Um, Thomas, what are your, what are your thoughts as, as someone who's, again, sort of lived both in the UK and in, um, a, a part of the US that, that has a different kind of flavor to, to my part up here in the, the wilds of the north, northeast?

Begin at the end and move back to the beginning perhaps.

It was interesting to me to look in, uh, on America, uh, as an American, uh, living in the UK, uh, between, uh, the years of, uh, 2019, uh, to 2023, and it was very interesting to read headlines and then meet a dad for a coffee and a walk, and to listen to how the headlines are read and interpreted.

And then you land, uh, back in America, um, 2023, really taking up ministry 2024, and you start to realize, um, you know, those guys that were-- [chuckles] those guys who were coming over the w- on the water, um, to establish a new land and a new place, um, they actually had a pretty strong template for a state church and a state religion, and if they wanted to see it through, I think they knew very well, uh, how to go about that.

It seems that they decided not to do that.

Just as an American from here, few years over there, and then you come back, and that just stands out in a way that I don't know if I could see it, um, without have left for a while, um, to return.

If, if they wanted a, a state institutional frame for all of this, had a, a pretty sturdy one that they could've just, uh, deployed the template and run it again, and it actually seems like they were trying to not accomplish that.

You've got kids closer to that [chuckles] age range than mine are now.

Thomas, how about you? Were you doubting Thomas at one point? I kind of want to believe that you were, just because it goes with the name.

No, I came to meet Jesus as a young boy at a church children's camp.

I heard the gospel explained many times growing up in the church pews.

But there was one time where I really heard it for the first time, where it went all the way in.

And just remember encountering this notion that, yes, there is a creator God.

And I, like everyone else, turn my back on this God.

I've broken his word.

Thomas, how did you find... narrating the story of the Scriptures in England to be different from narrating it in Nashville? I guess, you know, let's say London versus Nashville.

But for families who've maybe never used a catechism, like, how does it even look? What does it look like? Do you have a page that you could maybe read some questions or something for us?

Very happy to.

And Tricia, in our cultural moment today, I think we are reaping the fruit of what we've sown in the American church over the last 10, 20 years.

I think we've promoted a mode of Christianity that's simple, watered down, expect as little from you as possible.

And I think we're getting the fruit of that right now.

And people are waking up to it saying, surely following Jesus can't be just this, not just... 40 minutes on a Sunday and just a TED Talk in the middle of the week.

But no, people are longing for something that's well-formed, robust, and structured.

So why do you think that it's important to introduce these topics like suffering and death and other difficult things to children while they're young?

This leads to an attitude, as you suggest, of a Baskin Robbins of church, where people just kind of choose a comfortable place.

Church over saturation leads to kind of a market mentality of church.

I'll speak for Nashville, though I have the most fond memories of Wake Forest and Raleigh, North Carolina, where we were for 10 years before moving across.

You know, Nashville may be the most competitive religious market in America.

Church on every corner, everyone trying to improve its experience.

And, you know, the saturation or the market almost forms us before we ever ask what we're being sold.

It's like we're trained into this question of what can the place do for me, not what can I offer to the place.

What kind of strengthening do you think needs to happen?

Now let's turn to Tom West for Lecture 5 of Constitution 101 to secure these rights, property, morality, and religion.

In this lecture, I'm going to talk about the founders' understanding of economics, character and virtue, and religion.

The first time I spoke in this series, I talked about the basic purpose of government, according to the founders, being to secure these rights.

And what that practically means is protection.

Protection by means of armed forces against foreign threats and violence, and protection criminal law to protect against domestic threats and violence against fellow citizens.

And those are indeed the most urgent ways government has at its disposal to protect us, to secure our rights.

Today, I'm going to talk about important additional tasks that government at the time of the founding undertook.

To get your free lifetime subscription, go to hillsdale.edu slash lifetime right now.

We

do belong, we do deserve to be equal and free and equally free.

And from that then comes the idea of a natural right to liberty, from which in the founders' minds, all the other rights in one way or another can be derived.

If you have a right to be free, not to be ruled by another, that means the right not to be assaulted, not to be killed by another, thus the right to life.

If you have the right to be free to use your own mind and your own body to acquire property, that means you have a right to property.

If you have a right not to be dominated in the way you worship God, that's a religious freedom right.

The basic idea is all men are born free in the sense that everybody who is part of a government ought to have given that person his or her consent to be part of that government.

Access the free curriculum today at k12historyandcivics.hillsdale.edu. That's k12historyandcivics.hillsdale.edu.

We

do belong, we do deserve to be equal and free and equally free.

And from that then comes the idea of a natural right to liberty, from which in the founders' minds, all the other rights in one way or another can be derived.

If you have a right to be free, not to be ruled by another, that means the right not to be assaulted, not to be killed by another, thus the right to life.

If you have the right to be free to use your own mind and your own body to acquire property, that means you have a right to property.

If you have a right not to be dominated in the way you worship God, that's a religious freedom right.

The basic idea is all men are born free in the sense that everybody who is part of a government ought to have given that person his or her consent to be part of that government.

To get your free lifetime subscription, go to hillsdale.edu slash lifetime right now.

How would the founders interpret the idea of birthright citizenship in its current form in this country?

The founders, of course, uh, would have been happy with birthright citizenship for children of citizens, and, uh, of course that's primarily what- what birthright citizenship meant to them.

In today's world, uh, there's this new idea, especially being promoted on the left, that birthright ought to apply to children who are not children of citizens, and in fact who are citizens of other countries and even- e- even of course in the case of illegals, so all of that.

Uh, but from the point of view of the founders, citizenship was a very dis- had a very distinct meaning.

You had to be, uh, a member of the society to be a citizen and what did that- what that meant was you are one of the people who makes- who agrees to and abides by the social compact.

What is that? That is- the social compact is the agreement among a group of individuals who decide we're going to be fellow citizens together.

Once that compact is formed, it's an agreement, binding, on the existing citizens, to obey the law but at the same time to enjoy the privileges of the law.

What is your contention and what would you like to share with the audience?