Bringing the Church Back to the Public Square

[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. Welcome. I'm Stuart Amadon. With me is David Reilly, and today we're hanging out with Larry Davis. What's up, Larry? [00:00:09] Speaker B: Having a good time? Good to be back, Stuart. [00:00:11] Speaker A: Yeah. In the studio, he's referencing this one time that he and I recorded a podcast whenever I was in Memphis with my family. But now we're doing it in the house. In the house. Larry, you're running for Congress. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:22] Speaker A: How's it going? What possessed you? [00:00:28] Speaker B: You're right about possessed, right, Stuart, we're having fun. We're having a blast. We get to meet with the people, the people that matter. That's what I continue to tell people. But the main reason that we're running is we continuously see that people who run for office, certain people may work on their campaigns, they may go out, and they may vote for them, and there is no actual, tangible, authentic change that comes. So the words that they say on the campaign trail are not the actions that are sent down to the actual voter. And so we just got tired of seeing that consistently happen to the voter. And so we said, you know, especially in Louisiana, especially here, it's. It's met with solutions, are met with excuses. And so we said, you know what? We can actually build effective change if you choose to elect someone who is serious about the business of the people. So we're having fun. [00:01:20] Speaker C: Awesome. [00:01:21] Speaker A: So then we're talking about running for a seat. This is not a lightweight run for you, and especially because you're running not just as a conservative, but you're running as a conservative Christian. So let's talk about that a little bit. What distinctives exist would you say, between you and the other folks that you're running the race with? [00:01:45] Speaker B: It would have to be authentic Christianity. I mean, we have to go there, because the main question that I tell voters when I'm out on the campaign trail is majority of the change that these individuals may say that they want to produce, they serve in the state legislature. And Stuart, as we talked before the show, you know that majority of the effective, tangible change that voters can see comes from the state level. So some of the issues that I want to champion nationally, like abolition of abortion, redefining marriage back to its original context, and stopping the scourge of transsexualism. That is, they can do all this at the state level. They can pass these laws, these laws can be copied at the national level. So you have to kind of question their seriousness when they're running on this conservative message when yet they haven't applied those same principles correct in the state legislature. So I say the difference is I'm actually serious about affecting those changes that they have ignored and have the power to do. [00:02:44] Speaker A: So let me ask you, you and I were also talking about localism before we started recording. Like, this is one of the things that I'm passionate about, deploying people to effectively engage on a local level. Talk to me about that a little bit. Like how if we were looking around inside of our city, inside of our church, and we were trying to deploy people to be effectively engaged in local politics, where would you say they should start? What's. What's step one for them? [00:03:07] Speaker B: You want to start at your parish councils and your, you know, police, juries, if you have them. But I want to go to the question that I get most often is, do I believe in term limits? Absolutely. I will vote on that. But I will tell you this. You have a natural term limit in the state. I mean, in the nation, it's called getting up to go vote. And we have to encourage people to take the power that they have in their hands and actually go vote. And if you go vote, we don't have to pass a term limit bill because you voted to get them out in one term. [00:03:38] Speaker C: Accountability. [00:03:39] Speaker B: It's accountability. But if we continue to give that power over to the government to just do what we need to do, then we become lazy. And so it's essential for the church to get out of the pews and to be actively involved in their local government. I heard someone say the other day, you know, I'm not. I don't get involved in politics, but I disagree with this happening. Well, you have to understand that politics in the church are not disassociated. It's in one. Everything that we do is political, from the cost of our groceries to the cost of gas to, you know, our children's education to what, you know, politics is. Is life. It's civil government. And so you have to, I think breaking that wall that hits people to where they think that it's two different things and that they're not involved in it is the key. Yeah, but it is important. [00:04:35] Speaker A: One of the ways that I try to frame it with people is you live in a. A republic, a democratic republic, which means that, in a sense, the government belongs to you. You choose your rulers, you have ownership in this. And anything that belongs to us. What does the Bible tell us to do with it? We're supposed to be good stewards of it. And if we're not being good stewards of this thing that we have called a vote, if we're not being good stewards of our government, you own your parish government. [00:05:05] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [00:05:05] Speaker A: Like, it belongs to you. Your city government, your state government, it belongs to you. We have got to develop a sk of stewarding it better than we have. [00:05:15] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:05:16] Speaker A: And there is this false separation. You're 100% right. Of this distinction between faith and politics. It permeates south Louisiana now. I think we're coming out of it, and it's like, I don't know, slowly, slowly we're pulling against the bull. We're trying to get it to go a different direction. I think it's happening just very, very slowly. But what would you say are some mechanisms, like you're in the Tren, this you're running for campaign right now. You probably are figuring out as you're doing this what levers to pull to be able to move things in a direction. How do we wake people up faster in the state of Louisiana to rejecting the idea of keeping politics air quotes here and faith separate and instead saying, no, we're going to say Jesus is lord over all, including political decisions, and we're going to deploy in that direction. How do we do that? How have you seen that? [00:06:14] Speaker B: Effectively, I think secularly you're seeing it with these metadata centers and ccs and all this other stuff. You're seeing people kind of get awakened to say, I don't want this in my community. And then spiritually, you're starting to see this spread of this transsexual ideology and homosexuality. In every movie that we watch now or day, they sneak it in. You're starting to see people realize that. But I don't think they've clued in that the reason that it is spreading is because no one's going against it. We've kind of siphoned it to. Or I should say the people producing and perpetrating these evils have siphoned it to nobody cares. And