Andrew Linn on Liberty, Responsibility & the Future of the Second Amendment

Content type: Interview with filmmaker Andrew Lin

• Primary goal: Educate about the historical and constitutional principles of religious liberty and the separation of church and state
• Length: Approx. 45 minutes

Title: The Founding of Religious Liberty and Its Modern Significance Discover the fascinating history behind religious liberty in America through the insights of filmmaker Andrew Lin, as he discusses Roger Williams' pivotal role and the true meaning of the separation of church and state. This episode emphasizes why these principles are crucial today and how they safeguard individual freedoms. In this episode:

 Andrew Lin shares what inspired his documentary, "Church and State," focusing on Roger Williams' contributions

The historical context of religious freedom in early American colonies and Williams' influence

Clarification on what the separation of church and state truly means, contrasting modern misconceptions

• How Roger Williams' ideas have shaped interpretations of the First Amendment

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to the importance of religious liberty and the podcast's focus
01:14 - Who is Andrew Lin and his motivation for "Church and State"
02:50 - The influence of Roger Williams and the origins of separation of church and state
04:39 - Historical roots of religious freedom in colonies like Rhode Island
07:25 - Misconceptions: What does separation of church and state truly mean?
08:48 - The importance of protecting individual rights and religious expression
10:46 - Roger Williams' view on the Bible's influence on religious liberty
12:24 - How Williams' ideas influence modern interpretations of the First Amendment
14:16 - Quotes from Roger Williams on enforced worship and religious freedom
15:28 - The significance of Williams' theological writings
17:04 - The impact of religious belief on American founding principles
18:17 - Clarifying if the U.S. is a Christian nation, according to Williams' and historical perspectives
20:54 - Challenges faced in researching and creating the documentary
27:25 - The connection between religious liberty and the Second Amendment
31:23 - Opportunities for distribution and viewing of the documentaries
40:36 - The relevance of religious liberty and constitutional freedoms today
44:16 - Closing remarks and appreciation for Andrew Lin’s work Resources & Links:

• Fearless Freddy on Amazon Prime

• Church and State Documentary

• Roger Williams and the Founding of Religious Freedom

• Vision Video Distributor

• Newsmax Plus

• Amazon Prime Video

Connect with Andrew Lin:

• Website

• Twitter

• Facebook

Call to Action for episodes 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Hello, and welcome to the Liberty and Gun Rights Podcast, where we defend freedom, explore constitutional principles, and discuss the issues that matter most to Americans who value their rights. Today we're joined by filmmaker Andrew Lynn, director of the documentary Church and State, Roger Williams, and the founding of freedom of religion. In this episode, we'll explore the historical foundations of religious liberty, the true meaning of the separation of church and state, and how these principles continue to shape the fight for freedom today. Andrew, how are you today? I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with us on Liberty and Gun Rights podcast. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah. Do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Hi, yes. So my name is Andrew Lynn. I'm a documentary filmmaker. This is my second full feature film that I've created or documentary that I've made. My first film was called Fearless Freddy about a World War II submariner. This film, of course, is about the separation of church and state and its founder, Roger Williams. Awesome. So I'm based in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Oh, okay. All right. I'm in Charleston, the Charleston area.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Right. So we've got wonderful weather on in our part of the world, right? Yeah. Yeah. Things are pretty nice out right now. Not too hot, nice and breezy. Very nice. Good spring weather. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

