in the upcoming election
David Barton
and, Tim, going back to what you said about John Quincy Adams and do desires results for God's, let me even take that a step further, spiritually speaking.
Founding fathers literally absolutely believed that we would answer to God for everything we've done in life, with our family, with our job, with education, whatever it is, and one of those things was also with our stewardship of the nation. And so, therefore, god's not going to ask hey, did you vote when it was rigged machine? Well, if you didn't, that's fine. Now, that's not it. He doesn't. He's not asking you to vote for the winner or the loser. He'll hold you accountable for what you do, for your participation. It's not a matter of did you vote for the winner or loser, it's did you do something in this election? Now, if the other guy stole it, then God will deal with that.
But you need to be right by doing what you're supposed to do, and that is voting every single time. Even if you know it was rigged, even if you know they're cheating, even if you can see them cheating, you still have to participate so that you'll be correct, standing with God, when you can say, hey, I did what I could, I went out and did everything I could, but they stole it. Great God will deal with that. So don't ever give an excuse to yourself or let anybody else have an excuse to not participate, no matter how bad the system is in our minds and it's not as bad as a lot of people think but we're using that as an excuse for laziness and that's just not acceptable. But what Jody's got here is very practical things that all of us can do to restore confidence, gain confidence and to be involved actively in these elections.
Rick Green
Jody Hice, our special guest, stay with us. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show.
Break
Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Jody Hice, our good friend, pastor, congressman, author, you name it on the front lines making a difference, and we appreciate you so much. And now over at Family Research front lines making a difference, and we appreciate you so much. There, of course, worked with them for years and years, but, um, but, man, I'm just so thankful for you and I appreciate you taking some time to be with us today
Jody Hice
Well, Rick, I can't tell you how grateful for the incredible work that you and all the the whole crew, everybody at wall builder is you awesome, so great to be with you,
Rick Green
always good to work with you guys.
And you got a new book out on election integrity, obviously a hot topic across the country. You have been diving deep on that one, not only there in your home state but for the whole country, and this is an important time to have a book on how to restore election integrity, important time to have a book on how to restore election integrity. And so you know what I guess for you. What do you hope people get from the book and are able to do with this? Because everybody feels like you know everybody's talking about it, but they feel like, ok, what do I do about it? And you're giving us some solutions.
Jody Hice
Yeah, you know this and those things, rick, I didn't go to Congress with election integrity on my radar and I mean, this was just one of these things.
I was a senior member on the Oversight Committee and as soon as COVID in fact we had our very first case of COVID in the United States One case and the very next week Democrats started holding hearings in the Oversight Committee about the need to change election laws because COVID is coming and we're going to have all the, you know, potential lockdowns, people sick, not going to be able to ballot boxes, and so you know we need to do all this horrible outlandish stuff like sending ballots to everyone on the files and all this stuff.
And then they kind of shifted gears from there and went into the voter suppression argument and they used Georgia as exhibit a, so to speak, with that and of course, being from Georgia, I knew better. So that's kind of how I got into this. I got kind of pushed into it, started pushing about this nonsense and, sure enough, what amazed me is how rapidly, how rapidly, some of the things that they were pushing for began to be accepted across the country, and more often than not, unilaterally, just by secretaries of states or whomever, totally bypassing legislatures and just enacting this stuff.
Rick Green
Which is, of course, unconstitutional right. I mean that's in the Constitution. It's the legislature that's given the power to do that.
Jody Hice
It's the legislature. And so you know, now we're all behind the eight ball. All of us have been, well, depending on where you live. Fortunately, there's a lot of states that have taken some great action, but a lot of states have not, and so now as a country, we're kind of behind the eight ball figuring out how in the world do we get election integrity back. And so you know, going through all the story with a whole host of information, I deal with this type of stuff. But come back.
As you well know, Rick, every state has their own election laws, so this is something the constitution, of course, says. The time, place and manner of elections are left to the state, so this is a state issue. So all states are a little bit different in the way they operate elections, so it's hard to give guidelines for what every single state should do. But what I provide are universal principles that ought to be widely accepted and utilized in every state. Just to bring forth some of the basics that are absolutely essential for election integrity, such as cleaning our election voter registration I mean that ought to go without even mentioning.
It's almost embarrassing that we have to mention things like that, but the average state is between close to 10 to 20 percent inaccurate in their voter files
Rick Green
Meaning you've got people in the files that are either dead or moved to another state, but yet if they're on the files, there's potential for fraud, especially if you're mailing ballots to everybody that's in the files
Jody Hice
That's right, and so if we're starting the process between 10 and 20 percent inaccurate, I mean, then obviously we have a potential problem at the end result trying to figure out if we had an accurate election.