so we can do this. Nobody's going to vote us out. So we can do this. Nobody's going to. And so it really is not going to hit people in the majority until the metadata center is making their water black, or until their child comes home and says, mom, I think I'm trans because my teacher told me I'm trans today. And, you know, we want to be proactive, but I don't think it's going to really hit the majority like we want it to until they're forced into that. Look at the revolution, you know, it really didn't, they really didn't strive for independence until they looked at their tax bill, until they saw that they were actually being overarched and couldn't afford to live daily because they were being taxed to the point of no return. [00:07:37] Speaker A: That's a great point. [00:07:37] Speaker B: You know, and so what pushes people to revolution, I think, is when it hits everything that you, you're against and it's in your face and it's, you know, and I think we're on the verge of that. [00:07:47] Speaker C: Yeah, people are having to confront it, [00:07:50] Speaker A: you know, now it's, it's. Yeah, yeah, it's. [00:07:52] Speaker C: There one, one other thing I was mentioned, as you're talking about this separation or this perceived separation between faith and politics. Legislation is moral by nature, right? Any, any law that is passed has a moral, you know, assumption behind it. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:11] Speaker C: And people don't like to think about it that way or have maybe refused to think about it that way. [00:08:15] Speaker A: But that's, that's the truth, right? Yeah, yeah, there is, there is no neutral. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Right? [00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:21] Speaker C: Right. [00:08:21] Speaker A: We don't get to do that. I think that you're 100% spot on too, with the idea of when it hit, when it's in your face, when it affects you directly. Now suddenly you realize, oh, I have to do something about this. Because I think that's what we saw in Covid. All of a sudden, lockdowns happened, riots are happening in cities, it's in people's face every day. And I think that woke people up. They looked around, they said, wait a second, this can't hold on. We gotta figure something out here. Now I think we've lulled again. I think we've started to fall asleep again. People have gotten comfortable again. But I still hearken back to 2020 through probably 23 and remember what was going on then and say, no, no, no, we don't want to go back. We want to keep going forward. We want to keep making some good steps here. So I think that's very helpful. What would you say are some mechanisms that we could deploy to remind people of that? [00:09:18] Speaker B: That's a good question. I think videos work. I see with the live action group, the, the anti abortion group, that's national, they use videos and they actually show you what happens to the child during an abortion. And I think we're in a visual age and we have a lot of, a lot of young people and a lot of older adults or mid age adults who need to See, it needs to be tangible. It needs to be seen, heard, and felt. And I think if we take that message and show them this is happening, then they'll see. I'll give you an example. We served on the. I served on the library board, and still to this day, one of the things we tackled was child pornography in the children's section. [00:10:02] Speaker A: What? [00:10:03] Speaker B: And that's exactly what people say. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Hold on, roll this back. Roll back the tape. Say what? Child pornography in the children's section. [00:10:11] Speaker B: The children's section. Teaching young children like a kid's book. Teaching a child, a toddler, how to masturbate. These were the topics in these discussions in Louisiana. In Louisiana. That's exactly. This is exactly the type of response we get. Nobody knows. And to be quite frank, I didn't know until I was appointed on the library board. [00:10:32] Speaker A: Well, this is stuff that, like, you hear about and you say, yeah, like those libraries in San Francisco, you know, like those libraries in New York you're talking about here. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Yes. Livingston Parish, a red district, a conservative, you know, base. But I'll tell you this, when people start to see it, those were some of the most packed library board meetings that I ever attended. [00:10:54] Speaker A: Folks woke up. [00:10:55] Speaker B: Folks woke up. They spoke up. That was where I received majority of the success was it. It wasn't me going against it or going against the system. It was bringing in the locals, my neighbors, the pastors, even my pastor attends library board meetings, and he tests against that and read scripture in those meetings. That's how you move the needle. That's how you do it. So you have to be able to show people that this exists. Otherwise they don't believe it because, you know, they're sheltered. We are sheltered beings. Yeah. [00:11:23] Speaker A: Well, I think that your spot, like, media is huge right now. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Media is huge. [00:11:27] Speaker A: Being able to deploy video content effectively, podcast content effectively. That's why we're launching this whole platform. We're building this because there is no. I don't know why there's no conservative Christian media in south Louisiana. I don't know how this is happening. So we're going to make one. And we've seen the Lord bless. Like, there's been a tremendous amount of success in the, what, two months that we've been doing this so far? And so we're just going to keep grinding and hope that the Lord continues to grow this. Because we're trying to take over, teach people. Yes. And we're trying to build something that can galvanize people to move a direction together and say, hey, look, there's alternatives. Let's move this way together. So when you're going out so that you realize this stuff's going on. You're on the library board, you realize this stuff's going on in the library. How do you get people to show up at this meeting? What are you doing? [00:12:17] Speaker B: So the council. Just to give you the latter part of the story, the council removed me last January for 30. Because of 30 people. [00:12:25] Speaker A: You troublemaker. Yeah, get out of here. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Suppose the truth and then you get removed. But. And you know, most people don't go anymore. Why? Because you removed the conservative bastion. And so that was a failure. And a. [00:12:39] Speaker A: How did they get you off? [00:12:41] Speaker B: They had five votes. They have five votes. And they removed us for 30 people. 30 people. 30 angry people. Now, mind you have over 160,000 people in my home parish, Livingston. Okay, 30 people doesn't even drop a dime in representative government. Why am I. I'm not going to represent and make policy based on 30 people who are angry in a crowd. I mean, that would be absurd. But that's how our laws are written. Right now in the state legislature, you get 50 emails against the abolition of abortion and you only get 10 in support. What do you think the legislature is gonna do? [00:13:15] Speaker A: Really? [00:13:15] Speaker B: They're gonna side with the 50 votes? And that's exactly what that. That's their excuse. They will tell you, you gotta email us. Because all I've gotten, the only emails I've gotten is against us. We had a state representative. