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The WallBuilders Show

From Pulpit To Policy: How Biblical Teaching Shaped American Law

The WallBuilders Show

Tim Barton, David Barton & Rick Green

Wallbuilders Show, Education, Constitutional, Church, Christianity, History, Conservative, America, Family, Christian, Biblical, Religion & Spirituality, Wallbuilders.show, Government, News, Politics

4.82.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Forty million people live in slavery today, yet many pulpits are quiet where they were once loudest. We revisit a forgotten tradition of courageous preaching that confronted unjust laws, trained citizens to think biblically about public life, and helped turn spiritual conviction into cultural reform. From biblical prohibitions against “man stealing” to the explosive pushback against the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, we explore why past pastors urged civil disobedience when policy defied conscience...

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Wall Builder Show, short on time, so we're going to jump right in.

0:10.7

We're picking up where we left off yesterday with David Barton at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference.

0:16.1

Pilgrims, when they did their code of 1650, they quoted specifically from Exodus 15, where man stealing was a criminal offense.

0:25.3

It was a capital offense in the Bible in Exodus, part of the code that Moses had.

0:30.4

So man stealing was out, and they talk about that, what this means.

0:34.3

And today, that would be human trafficking.

0:36.3

Now, back in the slave trade back then,

0:39.3

between 1501 and 1876, 375 years, is 12.7 million slaves and voluntarily taken out of

0:46.2

Africa and moved elsewhere in the world. 12.7 million. Today, with 198 nations or 193 nations at the

0:53.9

U.N., there are 94 nations today that still have not criminalized slavery.

0:58.7

Slavery is still legal in 94 nations.

1:01.0

There are currently 40 million slaves in the world right now.

1:05.4

So we have three times more slaves this year than in 375 years of the African slave trade. Where's the noise about that?

1:13.9

Who's talking about slavery now in the world? So we had sermons on slavery back then. This is marriage

1:21.1

scripts like considered a sermon. This is 1837. The New Hampshire legislature passed a law

1:25.6

on marriage, looked at it, said, okay, this is a good law.

1:30.1

It lines up for what the Bible says on marriage. Here's called the higher law, the fugitive slave

1:35.4

bill, a sermon, duties owed God and the governments. You know, the scriptures talk about a fugitive

1:41.1

slave. What happens if a slave escapes that you don't go bring it back to

1:45.5

bondage? And so it's interesting that when the future of slave law was passed in 1850, and in my

1:51.6

opinion, that it's the most wicked federal law that's ever been passed in the history of the United

1:55.9

States. People say, oh, no, no, no, it wasn't a federal law. That was a court decision. As far as federal laws go, I think that's the worst federal law ever been passed with the future of slave law, said if you escape into freedom, we're going to chase you down anywhere you go and drag you back in slave. If you make a free state like Massachusetts, we're going to drag you right back into Alabama or wherever it was. And so that violates all the stuff on the scriptures, but that was the law.

...

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