The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is the Jeff and Nick Show. Welcome to the Jeff, Lori and Nick Show, and we're an informative talk show that is focused on finding solutions. Today is a great day, and it's a great day for all of us because we're alive and God has given us another day to make a difference in this world and to do better. Today, we're happy to have with us as our special guest today none other than Ruth Edmonds, and she is the Christian Engagement Ambassador from the Center for Christian Virtue. Good morning, Thank you for being on our show. Ruth. How are you today, Ruth Edmunds. I am well. Thank you, Reverend Jemison. It is so good to be with you and you're listening, audience. This is great and we thank you for being here today because we are in the midst of an upcoming an election on August the fourth, I'm sorry, August eighth, twenty twenty three. It is a special election on August eighth, and so many people are unaware of it, and I think it's so important. It's called Issue one. But let's just talk about it. I know that you're actually involved with it. But Ruth, before we get into the issue itself, look a little bit about your organization and maybe even a little bit of your background how you got involved. Great, well, thank you for that question. So I'm originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and I got to Ohio from I went to college here. I'm not a issue, So if it does, it's I guess. If it's not a issue, that doesn't really matter. But any grand a little small university east of Columbus and stayed here and I've been very engaged in the central Ohio community since then. And it's interesting because at some point in my life, God really married my marketplace assignment, which we all have a marketplace assignment what we do our vocation with my ministry calling, and he blended those two together and I found myself at Center for Christian Virtue. We are also we're known by our initials CCV. We're forty year old organization this year, forty years old, and we seek the good of our neighbors by advocating for public policy that reflects the truth of the Gospel. So what does that mean. It means that we are the churches lobby is at the State House that's the core of what we do. We lobby for issues that protect faith, family, and religious freedom, and it's an exciting organization to be a part of for such a time as this. We are the largest Christian statewide organization doing this work. We're nonprofit, we're nonpartisan, we are Biblical worldviews centered, and it's just again a delight to be a part of this organization. We communicate, we equip, we engage, we educate, and we activate the Body of Christ to be involved to influence culture. Somebody something is influencing culture, and it really should be the church. That is our assignment by God to occupy, take domini rule govern and unfortunately we really haven't been on the wall doing that as we should be with the love of Christ, and because we've kind of been asleep at the wheel a little bit. It um, we've kind of in our culture kind of gone off off mission. You've gone off those So our work today is to write ship to try to right ship that and shake up the dry bones and get us back on tracks so we can protect our children and our families and our freedoms. That's awesome, that's powerful, and faith, family and freedom and Christian values and is what it's all about. And every church, every Biblical Christian Church, Baptist, Methodist, whatever your denomination, is ought to be a part of this organization at least taking note of it or finding out more of what you do and how they can actually get engaged. Um do. What barriers do you find with what you're doing with your engagement. That's a really great question. The greatest barrier is that there is this misunderstanding by Christians and in the Church that there is a separation between you know, church and state. And you know the reality is that our constitution provides us with freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. And it the intent of President Thomas Jefferson when he was speaking to the dan Berry Baptist Association, his intent in answering their question of whether or not he was going to impose a state religion as the Delaware State has. Was he going to impose that now that he was the president? And he said absolutely not, I'm not going to impose a state a state church because there should absolutely be a wall of separation of church and state. And what he was meeting was that the you should be able to bring your faith values to whatever you do, whether it's government or it's the marketplace. But the government should never become a religion itself, and it should not be functioning as a religion imposing itself in your life. But we really should be influencing government, because again that's what God told us to do. Take a minion, occupy rule, govern the earth, which includes government. I think that's a very powerful statement that you made. I think, and I find throughout my walk within the Christian circle, UM that there are a lot of leaders that find themselves aligned with UM, a lot aligned with organizations and movements that really contradict what their faith is all about. So I think that if we somehow ruth, if we somehow engage the Center for Christian Virtues with some of the clergy and religious leaders who are in conflicting positions within their faith. For instance, UM, we know that, um, you know, God created men and women. They're not thirty some or twenty some different, uh I or agender is right? We know that, we know it. But we find ourselves a lot of religious leaders, even unfortunately, find themselves aligned with organizations and people who really uh take away their salt their season. And God said that we are supposed to be