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Kelly, stop talking to me right now. So what you're saying is that the loudest people are the ones that get their way? [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yep. [00:13:34] Speaker A: Period. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Period. [00:13:36] Speaker A: You've got to be kidding me. So all we have to do is mobilize people to just say anything and we win. [00:13:41] Speaker B: And we win. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Let's go. That's. This is. I mean, come on, man. Come on. Okay, so you said 30 people. So 30 angry people come to these meetings, they fuss about you and then you're out of there. [00:13:56] Speaker B: Yep, it was me and four others and one was appointed back onto the board. Of course, in the minority. So nothing you got was no policy actually got passed. But in my time with the conservative majority, we reduced the budget five and a half million dollars to lower the impact on constituents, on taxpayers, and we removed sexually explicit books. Let me just tell you, that's a quasi form of government. And I was able to do it in one meeting because I met with my board, we had a private financial meeting with staff. We went through the budget line item by line item. Asked for justifications. The former director could not give justifications for where she wanted increases. So if you can't justify to me where you want increases, we're cutting it. You're going to keep what you have, we're going to reduce it. Because you're putting this burden on taxpayers. It's not your money. It is a, it is a, a gift by taxpayers to have a library. It is not a mandate. It is not an entitlement. We have said, we will give you a library. And there was mismanagement. And so once we took control, I was appointed chairman, we reduced the budget five and a half million dollars and removed sexually explicit books. Government can work the same way. It can work the same way. If people are serious when they go there, you will see effective policy actually trickle down to the people. [00:15:20] Speaker A: So here's a serious question for you. Where did you learn how to do that? Dead serious. So like everything that you just said to me, it sounds fascinating. [00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:29] Speaker A: And I'm like, But I don't know, like, where do you go to what book did read? Where did you learn how to figure out how to navigate this level of bureaucracy? Because I don't know that I have that skill set. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I could just tell you getting a point. It wasn't Larry. I mean, it was God sovereignty. We can talk about that too. But I mean, God opened the door. I got on there, went through what we had to go through. He removed people out of the way. I mean, we apply pressure because when I was first appointed, I was outnumbered, so it was me against everybody else. And then slowly we started to get a majority. And then By November of 2024, we had a majority because all the left wing people could not stand our resolve and our consistency. And so they left. And we had help from Citizens for New Louisiana, which is a, which is a great, a great. [00:16:22] Speaker A: Familiar with them. I can't remember his name though. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Michael Lunsford. [00:16:25] Speaker A: Michael Lunsford. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:26] Speaker A: We ran a story actually about Opelousis that he highlighted not too long ago. So that was an important thing for us. [00:16:31] Speaker B: I know, ma', am, he was on, he was that media partnership in the pressure and then the vote allowed us to, allowed us to get in there and win. So it really was God and just positioning. And once we got in there, man, we did what we needed to do in one meeting. And that made the bureaucracy upset. [00:16:50] Speaker A: So how did you. Is this just like you're kind of learning as you go? Essentially, you're kind of just like, okay, I'm here now Now I got to figure out how to get rid of this. [00:17:00] Speaker B: Here's really steward is to vote you. Just like you. You. You should go into office with conviction. So I went into that board having my core convictions on what I thought and knew needed to be changed. I just needed to have the votes to get it across the line. And so once we got the votes, we were able to reduce the budget because the five other individuals or foreign individuals that I served with, all women, trusted my leadership. That's another thing we talk about. We had relationships outside of the library board to where they trusted my leadership. They didn't agree with the reduction. I really wanted to reduce the library down to zero, and they had to. You know, I'm just being. I'm just being quite frank. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Amen. [00:17:42] Speaker B: But we met in the middle, and they said, larry, we got to get them something. And so they trusted my leadership. They trusted the plan that I presented before them, and everything that I proposed before my. My board members, they approved, and we were able to see effective change. But that's equally yoked leadership. That's equally yoked partnership. When you put people on boards and committees that are not equally yoked, you're going to get what you see in America today, I understand, in destruction. Yeah. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Okay, so how do you pull that off? [00:18:13] Speaker B: You got to run. And people get mad at me when I say that, but I tell everybody, everybody's got to run for office. You can run for office because in order for you to appoint equally yoked people, it's got to be pastors, it's got to be congregants or running for office. We have to have the courage to support them. We have to have the energy to support them. And we have to take dominion over the earth. It's a lot more of us than it is them because the Muslims are out birthing us. Let's go out winning. [00:18:40] Speaker A: Let's go. Let's go. [00:18:42] Speaker B: You know, let's be real. [00:18:43] Speaker A: They're mobile. They're out mobilizing us. Yeah, but, Larry, I'm scared. I don't want to do it. Goliath looks really big. I don't want to. I'm nervous. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Got it, Larry. [00:18:54] Speaker A: It seems like a lot of work. I'm trying to deal like, I'm trying to deal with the rebuttals that are coming through. I don't want. What about. What about this one? What about this one? I don't want to get involved in politics, Larry, because it's just so messy. [00:19:10] Speaker B: There are no cowards in heaven. Oh, There we go. