Faith And Culture Updates From Iran To America

You can feel it in the air right now: a lot of people are exhausted, cynical, and tempted to believe nothing good is happening. We refuse to live there. This Good News Friday brings stories that are concrete, surprising, and worth sharing, especially with the friend who’s been hit with the “America is the bad guy” narrative and can’t see past the headlines.

We start with a remarkable update from one of the last places you’d expect: Iran. There’s credible reporting on a rapidly growing underground Christian church, and we point you to specific resources on the Back to Jerusalem movement and the strategy of Chinese believers entering closed nations as workers on major projects. If you’ve been looking for real leads instead of vague optimism, we name books, documentaries, and places to begin reading.

Then we turn to the United States, where a Gallup poll shows many Americans still believe a more religious society would be a positive thing, even as the numbers shift over time and across political groups. We talk honestly about why government policy shapes moral values, why that matters for culture, and how these trends connect to the choices we make in public life.

We also cover major legal and political developments: a Texas judge finally resolves a long fight tied to conscience and religious liberty, leaders push back on International Criminal Court overreach and threats to U.S. sovereignty, and we highlight a practical proposal to fast-track commercial driver’s licenses for military veterans. If you care about faith and culture, constitutional boundaries, and hopeful news you can act on, you’ll want to hear this one. Subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us on this Friday. Always looking forward to Fridays 'cause it's Good News Friday here at WallBuilders. Great opportunity, great opportunity to catch up on some of the good news from across the nation and around the world. David and Tim Barton gathering those stories for us throughout the week. I'm Rick Green. And by the way, if you missed yesterday, Foundations of Freedom Thursday, go to our website, wallbuilders.show. There were some great questions yesterday. We got some great history, learned some things yesterday. So check that out at wallbuilders.show and share it with your friends and family. And then of course, today's program, you want to share with those, those who might have been infected by the black pill virus of a lot of folks right now, trying to depress everybody and make them think America was the bad guys and not the good guys, you need to get some good news into the hands of those people. And so, today's a chance for you to share some of that. You can do that from wallbuilders.show and then wallbuilders.com is our main website, lots of great information there. And of course, the new book, Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor. Make sure you get a copy of that for the 250th, but there's a lot of other great information and books there as well. Including the American Story. So don't miss that one at wallbuilders.com. Okay, David, Tim, I know you guys got a lot to get to, so let's jump in. David, first piece of good news today. 

David Barton [00:01:17] Well, I'm going to pretend that I'm Rick Green, so I don't know how I can make my voice do that, but this is a Foundations of Freedom Thursday question. So, I'm gonna open with the question from Thursday on Friday. And if everybody's not fully confused, I'll get you there. So, what happened is there's a question that came in from Sharon Deidrich and she asked the question because we had Rudy on a program, Rudy Attalah, and he was talking about things going in Iran. And she asked a question, so this is really a question that comes from Foundations of Freedom Thursday, but the answer Rudy gave, we asked Rudy and he wrote the answer back, and the answer was just so good, that I thought, you know, this needs to be a Good News Friday. So, it really kind of deals with, I think people may have heard that in Iran there's a huge underground revival going, Christian church movement, they're growing just really quickly in Iran. There's a lot of mosques that are shutting down there. Now, you've still got the tyrannical leaders up top. They're killing the citizens and fighting the United States, et cetera, but there's still some stuff going on. And so, Rudy Attalah, who was in the White House with counter-terrorism, et cetera, he's now out. He runs White Mountain Research, has been our friend for years, helped to rescue Christians all over the world, persecuted Christians. He answered the question for Sharon. So I'm gonna read her question and read his answer. Sharon said, Rudy Attala said there were Chinese pastors who were sent in construction crews to Iran and now they're converting Persians to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Is there anywhere I can read to learn more about this? Thank you and thank you all for all of your work. So that was her question, here's Rudy's answer. Rudy says, now remember this is a question about Chinese pastors carrying the gospel to Iran. Rudy says the best place to start is the Back to Jerusalem Movement which is the Chinese house church vision and to send missionaries through the Muslim world along the Old Silk Road, including Iran. Their website is BackToJerusalem.com and they publish regular reports from the field. The foundational book is Back to Jerusalem and I can't pronounce all these Chinese names, but by Brother Yun, Peter Zu-Yongi, and Enoch Wong, along with Paul Hataway. 