the church, the religious leaders, the salt of the earth, not allowing all of this to influence them and salt and sometimes um, they are even silenced or quiet because of fear, fear, and somehow can absolutely yeah, you know, yeah, you know I believe that, Um. You know that most pastors, the majority of pastors, really do want to um, to honor God, to honor his word, and to leave their sheep, um, you know, their congregants down the right path. I honestly believe that sometimes what happens, um is that we you know, they they kind of overdwe on the on the being kind and the being nice because you know, Jesus had you know, he has a you know, God is a shepherd. He has a staff, a rod and a staff, you know. And so you can't be more inclined to be a friend to man than you are a friend of God. And um, you know, sometimes it's like, well, God knows my heart. And we're supposed to love everybody, Yes we are. We're supposed to love them, but we're not supposed to love their sin. And if God says that there's only one man and one woman, we don't have the authority to be able to say well, you you know, you can have your beliefs, you know, but God loves you anyway. No, we can't do that. God told the woman who was caught in the act of adultery. Woman, actually it was Jesus. He's aid, woman, where are your accusers? And he said, well, I don't accuse you either. But the next thing he told her was but go and send no more so God, you know, so Jesus he died for all of our sins, but not so we could just keep living in that way. And we have to speak truth in love. And that's I think is the challenge for pastors. Sometimes they get caught up in the fact that, oh, I don't want to cheap the scatter, don't want to lose the church or you know, lose the offering. Look, Jesus, God is your daddy, Jehovah Gyra is your provider. And if a five one c three is all it takes to shut down your church, you don't have a church of Jesus Christ. You got a church of your own. Because God provides, He makes provision for his vision. And that's what we have to continue to encourage pastors to not be concerned about what the government does because God is government, and he said of his increase of his government and peace, there's not going to be an end. So it don't matter what man does to you. I'd rather be more concerned about what God is concerned about. And if God is for you, who can be against you? Speak the truth? Yes, thank you so much, Ruth. We're gonna get right into the Issue one. We know that you've taken a position to be supportive of Issue one, which is protecting Ohio's constitution because we know that our nation and our state has been built on biblical it was built with founded on biblical principles. Tell us about Issue one and protecting Ohio's Constitution. We're gonna take about five minutes and we're going to wrap this up absolutely. Issue one, the Ohio Constitution Protection Amendment, is only about protecting then the state Constitution from frivolous issues and policies. It is. It is to elevate the threshold of how many votes it takes to amend the state Constitution and to allow for every state in every county in the state to participate in signing the petition to get a state Constitution of aendment on the ballot only two things. Raise the threshold. Right now it's a simple majority fifty plus one. We need to raise that to sixty percent. Ohio is lagging behind other states that are protecting their constitutions. Only eighteen states allow their constitutions to be amended by initiative petition, and of those only nine require a simple majority. We've got to allow We've got to align our constitution more toward the Federal Constitution. Our US constitution it only has seven thousand words. Ours has sixty seven thousand words. We've got to stop circumventing the legislative process, raise the threshold, allow every citizen in the state of Ohio to know about a constitutional amendment, and require more Ohioans to have to participate in changing the constitution in the state of Ohio. That's it, that's all, yes, Ruth, Thank you for that concise description of interpretation of what this is all about. Issue one. Just imagine if your church, religious organization did not have a constitution or by laws, uh or something that would keep it distinguishable from other organizations and outside influences. So it's so important to protect Ohio's autonomy, it's character, what it stands for, and to raise the threshold only protects the constitution. Doesn't mean that laws can't be changed or introduced or anything like that. But your constitution uh keeps it together, your organization, your your state. UH. Just again, like I said, I've known churches that have been destroyed because their constitutions um were just changed by some majority run da or and and it's and that's so destructive. UM. So just to maintain the character of the state, UM, the structure of the state, the Ohio's constitution must um be maintained and subject to outside influences. Folks coming in with millions or billions from other states just to change Ohio's constitution that we can't allow that. We have to protect Ohio and lasting. I guess what we're saying unanimously is to vote yes, absolutely yes on Issue one August eight, Issue one, August eight. I really appreciate being on here today and speaking with your audience. Thank you so much. UM. Remember to vote August eight yes on issue one. Thank you to our audience, and thank you again. Ruth Edmonds, UH, Christian Engagement Ambassador for the Center for Christian Virtues, and to our audience again, thank you. And let's remember to keep fighting the good fight and we can all do better. Let's do our partner. Wow wow wow. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network where real talk lifts. Visit us online at FCB podcasts dot com
