Today's Conversation

How safe is religious freedom in the United States? Upcoming cases in the Supreme Court and lower courts could have a significant impact on our religious freedom. Today's Conversation with Leith Anderson and Thomas Berg gives an overview of religious freedom, including what is protected in U.S. law, and what is not.

Based out of the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Tom's work has been cited several times by the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals. In this podcast, you’ll hear from a leading legal scholar on:

The most concerning current religious freedom issues in the United States;

Whether sexual orientation should be considered the same as racial discrimination in civil rights legislation;

His take on the newest Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch; and

What average Americans can do to protect religious freedom in the United States.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: How do you define religious freedom?

Tom: I define religious freedom as the ability of people of all faiths to live consistently with their faith — their deepest beliefs — presumptively free from government penalty for doing so. Let me unpack that with three quick points.

First, religious freedom means the right not just to believe but to act according to one’s beliefs — not just in the church, not just in the house of worship, but in all aspects of life, in charitable work, in your daily life. So that’s first. Second, it has to be guaranteed for all faiths. If it’s guaranteed only for some, then it’s not really religious freedom, but rather it’s a sort of policy means of advancing those faiths as against others, which is a different thing from religious freedom. Finally third, religious freedom should be broad, but it’s not absolute. There are boundaries on it set by the necessities of society and the rights of others. So, that’s how I define it.

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Based out of the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Tom’s work has been cited several times by the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals. In this podcast, you’ll hear from a leading legal scholar on: The most concerning current religious freedom issues in the United States; Whether sexual orientation should be ...

What do Muslims really believe? How is the Islamic community organized? Does the Qu'ran call for religious extremism? Today's Conversation with Leith Anderson and Joseph Cumming covers these questions and more. 

In this podcast, you’ll hear from an evangelical scholar on Islam, who has spent years in relationships with Muslims both overseas and in the United States, on:

The main distinctives between historical, biblical Christianity and Islam;

How different segments of the Muslim community operate and interact with each other;

His own experiences with Islamic extremism; and

How Christians should relate to Muslims in this country.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: What should Christians — especially evangelicals Christians in America — what should we be doing in relating to Muslims? There’s a recent article in Christianity Today magazine that says that most evangelicals have never even personally met a Muslim. So, what should we do? What should our approach be? And, what’s your practical advice?

Joseph: Thank you, Leith. That’s probably the most important question you could have asked. And so, I’m kind of glad you’re coming to it as we near the end of this interview, because that’s really what I want us to leave people with. And that is, you can build friendships with Muslims. And just as many, if not most, evangelical Christians in this country have never personally met a Muslim, many, many Muslims in this country have never had an experience of a Christian reaching out to them as a friend, saying, “I just want to get to know you as a human being.”

The most important thing you can do is to develop friendships and to show hospitality. Although there’s not one Muslim culture in the world, virtually all Muslim majority cultures strongly emphasize hospitality as being extremely important. And well, hospitality is an important biblical value.

Invite someone over to your home. And by the way, when you invite them over, make sure to set food and drink in front of them — obviously not pork or alcohol, I think people understand that. You don’t have to be worried too much about getting it wrong. Just show love, and welcome them in your home and say, “I want to be a friend.”

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If you enjoyed the program, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That will help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.

Today's Conversation is brought to you by the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

 

In this podcast, you’ll hear from an evangelical scholar on Islam, who has spent years in relationships with Muslims both overseas and in the United States, on: The main distinctives between historical, biblical Christianity and Islam; How different segments of the Muslim community operate and interact with each other; His own experiences with Islamic extremism; ...

There are 46 million people in slavery around the world today. As Gary Haugen notes in Today's Conversation, that's more people in slavery today than at any other time in history. Still he's hopeful — and has strategies — to see an end to human trafficking and slavery.

In this podcast, NAE President Leith Anderson and Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, discuss what's going on with human trafficking today, as well as:

What led Gary to start a Christian ministry to restrain violence;

The relationship between proper law enforcement and poverty;

How local police and governments respond to IJM's ministry; and

What strategies actually make a dent in reducing slavery around the world.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Do you find cooperation with law enforcement, or are they resistant with what you’re trying to do?

Gary: Well it’s been a fascinating journey over these last two decades, because we’ve learned a number of things that yes, in every country that we work you can find very committed government officials who want to protect their common citizens from this kind of violence.

Part of what we do is find those champions within these developing world countries who are faithfully trying to do the right thing and to come alongside them with support and encouragement and capacity building, so that they can actually not only bring effective rescue to individual victims in their community but begin to transform the brokenness of their own criminal justice system.

Because I think it’s pretty clear now that when you go into the developing world, there are lots of systems that are broken. The education systems can be broken, the health system. But there is no more broken system in a developing world than the basic system of law enforcement.

One of the most hopeful things for us is to realize that every criminal justice system that we have in the world actually has had to go through a process of transformation. If you were to go back and look at the police and court systems in the United States or in France or in any of the advanced economies 150 years ago, you would find it enmired in a struggle against corruption and the brutal abuse of that police power by political factions — exactly the same circumstances that you find in the developing world.