So these are some of the things voter photo identification, the mail-in ballots. There's a whole host of things that are glaring at us, as well as the smaller things as well. But this is kind of the direction the book is taking and fortunately, the people like you mentioned across the country understand this is essential for a government based upon the consent of the governed rather than the consent of the governing. You know, this is our opportunity as the citizens to determine who's going to represent us and what kind of laws we're going to be living under. So this whole issue of election integrity is absolutely essential.
Rick Green
Sacred Trust, Election Integrity and the Will of the People is the name of the book. You can get it at Amazon. Folks. Just look up Jody Hice and the book will come up, or the title Sacred Trust, election Integrity and the Will of the People. Jody, what I really like about what you just said as you were even going through a couple of those items they're doable. These are not massive, impossible to overcome steps. I mean, this is literally just getting our house in order is what it sounds like to me.
Jody Hice
Well, it absolutely is. And look, some people say, oh, it's so hard to get our voter files in order, for example. It is not, I mean you, just, it's an Amazon. Amazon knows who you are, Amazon knows where you live. I mean, if they can do it, we can certainly do it as a government. But we've got, uh, you know, companies like that. We have the postal services. Whenever you move, they know where you move from. They have a porting address where you are. Utility companies have this information. Your school districts have this information. Uh, the coroner knows who dies, who doesn't die, you know, and so it's just basic. Um, it's not rocket. Utilize the technology and the sources that are available to have clean voter files who you are, but then to have a photo id when you come to prove that you are who you say you are before we give you a ballot.
Rick Green
Those type of things only make common sense yeah, yeah, yeah it, yeah, it does I mean. In fact, it's the. I mean, if you're not for those things, you obviously are for leaving the system open to the possibility of cheating Even if you're not for cheating, you're not you're certainly being foolish, I would say, in terms of leaving the system open to making it easier for people to cheat. Jody, I got to, I got to ask you while I got you. You know David and Tim were talking about when we were on our break, about just the increase in church attacks and the increase in. It's almost like these violent attacks. We've gone from just speech or you know hate or you know people just being negative, to literally physically attacking churches again, and a massive increase in the last few years. What are your thoughts on that and what can be done about it?
Jody Hice
Yeah, you know, FRC has just come out. We have an annual report that we've been doing since 2018 on this very issue. In fact, it can be found at FRC.org, that Hostility Against Churches report. But it is really stunning what is taking place. We have seen just, for example, 2023, there were 436 cases of hostility against churches in the United States. That's more than double what we saw in 2022 and eight times more than 2018.
So not only are we seeing a rise in hostility against Christians and churches and so forth, but it's accelerating. I mean, this thing is not just an upward climb, this thing is skyrocketing out of control. And so we need to be very much aware of what's going on right now. It certainly is indicative of the times. I think it's indicative of the administration that we have right now as well, where we have pro-lifers who are protesting peacefully and praying in front of abortion clinics or facing the full extent of the law and being accused of violating the faith act. And I read of one lady this morning is facing 11 years in prison for just doing that praying peacefully in front of a, an abortion clinic. And so the hostility is my point. The hostility towards people of faith and those who are standing for this is very much real and on the rise, and it's being specifically a massive increase in targeting of churches right now,
Rick Green
What is the best response to that? Well, actually, let me ask it this way. You know, it sure seemed like over the last three or four years well, certainly the last three years with a DOJ that is so political that the you know, any press conferences, any known effort of you know trying to stop crime and that sort of thing, was always directed at pro-lifers and at any Republican constituency and very little to the left. And yet if there was any defacing of an abortion clinic or whatever, oh my goodness, it was a national crisis. But literally bombing churches, setting churches on fire, violence against churches or pro-life organizations almost ignored. That's been my perception anyway, at least on how it's reported. It seems like that in just my logical side of my mind would say that invites more violence against churches. If you think you're not going to be prosecuted or you think this is an area that they're less focused on, to try to stop it encourages it. So am I way off on that? I could be.
I mean, it may just be my own, my own perception
Jody Hice
well, I don't know how else you connect the dots, really, rick. I mean when you, when you look down, I mean watch, look at what's happening right now on college campuses of the anti-semitism I mean virtually institutions down. Nothing's going to happen to these. More than likely It'll be the same thing as those BLM protesters in 2020, burning down buildings and so forth. Nothing ever happened to them.
But you let someone pray in front of an abortion clinic and all of a sudden, like you said, it's a national crisis, and so these people who know that there virtually is going to be no consequence, then if they don't like faith or churches or what have you, then they want to intimidate it, and that's what really we're seeing.