Tim Barton [00:03:31] Hey, you did pretty good pronouncing Paul's name. 

David Barton [00:03:33] I got, yeah, I did get one right, one out of four, that's not bad. So. So Brother Yun's testimony is called the Heavenly Man, and it gives the backstory of the underground church that birthed this movement. On the construction angle specifically, Chinese believers travel into closed countries as laborers, engineers, and small businessmen on belt and road projects, because a Chinese worker draws no suspicion where a Western missionary never gets in. Eugene Bach's book, Back to Jerusalem, and especially China and End Time Prophecy, cover this strategy and their podcast shares first-hand accounts from workers in that region. For the Iranian side of the story, look at the documentary Sheep Among Wolves and the book Too Many to Jail by Mark Bradley. Iran has one of the fastest growing underground churches in the world and even Iranian officials have admitted it publicly. God is doing something remarkable in that part of the world, and it rarely makes the news. Rudy. So that's a piece of good news based on a question that Sharon asked and I was really glad to see that that much stuff was going on. I knew something about the Chinese underground church movement, where they go on as workers, but that's some good resources and people can go and grab those books and read that and learn about it. Sounds really, really wholesome and good. Good news in countries we're not used to hearing good news from. 

Rick Green [00:04:56] Good news and we'll, we'll be having classes next week on WallBuilders for pronunciation and we will see if Tim has any tough ones in his first piece, first piece of good news, Tim. 

Tim Barton [00:05:05] Well, no, I don't. I only have to pronounce Republicans. Democrats and Independents so the words are not hard some of the vision and values are a little complicated but that the article for mine. The one on top my stack says "Most Americans Want a More Religious Society" is it a gallop poll or gallop survey found. And the poll breaks down at sixty five percent of us adults think it would be positive for society if more Americans were religious. Now, it used to be we had well over 65% of Americans that were identifying as Christian and that number has fallen. Not to digress too much, but even if just all the Christians thought it was really good to be a Christian, we should basically achieve that number, not to digressing. What's interesting about the breakdown, and this is data from this year, 65% say it's good for society to be more religious. 22% say it's negative. 6% said it doesn't make a difference, and 7% didn't have an opinion on it. Where this poll gets more fascinating to me is the breakdown in political parties. So among Republicans, what percentage of Republicans think it would be good if Americans were more religious? Guys, what do you think? What percentage of the Republicans? 

David Barton [00:06:28] 107%. 

Rick Green [00:06:31] Okay, I'm gonna play the Price is Right and say a hundred and six point five and that way if he blows it, I win.

Tim Barton [00:06:35] Well, you both are over you don't know the Price is Right. You should bid a dollar. 

Rick Green [00:06:40] Oh! I gotta be under your right. 

Tim Barton [00:06:43] It's been a while 

Rick Green [00:06:44] I didn't watch enough Bob Barker 

Tim Barton [00:06:45] So it's 94% of Republicans think it would be beneficial for Americans to be more religious. 59% of independents, and what percentage of Democrats do you think? 

David Barton [00:07:00] 2.3. 

Tim Barton [00:07:01] Now, wait a second. Think about there's a growing Muslim influence there as well, because what's interesting about this poll is- 

Rick Green [00:07:10] Tim don't help, Tim don't help him, I finally might beat him on one of these. 2.4, 2. 4. I go one-tenth more

Tim Barton [00:07:17] Well, it's 51% of Democrats and what's interesting. 

Rick Green [00:07:22] I win! I finally won one! Let's pause the program and. 

Tim Barton [00:07:27] Come on down. 

Rick Green [00:07:29] Yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:07:30] Yeah, you can play some little Plinko Rick. We'll save it for you 

Rick Green [00:07:34] But I didn't miss what you just said. That is a much higher number than I make for sure. But maybe it is what you're saying. Maybe it's Islam and yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:07:41] Well, yeah, so it doesn't say what religion or what is religious and how we define religion. But here's also what's interesting. So it's 65% of Americans as a total. But if you go back to 2013, Gallup also polling back then, and in 2013, 75% of Americans said greater religiosity would be positive for society. Only 17% said it would be negative. So we've dropped 10%. 2013, 75% percent of Americans said being more religious is better. Now it's 65% of American's that think it's good to be more religious in society. So that number is declining. Well, along those lines, if you back up... And look at what the numbers were for Republicans and Democrats. So, in 2013, when 75% of Americans said, we think we should be more religious, what do you think the Republican number was back in 2013? So right now, 94% of Republicans think we need more religion in America. What was that number in 2013? 