So, Andrew, what inspired you to create the documentary Church and State, Roger Williams, and the founding of Freedom of Religion?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Um, a couple things. So I've I've heard about Roger Williams before. I go to a Baptist church. I'm a Christian. I'd always heard he was a great Baptist. Upon further research, you know, I found out that he was only Baptist temporarily in his life. Uh he did find the first, co-found the first Baptist church in America. But anyway, he moved on in life and left that denomination. But so there was that. I I was very intrigued by him. I feel he's an unsung hero. And then also in the day and age we're living in, I feel like church and state is a confused topic that people don't really understand. And I wanted to kind of educate people on the actual meaning of the separation in church and state and address the roots of it, the history of it, and how Roger came to these ideas. Funny enough, the way he came to these ideas was through largely through the Bible, through scripture. So, yeah, I mean, he he's basically where it all started. He uh he was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a Puritan, just like the rest of them, but he believed in freedom of conscience. Uh the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the authorities there did not agree with freedom of conscience. It was basically a religious state. Uh they would uh you know control every aspect of your life, more or less. Uh the length of your hair couldn't be past a certain length. Um you had to go to church on Sunday, so it was, you know, a religious state more or less. And he believed you can't force people to be Christian. You know, that's he believed that's uh the rape of the soul. He believed in soul liberty. So he was banished for that, among other reasons, out of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and he went and founded Rhode Island. Rhode Island, when he got the charter for Rhode Island, basically the state or colony constitution, he went to England to get the charter from the king. And it was the first, as far as we know, in world history to have the separation of church and state in its charter. Not with those explicit words, but basically it said that the colony of Rhode Island would not establish a religion to rule over the colony. So whereas all the other colonies had a denomination embedded in their government. So for instance, Virginian was an Anglican uh colony. When you paid taxes, your a portion of your taxes went to the Anglican church. So this was the first this was the first colony to uh not have that, to basically so this is the seed that would grow into the American ethos, into what would become a part of our identity, one of the most important parts of our identity as a country.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Now I I have to I have to uh claim ignorance. I'm not I'm not a historical buff and uh but I I want to say that didn't we separate from England and fight the war that we fought to kick them back over into England because one of the things that they didn't one of the things that they enforce was Catholicism or their brand of religion or not?

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Yes and no. I mean their main concern England was taxes and power to control the colonies. The colonies each like I said, they each had their own denomination. So Maryland was Catholic, Rhode Island was without a denomination, but largely Baptist settled in Rhode Island. I believe Connecticut was Puritan as well as Massachusetts. So each place, they were either Anglican, Puritan, Dutch Reformed, you know, different states had different denominations, and they would go back to England and get charters from the king, whoever the king was at the time, to establish each colony's basic constitution and layout for their state. And by and large, at that time, even past the revolution, if you wanted to serve in public public office in the United States in the United States and before, you had to have a profession of faith, of Christian faith. And it kind of got whittled down over years to the point where uh it went to, do you believe in God? Simply, not you know, Jesus Christ. And then you could. But um, so no, there there were different denominations in the colonies. It wasn't just all Anglican, although the southern states were largely Anglican. And the reason the people came here, they were fleeing religious persecution, they were largely Puritan, you know, initially in Plymouth and in Massachusetts, those the the pilgrims we think of, they were Puritans leaving the Anglican church because they were they thought it was too Catholic and they wanted it to be more, you know, Calvinist or Reformed.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Right. Well, I got you. Okay. That's interesting. What does the phrase separation of church and state truly mean in its historical context?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

So the separation of church and state, as I mentioned earlier, is it's not what people think. In this day and age, people think the separation of church and state means that religion has no place in politics or in public affairs. That is not what the founders intended, by and large. There may have been a minority who thought that way, but largely what it means is also, as I mentioned earlier, when you paid taxes, each colony had their different denomination. And let's say you were a Baptist living in an Anglican Virginia and you're paying taxes, and a portion of that is going to the Anglican church, that's going to disturb you or bother you because that's not your denomination. So the separation of church and state is a few different things. It means that they basically didn't want one denomination ruling over the country, as was the case in most of Europe and in the colonies. They didn't want that. They didn't want their taxes going to churches they didn't affiliate with. And so that's what it meant. And if you look at the history of the ratification of the First Amendment, what did they do immediately following the ratification of the First Amendment? They called Cong or Congress called the president, President George Washington, to have a National Day of Thank Prayer and Thanksgiving. So it's not a black and white subject where we have chaplains in Congress. We have Ten Commandments and different buildings and all kinds of different things that it's not exactly a clear cut line where it's, you know, oh, this is we're not an atheistic government. You know, we're not communist. So it's not freedom from religion, it's freedom of religion.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Well, I think as an American we we uh appreciate that right. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

We should.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

We don't like we don't like a government entity going, oh, you have to be Anglican or you have to be Buddhist or you have to be this or that. Right. Just like we like for them to stay out of our pockets and quit robbing us blind, we don't want them telling us where we can go worship on Sunday. Amen. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