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Let's go, baby. [00:19:17] Speaker B: Cowards in heaven, let's go. [00:19:19] Speaker A: Amen. You gotta fight. And that's something. Here's one of the things I've found, though. It's harder to do that for people on a local level because everybody knows you and they know your mama and they've been knowing you and your mama since you were seven or whatever. See, I'm not from here, so I don't really feel that right. But I have some people that I run with and they feel a certain social pressure that I don't necessarily feel. And it's harder for them. It's harder for them to say, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna do this, we're gonna make some noise over this because there's social fallout that happens. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Scripture kind of gives God to that. And pardon me, because I hadn't studied this scripture in a long time, but I'm pretty sure Jesus talked about him not being able to preach in the town he was from. Yeah, he had to leave his town because nobody would listen to him. He had to leave his town and go somewhere else. And so not saying that on a, you know, for me, I didn't grow up in Livingston Parish. I mean, I went to high school there and got my foundational principles there. But majority of my success has come from there. I grew up in Baton Rouge, but, you know, that's a 20 minute drive and I'm still able to affect that change. So they haven't known me for long, but they have the parts of me that they do know. They've seen the voters who I'm talking about have seen who I am in the consistency of my belief. And so if that is something, if you first, if you're a Christian going into politics, I think we need to judge that the same way that we judge and pick pastors. We're not asking for everybody to, to do it, but we're asking for those who are qualified, who are qualified, who are qualified leaders. You know, and my, me and my pastor, we studied that too. The Bible gives clear directions and Exodus on what qualifies a leader to be empowered does not take a bribe. That's the biggest one, you know, in a man, you know, but that's a different topic, you know, and so we. There are. The Bible gives us outlaying in everything that we need to do in our lives. And so I think the answers are there. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:24] Speaker B: And how to do government. [00:21:25] Speaker A: I think that you, I think you hit the nail on the head really well. Is that every Other group is deploying themselves politically. Except Christians. [00:21:36] Speaker B: Except Christians. [00:21:37] Speaker A: Christians won't do it, which is just this fascinating. And I think it's because of what you were talking about before. It's this false separation of faith and politics where people say that. They say, well, no, I don't let my faith mix with my politics. But everything is political. [00:21:54] Speaker B: Everything. Everything is political. But you also see, so there's a dichotomy here. Okay, there's what we discussed earlier and what you just repeated about this, this false reality, but there's also false leadership in the church. In fact, I was asked when we qualified in a press conference and I was just attacking the Muslim religion. And one of the liberal reporters from Massachusetts asked, and she had to dig deep for this. She said, well, what about the Salem witch trials? And if you see my face on the clip, I said, pardon me, the Salem witch trials? She said, yeah, Christians burn. I said, ma'. Am. I said, you dug deep for that analogy. I said, but every church or every being that calls himself a pastor, a church is not a church. The Bible tells you who's a pastor and the Bible tells you what is a church. And it's kind of why I supported that amendment last year that kind of dictated where the tax breaks are given because I think that would have helped more legitimate churches. And this goes into a wider, wider concept. There are so many motivational speakers that are using the influence of pastor and church today that they're leading loads of people to hell with false doctrine. [00:23:06] Speaker A: You're talking about false. Yeah, false prophets. [00:23:08] Speaker B: False prophets, you know, through and through. And so where do we, how do we invade into those spaces? Because for the Christian, it's not only are we combating that false reality, but we're also, you have Christians labeled Christians who don't believe in abortion, I mean, who believe in abortion. Right. Who believe in same sex marriage, who believe in all this. And so we have a huge, a huge fight on our hands because it's not just, you know, one focus, it's dual focused. And so we, we have got to start speaking up because like I tell people all the time, we don't get a pass in heaven for, you know, we're gonna, as Christians, we're judged for every life that doesn't come to know Jesus, that's not adopted into the family of God, we will be judged harsher than those who die unrepentant lives. And so we've got some work to do. We've got some work to do. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, I think I Mean, you're kind of getting me fired up right now, to be completely honest. I'm like, I'm getting excited. I haven't felt this excited in a little while. So I'm about to go find a lot of things to work on. But the thing that is true, I think, is that it is incredibly easy to engage. [00:24:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:23] Speaker A: And realistically, what are we talking about? How often does a city or parish [00:24:27] Speaker B: council meet twice a month? [00:24:29] Speaker A: Come on. In one evening. [00:24:31] Speaker B: In one evening. [00:24:32] Speaker A: Well, you can just show up. You can just show up, understand the things that are going on around you. You can even watch most of these things online now. Right? Like, you can literally just pull up the transcripts. You can. You can see what's going on. You can see what the things are that are voted on, and you can be relatively engaged on a local level pretty fast. [00:24:47] Speaker B: Pretty fast. [00:24:48] Speaker A: And I think what I find inspiring about you is it seems like a lot of learning as you go. Right. That's my personal favorite kind of learning. You know, [00:25:00] Speaker B: not all at once. [00:25:02] Speaker C: Well, it doesn't come along with all the bad habits and maybe the institutional baggage. That makes sense. [00:25:09] Speaker B: I was sheltered. My mom and dad sheltered me just enough to where I didn't get, you know, I'm still. I'm still sheltered because my response to some of this stuff that we're seeing is like, my God, how. How do you even end up with this warped, you know, worldview? [00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:29] Speaker B: And, you know, that's just where we are. But I'll tell you what thrusted me into politics is I remember the TV being on in 2008 when Obama, you know, won the presidency, and it felt like the whole nation was coalesced behind this individual because he was the first of something. I don't remember in our household talking about him being the first black whatever, but it was. It was that it was a shift. And so what Americans thought was going to happen in our nation. And I remember, I tell people all the time, Barack Obama had the greatest marketing media team. You go back and watch any of his ads in store, I'll show you one of my favorite ones before we leave. It's all a lie. But it is. It properly hits ethos, pathos, and logos to where it will make someone say, this guy is who I want to vote for. Wow. And his media team was phenomenal. It's the