David Barton [00:08:52] I would bet it's lower. I would think maybe down in 83, 85, somewhere in there. 

Rick Green [00:08:59] Because they've, and you're saying that David, because they have kind of awakened to the need for this. More of them have awakened to need for the this. There was more of a secular kind of French Revolution freedom people. 

David Barton [00:09:09] Yeah, I think they've seen how ugly the swamp is and how vicious some of those people are. The retaliatory way that some officials act. I would bet it's higher, maybe by 10 points. I don't know. 

Tim Barton [00:09:23] So, in 2013, 91% of Republicans thought we should be more religious. So actually the number's not all that different now. Where it makes a difference is coming up in a second. There's another question that will show you that what we used to think and what we think now, even though the percentage-wise doesn't look that different as far as more religion, when it comes to the application of that religion and culture, that's where it's super different now, but so 2013, how many independents, what percent of independents and then Democrats, this is where it's interesting, because this is were there's a huge fall off. So, independents currently are 59%. Back in 2013, 71%. So, 12 more percent of independence in 2013 thought religion was good for society. The Democrats now is where it gets interesting. In 2013, what percentage of Democrats thought religion with good for a society? What is it now? 51%. 

David Barton [00:10:20] Probably 67, 68. 

Tim Barton [00:10:23] I feel like you just read this article because you nailed it. It was 67%. But, but here's to me also where it's interesting, not just that you see a major fall off among independents and Democrats, people that are becoming increasingly secular and we're an increasingly secular society. Where it now is interesting is they also asked about religion in government shaping public policy. And what they found is that Americans increasingly believe government policy shapes the nation's moral values. Nearly seven in 10 adults, it was 69%, say government policies have a significant effect on moral values. If you back up to 2006, only 59% of Americans thought that. In 1996, it was 58%. The reason this matters is there are more Americans right now that are recognizing that the government influences the moral values of America. And we are seeing an increase of Republicans saying we need more religion in America. So I think it's really good news that more Americans than ever are recognizing that the government actually does shape the moral values of the nation, it makes a difference what direction our nation is going. That's a huge deal. But then also when we are seeing an increase, and I know we would love to see an increase probably from Democrats, independents and Republicans, but again, an affirmation for me is as society is becoming more secular and you have in the conservative side, people that are wanting more, advocating for more faith. In life and in America and the public arena, that is really encouraging and really good news to me. 

Rick Green [00:12:17] Bodes well for the future for sure for sure let's take a quick break guys we'll be right back with more good news you're listening to the WallBuildersr show 

Rick Green [00:13:32] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Good News Friday. We've had one from David, one from Tim, tossing it back over to David. 

David Barton [00:13:38] Yeah, this is good news out of Texas. It's gone on for a number of years, the situation. It Involves actually a personal friend, Diane Hensley, who's a judge down in Waco, one of the larger middle cities in Texas. And back in 2019, when COVID was going and not long after they had done the Obergefell marriage stuff, she said, look, as a judge, I'm not going to perform same sex marriages. So, what she did was she said here's the feet schedule that I have. Because judges in Texas when they do something like that they can get paid for it. That's something that that rural judges can earn money by doing weddings instead of a minister, whatever. If people want that so there's a fee and she said but I'm not gonna do it for same-sex marriages And here's places you can go that will do it and they charge the same that I charge. So, there's no difference in price here. And so not a single objection was given on what she did except by the state of Texas. The Judicial Commission said, oh, you can't do that. And they went after her, they sanctioned her, they came after her. They tried to punish her. She has been defending this thing now for what is this, seven years that this has gone on? I mean, this is so old news. This stuff is so different. We've had so many court cases go the other direction where that you can punish people because of their faith on issues like same sex marriage. And so as a result, she finally got a settlement on it. Uh, it's not a big settlement. She gets $10,000 in damages, but here's the part that got me. She gets repaid $630,000 and attorney's fees. That is a really stupid, frivolous case state of Texas. Why did she go after her? First off, Texas doesn't do this anyway. And why the judicial commission went after her when, when the governor and everybody else and the legislature had made it, no, you don't do this, this is some runaway bureaucrats, even in a fairly red state like Texas. $630,000 repaying attorney's fees, but the good news is she prevails, she wins. This is now out of her hair. It didn't make any difference to her anyway because she wasn't gonna do what violated her conscience, but good for Diane for standing there and good for her for getting a win seven years later. 