But we also but we also want to be able to share our faith publicly without getting arrested or those kind of things. And a lot of people think that's okay in this day and age. College educated people think uh, you know, oh, well, you can't talk about God in public square. That's not right. That's against the separation of church and state, but that's not, you know, we have presidents pray all the time, you know, hold Easter ceremonies and different things at the White House. It's not, you know, it's not the way I like to say we are foundationally a Christian country. We are not a theocracy. We're not a theocracy, but we are foundationally Christian. In that, why is polygamy against the law, you know, by and large, in the country? You know, all these laws are rooted and laws are rooted in a culture's beliefs. So if you go to the Middle East, you're gonna get some polygamy. That's you know, you're gonna get Sharia law, but why is that? It's a different, you know. So we're foundationally Christian. Does that mean all the founders were Christian? No. Uh does it mean that we are a Christian theocracy? No. But it just means that our Western society is based on the Bible, basically.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

So here's another thing that gets me kind of cranked up. Have you heard of the freedom of speech zones in Washington? Washington state or Washington, D.C. No, Washington, D.C. And it may be in other state capitals too. Yeah, but if you want to if you want Yeah, if you want to go have a uh a debate or or let's say let's say something's happening, let's say uh a senator or somebody is out on the steps of the Capitol and they're they're they have a speech going on or whatever, and there's a group of people, mom's demands action or whatever, whatever group uh wants to go um have a what do you call it, a free speech or protest or yeah, a protest. They want to go have a peaceful protest. Well, they have areas that are that are barricaded off away from the event that's going on that's called freedom of speech zones, which I'm not a I'm not a constitutional lawyer, you know. And and I have not I have not read about that anywhere, you know, in the in the the preamble or anywhere. It's like where where did we come up with freedom of you you have the freedom of speech, but you're just not gonna do it here. You're gonna do it away from where everything's going on.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Right. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Yeah, I'm not a constitutional lawyer either, but I would think that in America that's pretty ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

So how have Roger Williams' ideas shaped modern interpretations of the First Amendment?