We're seeing the Christian community being intimidated from even attending worship. And when we talk about hostility, I think it's important that we do understand we are talking significant things, from as small as vandalism, but gun violence, arson, bomb threats is pretty major stuff that we're talking about here. When we're dealing with this hostility environment against churches, it's not just doing some little small act of vandalism. It's pretty major stuff. And, of course, we've seen people killed and shot and all that kind of stuff in all of this. So churches have got to take common sense. Obviously it's a spiritual problem, so we've got to be praying for the work of God in our various communities and so forth. But church is also, in a very commonsensical kind of way to look at some security measures, boots on the ground and people watching cameras and this type of thing to make sure that when people come to worship they can do so freely, without fear of harassment or intimidation or some more serious threat.
Rick Green
Yeah, yeah, amen. Hey man, good stuff, all right. Former Congressman Jody Heiss and, by the way, the forward to the book. Our friend Ken Blackwell wrote that for you, so that's pretty cool. Secretary of State in Ohio and all kinds of other offices, and so you know he's kind of like you, he's. He's dug deep on this issue. Jody, thanks for doing the book. Sacred Trust, election Integrity and the Will of the People. You can get it at Amazon today and always like having you on l man, so come back soon.
Jody Hice
Always love being with you. Thanks, rick, keep the torch ablaze.
Rick Green
You got it. Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.
Break
Rick Green
We're back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us, thanks to Jody Hice for joining us as well, and we'll have links today at our website for the new book, or you can just go straight to Amazon. David and Tim, you mentioned this earlier, but sometimes when we bring up this election integrity issue, people feel like it's game over and not get involved or whatever. But we've actually seen quite a few victories of small changes. I don't know that we've had a state go totally back to paper ballots and hand counting and all the things I would like to see us do after my recount of 20 years ago, but we are seeing victories. I mean, people are aware that this is a big issue and you know it's just one of those things that's going to take time. We're not going to fix this whole thing overnight. I got to say.
David Barton
One of the things that Jody said I had never thought about before maybe you guys have but the fact that right after there's one case of COVID, the Democrats start calling for changes in election laws. I had not noticed that correlation. One case of COVID now we got to change the way elections are held in America. That is a massive change and it had great impact. And we look back and man, what COVID did to change the elections is substantial. But we've got to get back to doing the right things in elections. There are things people can individually do and I'm going to tout here. I'm going to tout faith wins, because what faith wins? They have a section where that every citizen can do something to help secure elections. I'm going to use Virginia as an example. They got 312 churches in Virginia said, hey, we'll do what we can around us, and they got people from those churches Sunday school leaders and Sunday school teachers and just people going to church and they took the record, the voting record for the county, and they had people just look at who's on the list and they said look for two things. If there's more than six people voting at one address, check that out and make sure you could have more than six people voting in one address, but it's kind of a flag and if you see people who are over 100 years old and still voting, that's possible. But just check it out. And so what they did was they found one place where there were 17 people who were registered to vote there and they went and checked the address and it was an open cow pasture. It was not even structure on it. And they found other places where the people who were way over 100 were still voting. As a matter of fact, we did this in Michigan and found a guy in Michigan had voted twice in the 2020 election and he was born in 1850. So the dude lived through the Civil War and he's still voting in 2020? No, no, no. So what happened to Virginia was, literally, they found 5.2% of the vote was fraudulent and they were able to identify that, and when you pull that many false votes off a voter roll, that can make a real difference.
Now, this was. This is significant because it was just 312 churches and there's tens of thousands of churches there and it doesn't have to be your church, you individually, if you'll go to faithwins.org. There's a take action area there and there's an area where you can. You can. They will help train you on what you can look for in your roles, and those roles are public. You're able to get those in any state, any area and you can look through those. And again, and when we did in Michigan the first 200 people that were over 100 years old and still voting we found online obituaries for 67 of them. So they're still voting and we have online obituaries that they're dead. That's the kind of stuff that will help voter security.
Don't rely on your legislators to do everything. Don't rely on your state reps to do everything. There's things you can do. You can put eyes on the process. And again, faithwins.org is a good place to help get you activated right in your community, just with the precincts around you. You don't have to change all the states in the United States, just change your precinct, and if we can get individuals doing that, we can change states and we can change the nation.
Rick Green
FaithWins.org. That's FaithWins.org. Great way to get plugged in on the ground. Get your church engaged, start doing these actual action items that can make a difference in the culture. It's not enough for us to just pray, john Hancock said. I urge you by all that's dear, by all that's honorable, by all that's sacred, not only to pray but to act. So we've got to do both, and here's a great action step for you. So check that out today at faithwins.org. And then, of course, check out Jody Heiss's new book. And then catch up on your Wall Builders show radio that you might have missed over the last few weeks show. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.