Rick Green [00:15:47] And David, will that be, I mean, first of all, thank you to Diane for being willing to fight that and to lead the charge on this. But will that, what kind of a precedent is that? Does that help to curb additional pressure on judges and others to perform that? And, you know, would this say, I guess, it wouldn't affect other states, but I guess it would affect other judges in Texas. 

David Barton [00:16:13] It could have but it doesn't look like they went after any others and the governor was really strong in this. The legislature was strong on it. Texas passed the Freedom Restoration Act the, the, all of those acts were there and that's what the courts upheld anyway. And so why this stupid Judicial Commission decided to target her despite the state law, despite the state positions, despite everything, despite even the fact that the US Supreme Court was not going in that direction You know, why they went after it, I have no clue. She's the only one I know of. It could be some others. And there were a couple others over in Granbury and some other places, but they got settled really quick. But this one has gone on for years and years and years, so I have no clue whether it's just an individual in that agency that's rogue or that doesn't like Diane or who knows what it is. But the deal is it's now stopped. 

Rick Green [00:17:04] Yeah. And those did believe me, those judicial commissions, uh, are typically run by, uh the, the most liberal of the, of the, you know, attorney groups. Because I remember fighting them over even judges being able to, to, answer questions when they're running for office and that sort of thing. And they usually come up with some, some crazy, crazy rules. So very, very good victory. Okay. Tim back to you, man. 

Tim Barton [00:17:27] Well guys, this one is dealing with something from the International Criminal Court. The ICC and the title of this headline or the headline of this article, rather the title of the article says, "Rubio Pledges to Dismantle International Criminal Court's Threats to US Sovereignty". Now this was a big deal. I think two weeks ago is when a lot of these news stories broke that the ICC was claiming to have jurisdiction over America. Of course, Trump, uh was like, that's ridiculous, no you don't. But the State Department. What this article is identifying, the State Department is launching a campaign to dismantle a threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. Sovereignty. Now, guys, as I hear some of this stuff, I kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, what's the big deal? What are they going to do? But what this article points out and what I logically probably should have thought about is we do have U.S. servicemen all over the world. And if for whatever reason something happens somewhere around the world these servicemen and women, these U.S. Officials, could be called before the ICC, and if you have a bunch of woke judges on there, and oftentimes when I'm saying this, I think often of the UN and their Human Rights Commission, and when you look at the members of the Human Rights commission on the UN, the United Nations, and you realize that virtually every member nation that's part of the Human Rights Commission are the worst offenders and violators of human rights? And you're like, well, this is just a sham. Right, this was a concern with the ICC is that this International Criminal Court was gonna be a sham, and so what the U.S. Government is doing from the State Department, the Trump Administration is considering revoking visas and imposing travel bans on International Criminal Courts personnel, imposing increased sanctions on the I.C.C and its affiliates. The article goes on highlighting other things. And also, I have not thought about the ICC enough to really know these details. So this was semi news to me. Do you guys know when the ICC was created? And not to put you on the spot, but I didn't really know this, Dad, you know this? 

David Barton [00:19:40] Is more like 30 years ago it was created as part of the UN. I don't think it was created that long ago 30-35 years something like that. 

Tim Barton [00:19:49] 2002, so not even that long ago, it was supposed to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. And so, of course, when you have some of these woke nations at the UN, that's going to say, you know the US has been one of the top worst offenders etc. Well, one of the things again, the, the Trump Administration and the State Department Rubio are pointing out the United States has never been a member of the ICC, but the court argues it as the power to prosecute people that are not part of the member states in this. And Rubio gave a great little speech where he essentially quoted the Declaration of Independence and he was like, guys, we, we threw off tyranny a long time ago. We're not about to let some unelected bureaucrats from some other nation tell us how we're going to govern and do our thing. Anyway, so the good news is we now have a administration and specifically a guy like Marco Rubio who is a major leader and this is not to get in this conversation but somebody who very well could be the next president of the United States. Obviously, a lot of people are going to JD Vance. But man, Marco Rubio is just super impressive and he has been an incredible leader on this and guys, if we didn't have leaders like Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in some of these situations, if we were back with Biden or Obama that would just acquiesce and give this power away to these unelected bureaucrats from other nations, it would be a travesty for America. The good news is we have President Trump and Marco Rubio that are leading the opposition, telling the ICC, yeah, you're not gonna do this. We're not going to let you have power and authority over Americans or service members, American personnel, et cetera, so. Overall, really good news. 