SPEAKER_01 10:53

So yeah, I mean, people come at Roger Williams from different angles, obviously. A liberal will read, you know, the parts they like about Roger Williams, and a conservative will read, you know, I guess parts they like, but to be honest, he was a hyper Christian Puritan man. He was very Christian, and all his arguments were based on the Bible. So if we look at him honestly, and we don't just look at the parts we like about the separation of church and state and about what people would interpret as freedom from religion, but if we look at his actual writings, we'd see that the way he influenced our society is that he wanted to protect Christianity and true Christians from, you know, there's a quote in the documentary that Roger believed when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. And he believed that any influence from the state into the church only corrupted the church. It didn't make the government better, it only corrupted the church. So he was protecting sheep from wolves. That's the idea of the separation of church and state. It isn't to persecute cheap Christians. It's not to, you know, so it's to actually protect these people. Our constitution, by and large, that's what it's all about, is protecting individuals. The truest minority, the smallest minority is the individual. And by the grace of God, we have this wonderful constitution that protects the individual from coercion and not perfectly, you know, we always have, you know, up until the you know, every day we have something coming out where a state is, you know, violating their their constitutional authority, but then we can push back because of the constitution. So but yeah, so I would say Roger, Roger influenced the thinking of the separation of church and state, and he influenced the idea of protecting individuals, and he brought forth passionately soul liberty, freedom of conscience. That was his big thing that people should be free to choose. Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Do you have any direct quotes from him or something that you can read that discusses that?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Well, so okay, so one of his great short quote that's easy to remember is uh he believed that force worship stinks in God's nostrils. That was one of his quotes. I can't I won't get it exactly right, but another quote, a quote of his was that uniformity by by a civil state. Uniformity by a civil state is basically, you know, an antithesis of the Christian faith and violates God's law. Something along these lines. So his big thing was he was against forced worship, force uniformity, and things like that. To get it, I'd have to look up the exact quotes. I have his book right his book's right here. It's called The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. So it's a big read. It's very involved. He has very deep theological arguments, he's very intelligent, and it's a very thick book. It's as big as a Bible. But he wrote, you know, about freedom of conscience. You know, he didn't think you could whip people to make them believe what you want. You can't do all this stuff. That's external. He believed that that's the rape of the soul, and that's external, that's not internal. The sword of the spirit works in the heart. The sword of the state that stops people from committing crimes, but it doesn't change people's hearts. So Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Well, I have heard I'll turn 65 this year, and so I've heard a lot, but I have heard um a lot of debate about whether the United States of America is a Christian nation. And of course, you know, you hear people that go, No, there's freedom of religion, and we have the right to to worship however we please without the influence or the government stepping in and going, no, you know, outlawing it or anything. So we have that. And then you have then you have those people that say, No, we're not a Christian nation. That's not our our founding fathers did not were not Christians and did not blah blah blah. All this stuff that you're saying is incorrect, blah, blah, blah. And so where where is all that coming from, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Leftists, socialists. Yeah. I think yeah. I think people, even though socialism is an atheistic uh form of government. So, you know, yes, there were deists, you know, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, there are people who are not professing Christians involved, though a minority in the founding of our country. But if you just like for instance, uh the charter that Roger Williams got from the king of England, King Charles, for the to establish Rhode Island, if you just read that, the language, no, no, the greatest Christian today doesn't talk the way these guys talk. You know, by the grace and sovereignty of our Lord, we bestow this land upon you, you know, these kind of things. It's just, yeah, we are, like I said earlier, I absolutely believe we're a Christian nation, undoubtedly. Now, it depends how you measure it, though. Are you measuring it by the populace? Because would you say Japan is a is a Buddhist country, of course, because they're majority Buddhists, majority Buddhists. We're majority Christian now, that's waning, of course, due to a lot of different factors. Immigration, the university, college system is anti-Christian. But yeah, but yeah, I mean, like I said, we're not explicitly Christian, we're not a theocracy. Thank the Lord we're not a theocracy, and that's one thing Roger Williams believed is that, and this was a very important distinction, the Puritans who came here believed they were God's chosen people, and God established uh the Massachusetts Bay colony, and it was gonna be as a light on a hill, as Jesus said in the Bible. They were gonna be a light on the hill. He said, first of all, look, you're not they thought they were the new Israel. They were gonna start a new Hebrew Republic. They even wanted the language of the United States to be Hebrew, so uh, or of not of the United States, but um the Americas at that time. So anyway, uh he said the only theocracy sanctioned by God is ancient Israel. So every government since Israel, that is apart from Israel, can only enforce the second table of the Ten Commandments, uh uh six through ten, commandments six through ten. The first four that deal with our relationship to God, you can't enforce those laws because that's between an individual and God. But thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, that can be enforced by a civil government. But we can't, you know, run around, you know. I mean, and this is a a good distinction. What is Islam? To me, Islam is more of a political system than a religious system. Sharia law, all these things, it's controlling people, right? If you leave the faith, we murder we murder you. And that's kind of what, you know, Christianity was at the time, in that time, the 1600s, and prior to that, it was a state-run religion, largely. And he was the first to say, look, that's not what Jesus established. He he established a spiritual kingdom. He said, Go into all the nations. He didn't say establish a nation, he said go into all the nations, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. So we uh the church is the kingdom within nations. So, anyways, yeah, I think leftist socialist universities, that's where all this nonsense comes from, that we're not a Christian nation. I mean, like I said, why why is polygamy illegal? Why is bestiality illegal? Why is cannibalism illegal? This isn't just atheists will, you know, rob the Bible of its morals and say, oh, this is just innate to humans. But if you go to Papua New Guinea or certain areas, this this is what they do without the without knowing the Bible, people left to their own devices aren't moral. They they do plenty of horrible things and they come up with their own ideas of what morality is, you know. Oh, we gotta, you know, throw and there is a uh last thing I'll say is I had heard that in India uh up until about a hundred years ago, uh that they were throwing their newborn children to crocodiles as a sacrifice to the gods, things like this. So there's a reason our laws are the way they are, you know, and the laws in India are the way they are. It's not so foundationally we're Christian, I would definitely say, and people who attack that are dishonest and just disingenuous.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

So why do you believe religious liberty remains a critical issue in today's political and cultural landscape?