same thing with Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Goebbels. You know, they were able to convince a whole group of people to board trains because they thought they were going on a free Camping trip sponsored by the government, and they ended up at Oswich. And so you look at these conditions. But I can tell you when we watched. When I watched that happen and I watch him walk on that stage in Chicago winning the presidency and was watching cnn, used to watch cnn, Wolf Blitzer, I don't say I was a Democrat. I just said I was in. I wasn't old enough to vote yet. But watching Wolf Blitzer and watching CNN all that time, Anderson Cooper, before he used his professional job to come out of the closet, which I, as a kid, I was like, shouldn't you be fired for that? But anyway, the first interview I saw was Joe Biden got on the news and he was asked about gay marriage. And he said, of course, me and Barack Obama agree that gay marriage should be legalized. And I had to take a step back. And I said, this wasn't what I was raised to believe in. The 2012 election cycle was when I paid attention to the Republican side. And I watched as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, you had Newt Gingrich, but. But Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman were probably the most conservative, like me, like us on that ticket. They believed in conversion therapy. They believed in the abolition of abortion. They were socially conservative individuals. And I identified with them more than anybody else. And so that's kind of my trajectory into politics is knowing and learning that politics is advocacy for one's beliefs. [00:28:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:05] Speaker B: And ensuring that we remember our foundational values. [00:28:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:09] Speaker B: But that was the start was that election and that interview with Joe Biden when he sat on the news and said. Then I said, well, why are we supporting this man? And he doesn't represent our beliefs. [00:28:21] Speaker A: Well, I've found that that has been a turning point for a lot of specifically black men. I've heard that story over and over again. I think it's more black men who are. Who are more willing to make that jump. But I have continuously heard a tale of them saying, hey, this doesn't seem to be working out. Well, let's try something else. Let's move in a different direction. Take a pivot. So let's talk about this. We've got people who are itching to try and figure out what steps to take. It sounds like for you, it was just the next step. It was just, well, this is in front of me. Am I. Am I right in reading that? It's not like you just got out of bed one day and you said, you know what? I'm running for Congress. You know, like, how do you. What opportunity did you see in front of you first that you said, okay, I'm going to do that. Was it the library board? [00:29:15] Speaker B: Well, no. So my civic service probably started earlier than that. [00:29:20] Speaker A: Okay. [00:29:22] Speaker B: The main question, or the main answer to your question would be this. You know how most people say, let me pray about it? Typically, if it's something good that's presented to me where my voice can be heard, I'll say, I'll pray about it. But typically my answer is going to be yes, because the Lord's never steered me wrong in that pursuit. But I mean, I served in Kiwanis. I was serving in local organizations, ministry, mainly the church. I started the Young Republicans Club in Livingston Parish. I was the vice chairman of that founding member. And so it really was a coalition of opportunity that I said yes to. It was more or less people saying, I see something in you, and I think you would be best to serve in this position. It really was connection, growth and opportunity that allowed me to get out and serve. But the church, when the church is the main source of that opportunity and it's vetting the people within their church, then that those opportunities. So if the church is also doing Kiwanis Club member meetings, if the church is also doing Rotary, if the church is also doing the food bank, if the church went back to being the dominant force of community engagement, you will see that become natural. You will see your natural leaders throughout your church. You know, the body of. The body of Christ, we all are important members. The fingernail is just as important as the nose and as the eye. And so no matter what you are called to do within the body of Christ, it serves an essential function. But the church has to get back to being the dominant social engagement in our communities. And that, that starts with correct. Theology is where it starts, which is harder. It's harder to do that. But. [00:31:10] Speaker A: Well, it starts with, I would say, realizing that the church and the state are not actually separate. [00:31:17] Speaker B: Correct. [00:31:18] Speaker A: Okay. So we talk about sphere sovereignty a lot at our church. I'm sure you guys do, too. But it's the idea that there are distinct spheres, but the church has a lane. And it is to talk to all of them. It's to talk to the family, it's to talk to the state. It's to say, this is acceptable. This is not acceptable. The church has forgotten its prophetic ministry. Right. We've forgotten that it is actually our lane to say, this is what the Bible says, and you guys keep doing that or, stop it. Let's figure this thing out. So I think we're seeing that start to wake up a lot. But I think that what scares some people is overspending their social capital. Do you know what I mean? Whenever I say that? [00:32:02] Speaker B: Elaborate on that. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So the idea that they're coming to the table and they're like, you know what? We are going to start making noise politically. But they want to wait. They don't necessarily want to engage. They want to wait for maybe what the right moment would be. They don't want to necessarily speak into every single thing that happens. They don't want to engage on all issues. They want to wait so that they. When they speak, it really matters. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:29] Speaker A: So what would you say to something like that? I don't want to deploy on this. I don't want to engage just yet. I want to wait for something to really happen, and then I. Then I should move on it. My argument. Sorry, let me say this. And then you. Let's kick this around a little bit. My argument would be like, no, just engage on everything. Just get in there and normalize the church being engaged politically rather than waiting until things get really bad and then deciding to speak. What would you say? What would be your path? [00:32:56] Speaker B: Well, what scripture says. It's arrogant to say that you're going to be here tomorrow. We have no idea. We don't hold the keys to life and death in the power of our hands. [00:33:04] Speaker A: I like it. [00:33:05] Speaker B: But going back to the tangible part of what you're saying it is, by the time they feel that angst to get involved, it's already too late. I mean, the Supreme Court has already ruled that gay marriage is, Is. Is okay and gay adoption is okay. And so in order to overturn that, we now have to sue, get it back up to the Supreme Court and get them to overturn it. That is a high mark to meet. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:31] Speaker B: And so by the time we get engaged and start doing things, it's already. We've. We've allowed this time and this amount of work to lapse in between. And so I would just say, you know, get involved. When you, when you smell it, you respond. You don't wait till the fire engulfs your home. You want to start to put out that fire immediately. It's immediately when you hear the alarm going off the smoke detector or you see the. See or smell the fire. You want to go ahead and put it out. You don't want it to engulf half your house by the time you get involved. [00:34:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:00] Speaker B: Then it's no point. Yeah. You know, so Chris, there, Jesus, like, I Told you to tell my new students Jesus took naps, okay? He napped. He didn't sleep. He napped. That is how devoted he was. And he just had the luxury of knowing when the day was coming. You know, we need to be involved because we don't know when the day is coming. We need to do as much as we possibly can now to affect the change. Because guess what? Now you have transsexuals, which is a big issue. They are now in office writing your laws. They are now legitimate. We have them in the military. They just did this big story about transition. Women and men who are serving in our military and our tax dollars paid for it. That is a mental illness. Why are they in our. Why are they working for the Department of Defense? And so this infiltration is here. And I know in South Louisiana, we don't see it. I'm starting to see homosexuality more every time I go and eat. More than what I was as a kid. Now they're taking your order, they're handing you your food. And so that's now in my face. But the transsexual idea, I don't think people understand how rabid that is becoming and how disintegrating for society. In fact, I'll tell you how bad the sin is and how destructive homosexuality is. There it was just a CDC release of HIV AIDS in our nation. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Okay. [00:35:26] Speaker B: It is highest. I believe it was 49 or 43% of black men have HIV AIDS. [00:35:33] Speaker A: Really? [00:35:33] Speaker B: In South Louisiana. South. I don't want to say South America, but the southern part of America, they have the highest numbers. You're talking about married men who have HIV AIDS from encountering same sex sexual relations. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Bro, come on. [00:35:51] Speaker B: That is what's invading our culture right now. [00:35:54] Speaker A: Well, and in the South. South America. I almost said it again myself. In the southern part of the United States, like, that's where the majority of black people live. [00:36:01] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:36:03] Speaker A: This is a big deal. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Yes. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Holy smokes. [00:36:05] Speaker B: And it's spreading like wildfire. And that was a CDC report, you know, that was just released. And so how do we respond to that? So there's obviously a part of it, a part of that discipleship that we're missing. The church needs to pay attention to where. And speak publicly and speak publicly out against. Because that's a whole 43%. That's a lot of men. [00:36:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about this. There are a lot of churches who operate with the mindset of, no, the commands of God are only for the church. They're not for the people around us. What would you say to that? [00:36:39] Speaker B: That's false. [00:36:42] Speaker A: If. [00:36:42] Speaker B: If that was the case, you wouldn't have America, Stuart. You would. You would have America. You wouldn't even have Great Britain. I mean, nobody. Nobody in the course of our history ever believed that. No functioning nation ever function under that. You know, you look at some of the civilized countries that have lasted generations and years. Europe, the us, Spain. It's because they had those deep Christian foundations. When you look at what they were founded by, you know, it wasn't until the Enlightenment period, but even during Enlightenment, the Church reformed itself, which birthed us, but it also rebirthed thought. That was happening during that time, but it was nothing new. The church was still a consequential part of society. The main reason behind the revolution was to have that freedom of thought. Everybody didn't want to be forced to be a Catholic. You know, they wanted to have that freedom to seek after Jesus. Okay, seek after Jesus. But they wanted to have their own ecclesiastical way to do that. And we can debate that through doctrine. And I would love to live in a society that debates doctrine and not the murder of babies or not the murder of babies. [00:37:49] Speaker A: What a great problem to have. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Let's talk about Jesus. [00:37:53] Speaker C: We had an episode recently about the wnba, but has to have committees to figure out what a woman is or things like that. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Well, and it's happening in Louisiana, too. So Daughters of the American Revolution. I don't know if you're familiar with that organization. They just passed a national thing where now the daughters can be men. They're allowing transsexual men to come in and join their ranks, which is interesting. The way that we frame the argument is. Okay, listen. You have two objective qualifications. One is that you trace your genealogy back to somebody who fought in the American Revolution. The other is that you're a woman. We just eliminated one of the objective requirements. Why not both? If this can objectively be different, if this can now become subjective, why can't this other requirement become subjective as well? Now, anybody. You see what I'm saying now? Anybody can do this. It's an interesting place that we're lending in. And there are chapters of this organization [00:38:47] Speaker B: all over Louisiana, and it's an exclusive club. Like, you have to prove your lineage before you get accepted into that organization. [00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah, not for long. [00:38:56] Speaker B: Not for long. It doesn't matter. But let's talk about that, too. Because, Stuart, I'll be honest with you. It's making national headlines. But I guarantee you, it's probably one board member who caused this issue. And when you look at Supreme Court president, you'll always find that when situations get overturned, it's one person. It was one lady who took prayer out of school. She was recently divorced. She went to the spring, she went in to drop her kids off for late for school and heard the school prayer. Netflix did a series or a documentary on her and heard the school during prayer. And she was, of course, married because her husband left her and she took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And prayer was taken out of schools. It was ruled unconstitutional because one woman, Roe v. Wade, one woman, Brown v. Board, one man. You know, you start looking at some of these cases and you start to see it's not as popular as people May. It wasn't 100,000 people demanding justice. It was typically one person that caused a riffle, and nobody had the courage to stand against him, and so they all bow down to him. But to speak about that lady with the prayer, you know, she was murdered by one of her sons. She had two sons. Her other son, who's living, has spent his life trying to get prayer back into schools. Wow. You talk about adoption into the family of God. And so one killed her, Cain and Abel. One killed her. And then you have one spending his life trying to revert everything she did. Even Roe v. Wade. You hear stories about this woman did not want the legalization of abortion and [00:40:38] Speaker A: has spent her life after the fact to try and undo. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that that's an important thing to draw back to the beginning of our conversation as well. So the idea that it takes so many people and so much volume to be able to accomplish something, and literally, it could be sending an. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Sending an email. [00:40:55] Speaker A: It could be a person sending an email to our state representative or whomever it is to say something. I mean, I've had conversations like that where I know. So our state rep, his name is Dustin Miller. There was some transgender things that came up on the docket not too long ago, and he elected to not vote on it. And so I made a tiny bit of noise through one Facebook post on the Internet. Next thing I know, he's texting me, and he's like, hey, we're going back and forth about this thing that he brought up, and I'm not that important on the Internet. You know, just like, full disclosure, like, I don't have a big following. I'm not trying to do any of that. So. But we're. I'm just saying something on the interwebs. It made something Happen. And then from that point forward, I checked his voting records. He has not voted or. Sorry. He has changed his positioning in every transgender vote that's happened in the state of Louisiana since that point. Since that one. [00:41:50] Speaker B: You live. [00:41:51] Speaker A: And I'm like, you live in a [00:41:53] Speaker B: great area because the. The politic here is about 49, 50. Yeah. Dustin Miller is on. Is on a. On the precipice. So he pays attention to that 49%. [00:42:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:06] Speaker B: Just as well as he does to 50. Yeah. But most Democrats in Louisiana who are not from New Orleans are socially conservative. That doesn't mean go out and vote for them. I'm just. Because they don't have the courage to change their party, but just to give them an acknowledgement they will like. They voted for the castration. That was a bill, I believe, by Regina Bearer, I believe, who proposed that bill for castration after rape. And so when it comes to criminal justice and social issues, they typically do the right thing. Typically. [00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we found the same thing in this area. In fact, we did an episode on this relatively recently about how the majority of Louisiana, especially St. Andrew Parish, Acadiana Democrats, are socially conservative. [00:42:51] Speaker B: Now. [00:42:51] Speaker A: We brought up. Brought to the attention guys like Jamie Davis, who's running for senator now, and he's running on very much a socialist ticket now. He's running with a good old boy handshake. [00:43:00] Speaker B: Yes, sir. [00:43:00] Speaker A: But he's running on a socialist ticket. So there does seem to be a drift. You know, the parties are shifting a little bit more in that direction. At least the Democrat Party is. And so we want to say, hey, we've enjoyed this for a little while, but it looks like things might be changing. [00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. Because he said that. He said to go far left with this. I mean, you even. He's. They're calling him the farmer from Tinsaw, but you saw him. He's wearing an LGBT pin. He's out at. [00:43:27] Speaker A: I did not see that. [00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah, he. If you even did the month. He even celebrated the month, but he's going out. Wow. You know, Helena Marino, if I was in his position, I would be set apart in everything that I do. I would not. But he has to get money. I mean, you talk about. This man is neck and neck with money, with Julia Letlow. You look at our campaign finance. Our last report was 20,000. Nobody's. Nobody's knocking down their door to get this man. They don't want me in there. They do not want to give me money to go there and change. But Jamie Davis is easy. Jamie Davis is, I watch his interviews and first off, you can ask him is it if it's raining or sunshine outside. He's always, let me tell you, let me do. You know, he's just abrasive and you can just see he's a compromised individual. And I hope that voters see past that and see past their anger and frustration at the Republican Party and they just, they do what they need to do. But my, what I challenge people with that is if you were so upset with what you had. Because let me tell you, we filed paperwork last December to run against, you know, the congresswoman. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Because we saw a record, you know, nobody was behind us. No, because nobody, nobody had the courage to take that fight. But you were forced to deal with that. And now she is our senator. I'm going to support our senator because on the social issues, the moral issues, which matter over anything else. [00:44:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:58] Speaker B: She's aligned with majority of them. We just have to hold our feet to the fire to make sure she executes. But we cannot complain in the choices that we give when we don't have the courage to take on the system because we don't have faith the size of the mustard seed. I can tell you my campaign, you can talk to my team. Every day is about faith. I tell my team, it doesn't matter if we go to this meet and greet and there's one person we're being obedient to the process. We're being obedient to say, God, it doesn't matter if it's 0, if it's 100. We trust in your sovereign will to let the outcome be yours. And when people allow God to steer the ship and they be obedient to what he's called them to do, you will see mountains be moved, I guarantee you. Someone asked me, they said, larry, how do you Moon Griffon? He said, how do you see this race? You think it's going to be the same? I said, stuart, I wouldn't be in this race if I thought that God was going to allow the same things to happen as he has before. And he's shown me time and time again we're not going to allow that. [00:45:56] Speaker C: I mean. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, well, if I could just so let's all be 100% honest here. Jamie Davis is not going to win that race. Okay? It's not going to happen. But he, I guarantee you money knows that he's not there to win the race. He's there to move the policy. [00:46:15] Speaker B: Yes, sir. [00:46:15] Speaker A: He's there to shift it. And this is Part of Louisiana. If I understand correctly, in the old primary system, it would have been a jungle primary. Right. Everybody votes. Now we've shifted it to where now we just have two candidates running at the same time. We didn't. In other words, we're not gonna have two Republicans run at the same time. One Republican, one Democrat. Am I understanding this correctly with your primary system? Yeah. The way we've got it now. [00:46:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:46:39] Speaker A: Okay. Head to head. So now what's happened is the Democrat has way more opportunity on the ticket than they used to have. Right. He's got a big stage now. He gets to swing considerably harder to move party policy. And this is not a move just for the Senate seat. This is a move for the state of Louisiana. [00:47:00] Speaker B: Yes. And if you notice and if we [00:47:02] Speaker A: could adopt those tactics, we could do this. [00:47:05] Speaker B: But we don't. We're not serious. We have all the power. We have the governor, we have the House and the Senate. We're not using our power effectively. And I did a Facebook post and said, you know, when we elect Democrats, you get Obamacare. When you elect Republicans, we can't even secure our election. [00:47:22] Speaker A: I saw that post. [00:47:23] Speaker B: You know, we can't even vote to secure our election. So one side is more devoted to their policy than ours. You're absolutely right about Jamie Davis. Because the, the strategy of the Louisiana Democrat Party, which is phenomenal, is their patient. [00:47:38] Speaker A: Yep. [00:47:39] Speaker B: They know they're not going to win every election, but every election they get closer and closer. [00:47:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:44] Speaker B: And closer. You know, you saw they were able to bring back their most recent vice presidential vice president. Not candidate because she was the vice president, Kamala Harris to New Orleans. Everybody was allowed to go to that convention. Everybody. You could be a homeless man off the street. As long as you were a Democrat, you were a part of that. The Republican Party doesn't do that. We can get J.D. vance in there. We're charging people $15,000 to see the vice President. You know, and so we are not being good stewards of the power that we're being, that we're being given. It's political games. Democrats don't do it. You know how many well established Democrats in the state legislature who have more experience than Jamie Davis, but they are respecting him and giving him the opportunity to run for Senate. They're not raising their hands. I've been in the legislator 45 years. That should be my seat. They're giving a local man an opportunity to run for the Senate and it could be because they think he's going to lose. But he is still establishing his name statewide, nationwide. He is getting all of the tools necessary to possibly win or to possibly run for something bigger. And nobody's challenging him from the Democratic side. They all fall in line. But you come to the Republican side and what do you see? Corruptness after corruptness. We are stealing signatures. We're swaying votes. We're not doing what's best for the people. We're doing what's best for the individual person. [00:49:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So I. All right, we're running out of time, so we have to wrap this up. This has been a ton of fun. I would advocate. I've been saying this for a little while. I would advocate that it's a mentality issue that we carry. Okay, so the Democrats, what do they call themselves? They call themselves the progressives. They're going to. They're going to progress. They're going to move in a particular direction. What do Republicans call themselves? The conservatives. Which means what? [00:49:42] Speaker B: Conserve. [00:49:42] Speaker A: We don't do anything. We sit. We sit on our butts. Okay, so I'm kind of like moving in a direction where I'm like. I don't call myself a conservative anymore. I call myself a reformer. Ooh. I'm moving in a direction. Do you get what I'm saying? [00:49:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:57] Speaker A: Like, Teddy Roosevelt was a reformer. Now, not everybody believes in all the decisions that he made while ever he was in office. Okay, that's fine. But he was moving. And I would argue that, I agree with him a lot of those policy decisions that he was moving in. Not all of them, but a lot. [00:50:12] Speaker C: But a lot. [00:50:12] Speaker A: And because of that, he was able to step out of the party that he was a part of for so long and start the bull moose and nearly win the stinking election with a bullet hole in his chest. [00:50:26] Speaker C: Okay. [00:50:27] Speaker A: Like, that dude's a man. And I think if you go back and you read and you study his life, it's because he was moving in direction the whole time. He was not sitting still. He was moving. [00:50:37] Speaker B: Reformer. [00:50:38] Speaker A: Reformer. Yeah. So in other words, conservatives have had bred into our DNA for however long that we're just trying to hold off the bad guys, just hold. Hold the walls a little longer. The progressives progress and they move, they continue to advance. I'm done with that game. I'm moving. If we're going to actually swing the battering ram against the gates of hell, which is what the role of the church is, we advance, we take the gates of hell. Amen. Then that means we move. We advance. We swing, we attack. We have to be able to change our mindsets here. We're not just going to sit here and not do. We're going to move forward. And I think reformer. I don't know. [00:51:22] Speaker C: I just want to. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Well, you got me thinking of how to change my whole campaign. I mean, I'm serious. Like, how can we. Where can we put that in there? [00:51:31] Speaker A: Reform, Louisiana. So actually, just to be straight with you, this is a party in England. I'm sure you've heard about it, the Reform Britain. [00:51:39] Speaker B: Nigel Farage. [00:51:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So then they gained a tremendous amount of. There was the Restore Britain and then there was the Reform Britain, and everybody started paying a lot more attention then. I think words matter, and I think that this is something that we need to be thinking about actively as Christians. All right, so we got to wrap this up. I'm convinced. Larry, let me speak on behalf of my listeners, our vast army of listeners. It's not that vast, but if our listeners are here right now and they're saying, all right, I'm convinced, I'm going to engage. What would be step 1A for these people to engage with politics on a local and a state level, Attend the meeting. [00:52:23] Speaker B: Just show up, show up. [00:52:24] Speaker A: Boom. So if you haven't done that yet, awesome. We can help you out. [00:52:31] Speaker C: Just as a. One of the biggest points from this conversation that's that stood out to me is like, let's get loud. Doesn't take. It doesn't necessarily take many people. [00:52:39] Speaker A: No, it takes. [00:52:40] Speaker C: Do something. [00:52:40] Speaker A: It takes one. One. You can just say it and things happen. Needles move, and we can do this. Amen. Larry, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, guys, thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. You go to the parish circuit.com to find other articles, blogs, podcasts, all the things. We appreciate you listening and we hope that you'll join us next time.