Rick Green [00:21:41] All right, David, that brings it back to you. 

David Barton [00:21:43] We've got a lot of Trump appointees that the Senate is not moving, and I say the Senate specifically, Democrats are not moving and they've been able to block a lot these. And some of them include federal prosecutors or US attorneys. And so, US attorneys are needed in areas where they kind of coordinate who goes to federal courts and what happens with the cases, et cetera. And so up in the Seattle area one of the appointees of Trump has not been confirmed. And so, he's the U S attorney that would be up there. Democrats don't want that. They apparently want somebody really woke and liberal out of Washington state, not somebody that the Trump chooses. And so that's that, that person has just been sitting in limbo. And so, what happened was the, the federal courts up there appointed a temporary U S Attorney. And so, they got that temporary U.S. Attorney appointed. Um, he was sworn in, he, was on his way to, to the courthouse area. And got word he had just been fired. This is the fourth time that Trump has fired a temporary attorney and good for him. The judges have no business choosing the members of the Executive Branch or who's there. This is such a constitutional violation, so basic, separation of powers. And I love the fact that, you know, Trump doesn't even care whether the guy's good or not. That's not the point. It's not that judges that appoint the prosecutors and that appoint US Attorneys, et cetera. That comes from the Executive Branch. And I love the fact that Trump is just doing this straight out. Any judge that thinks they have the right to appoint officials that the President's supposed to appoint, and they're appointing them because the Democrats in the Senate aren't moving them through, they don't have that right. I love that fact that the Trump did this and the guy had just walked in and was getting ready to meet the people around him when he got the word he'd been fired. Hour later. I mean, that quick. And I think that's great news. 

Rick Green [00:23:34] All right, Tim, final piece of good news today. Take us home. 

Tim Barton [00:23:39] Well, this is one from last week, President Trump was giving a speech and President Trump in his speech said they're gonna crack down on all of the illegal alien truck drivers and this is Trump's words who are" killing a lot of people shouldn't be driving we don't want them." And in the midst of the President saying they're going to crack down on illegal migrants, and by the way for people that are not familiar with this there are so many videos showing these drivers who also, again, so much new stories out there. If you have not seen this, go look for it. People that cannot read any English, can't read signs, can't speak English, they get pulled over and officers are talking to them and they can't answer questions. There's now evidence coming out that they had to have, for many of them, interpreters when they would go to get their driver's license or their CDL, et cetera. And then there are lots of videos of them going the wrong way down the highway. There's unfortunately horrific videos of them crashing and multiple people dying from some of these crashes. And so, President Trump has a lot of reason to say, this is awful. We have to stop it. But what's really great, his suggested solution, he said, we're gonna replace them with proud American veterans. We're gonna make them and teach them that, the veterans, we're gonna say any American who's driven a truck for military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver's license. And one of the many cool things that the Trump administration is doing, working with the military, working with veterans, trying to help make sure that as so many of these men and women have served the nation, that they're not forgotten about and left behind. And as President Trump pointed out, many of these people have already been trained. And they would be easy to come in and fill these gaps. And so, seeing President Trump's suggestion to have military veterans become truck drivers. So, for some of them that are wondering, man, what's my next step? What am I going to do? Apparently, there's going to be some opportunities for some truck drivers on the road. And I don't know if, if the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, Coast Guard, I don't know who has the best drivers, but apparently we will get to find out at some point in the future, as President Trump now was working to make a way for military veterans to become truck drivers, to replace all of these illegal migrants who, number one, shouldn't be here, and number two, certainly shouldn't have driver's licenses. 

Rick Green [00:26:15] All right, gentlemen, we'll thank you for the good news today. We'll have more next Friday. And then of course, some great programming for the week as well. So don't miss our programs next week. Be sure to share them with your friends and family. You can do that by going to wallbuilders.show and share from there, or all the different podcast apps out there available to you, uh, as well, we sure appreciate you in the audience listening. Be sure and go to wallbuilders.com today. Get some of those great resources, make a contribution, be a part of what we're doing, be, be of force multiplier and share some of these things with your friend and family. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.