So the developing world is going to have to go through this tremendous struggle to transform its justice system, so they actually serve the common person. And there’s an opportunity for the church to be part of that fight. Because in advanced economies, especially in the United States — there’s an amazing story when we had to go back 100-150 years ago when we had to build police forces and court systems that actually helped and served the common citizen. That was a struggle that the church was a leading voice in the past century, and it’s a role that the church can play now as the developing world goes through that same transformation.

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If you enjoyed the program, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That will help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.

In this podcast, NAE President Leith Anderson and Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, discuss what’s going on with human trafficking today, as well as: What led Gary to start a Christian ministry to restrain violence; The relationship between proper law enforcement and poverty; How local police and governments respond to IJM’s ...

In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson and Brad Hewitt talk about how to be a money-wise Christian. As the CEO of a major Christian financial services organization, Brad guides listeners through biblical principles and practical tips for making wise financial decisions.

In this podcast, Leith and Brad discuss:

How to think about money from a biblical perspective;

What to do when you feel financially stuck;

How the student loan crisis stifles callings; and

The differences between good and bad borrowing.

For more information about the NAE's initiative to provide solutions for pastors and churches, visit NAEfinancialhealth.org.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Related to the debt issue is how we all live in terms of the means that we have to live at a certain level of society. So, you’ve talked about living below your means. How do you do that? What does that actually look like?

Brad: … We did some research on this, and it’s really interesting. The people who are at that surplus mindset, every one of them — as we looked at people, and we just looked at those people specifically and started interviewing and talking to them — every one of them self-described themselves as being very counter-cultural and intentionally living well below their means. So, what they did — and again, this is at all income levels — whatever their means were, they would actually intentionally try to live below that. So making individual choices to say, “Well, I could afford this; I’m not going to do it.” And that’s what it means.

And that’s why it becomes harder when you start dropping below the median income, it becomes much more difficult to make those choices simply because housing is expensive, health care is expensive, all the things that are expensive. And so, practically speaking you get to a certain level, and it’s nearly impossible to do that. If you’re making $10,000 a year, it’s virtually impossible. But that intentionality mindset around “I’m going to intentionally live well below my means” does two things.

One is that it builds margin into the system, so that you don’t get set back because of emergencies or others. And frankly what it does — it’s really fascinating — it cultivates this mindset of abundance and generosity, which actually I think are the keys. And in fact, what we’ve been studying more and more is generosity, gratitude, what we call a group — having a social network that supports what you are trying to do — and grace. Those four G’s actually are some of the fundamentals to sustaining living well below your means. And, I think that’s part of the secret of being counter-cultural in living below your means.

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If you enjoyed the program, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That will help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.

In this podcast, Leith and Brad discuss: How to think about money from a biblical perspective; What to do when you feel financially stuck; How the student loan crisis stifles callings; and The differences between good and bad borrowing. For more information about the NAE’s initiative to provide solutions for pastors and churches, visit NAEfinancialhealth.org. Read ...

Poverty-focused international aid addresses a host of public health, disaster relief and food security issues, and promotes religious freedom and human rights. Though it is a very small portion of the U.S. budget, it is often on the chopping block.

In this podcast, you'll hear NAE President Leith Anderson and Rich Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., discuss:

What is included in foreign aid and how the U.S. program got started;

How foreign aid furthers the ministry of World Vision and other Christian organizations;

What roles the government and churches should play in helping the poor; and

How U.S. foreign aid compares to programs of other developed countries.

Rich also shares about his background in the corporate world — how it prepared him to lead World Vision U.S. — and his heart for mission.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: I’ve had people say to me, and I’m sure you’ve had people say to you: “Well the United States has a huge debt. And we have continuing deficits, and so the debt’s getting bigger. Wait until we pay off all of our debts first, and then we’ll help somebody else.” How do you respond to that?

Rich: First of all, I think as we’ve said already, foreign assistance is such a small part of our budget and really a very vital and necessary part of our budget. We are not going to get out of debt by cutting back on foreign assistance.

So, this would be like if you had a family budget crisis, and you said, “We’re living way above our income. How can we solve our family budget crisis?” And you said, “I know, we’ll cut out toothpaste. We won’t buy toothpaste anymore, and that’ll help solve the problem.” Well, it wouldn’t really help solve the problem. It’s too small and too insignificant to really make a difference. And you’d end up with higher dental bills, because you’d start to get cavities, and there would be unintended consequences.

And I think the same is true of foreign assistance. It’s a vital program. If we severely cut it back, it would lead to other consequences in the world that would have far more expensive solutions to them, namely involving our military.

And I don’t think it’s good policy to balance our budget on the backs of the poor. There’s other ways that we can cut back on our government spending that don’t literally take the lives of innocent people around the world who have been helped by our U.S. foreign assistance. So, I just think there’s a little bit of fool’s gold there thinking that we can balance our budget by dramatic cutbacks on foreign assistance.

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If you enjoyed the program, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review. That will help get the word out and raise the visibility of the show.

Today's Conversation is brought to you by Fuller Theological Seminary.

 

In this podcast, you’ll hear NAE President Leith Anderson and Rich Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., discuss: What is included in foreign aid and how the U.S. program got started; How foreign aid furthers the ministry of World Vision and other Christian organizations; What roles the government and churches should play in helping the poor; and ...