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Because of Charlie Kirk. He's a perfect example of oftentimes when what we accuse others of, we're guilty of ourselves. So the leftists love to talk about the Salem witch trials. Meanwhile, no one's more puritanical than a leftist about if you don't believe the exact thing we tell you to believe, and if you are somebody we don't like, we're gonna kill you. That's exactly what happened to Roger Williams. Roger Williams was banished because he had a difference, not because he wasn't a Christian, not because he was a Buddhist or a Muslim in a Christian state. It was because he was a Christian who disagreed with the authorities. And to me, that's uh Charlie Kirk would be a great example of why freedom of religion and freedom of its speech is very important. And that's exactly what he was trying to do. He was going to college campuses discussing differences, you know, let's debate, let's talk about this, let's not, you know, have have safe spaces and silo ourselves from everything, you know, be be afraid of our own shadow to the point where, you know, we're if we hear something we've never been exposed to or only heard about through our professor that that's evil, you know, we're gonna shout, attack, and beat and be stupid and all this. And so yeah, that that's what I would say is that's why freedom of religion is very important today. We need to realize that debate is and to and that's true toleration, by the way. They think they're tolerant on the left, ironically. Toleration is saying, oh, you have a difference of opinion, let's talk about it. You don't have to talk about it, but that's toleration. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Well, and and you know, America is a boiling pot of immigrants. You know, we have people from all over the world that come to America for lots of reasons. One of them is because it's a wonderful place to be. Freedom, liberty, justice, you know, all those things. And um so Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

We're and we're a very hospitable country. You know, we're not everybody wants to say how racist we are. We're I believe we're the most diverse country in the world. Right. You know, religiously, racially, you know, there's no perfect nation. There's not gonna be some perfect utopia where everybody's just, you know, some yeah, and they like gonna treat everybody perfectly.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

So well, we have we have uh people, legislators, senators, people in the House of Representatives, not only at the federal level, but we have we have people at the state level that want to turn us into a socialist, uh, what is it called? Social No, no, so social socialist communism or what do they call it? Democratic socialism. Democratic socialist, yep. Democratic socialism, right? Yeah, and we're a constitutional republic. Right. We're not we're we we have always been a constitutional republic, and and so many people are ignorant about that. And I'm like, read the constitution, read, read the bill of rights, read all of that. Nowhere in there does it talk about socialism. And and if you look at history, and again, I'm not a history buff, I don't know a lot about it, but from what little I listened to and learn, and all the knowledge that's available to us on the internet, right? Socialism is socialism has never worked anywhere. Point at a government or or a nation that's Socialism has worked. Cuba's not a good example. I mean, every socialist government, every socialist government, wherever it might be, whether it be Cuba or somewhere else, what happens? The people in power get rich and everybody else starves to death. You know, it's it's it's a it's who wants to live in that? I don't want to live in that.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

No, me neither. Well, you know, that and that's what these universities are doing. They're creating these little babies, you know, who need a nanny state or desire a nanny state to take care of them because they don't know how to handle difference of opinion. They don't know how to handle anything. These modern universities, in my opinion, are religious facilities for the secular, for an atheistic secular socialist ideal. You know, they're they're indoctrination camps. And if you look at North Korea and South Korea, that's such a perfect example where there's literally a border, a nation cut in half, where you can see the difference between a socialistic country and a capitalistic free market country. And you can see the satellite images of North Korea at night, there's no lights, you know, and then South Korea has tons of lights and these ideas. And what people will do in this day and age, they'll say, Well, look at Kost China, how well they're doing. They wouldn't be doing well if we didn't, if if the billionaires in this country didn't co-opt our government into NAFTA and send all our corporations over there, that's what built their wealth was the United States. They they got all these jobs, they got all these manufacturing jobs. That's when when Nixon opened trade with communist China is when the boom started to begin. Before that, it was absolute impoverished suffering, as you mentioned, you know, famines and all these horrible things. So they opened their markets. That's that's the difference. It's not like, and it's because of us. Otherwise, they'd still be in the dark ages like they were.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

What challenges did you face while researching and producing church and state?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

I guess there's no depictions of Roger Williams. He uh in those that day and age, he wouldn't allow anybody to paint him or make a statue of him because that violates the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not make a graven image. So he stuck to that. Other other people allowed it, other contemporaries of his time. So I guess coming up with the idea of how to present this film, make it uh not boring, make it engaging, and and so we we ended up doing animations to create scenes discussed in the film, kind of in a parchment paper style, like old style, like what the Constitution was written on, kind of um so but uh I'm glad with the way that turned out. I think it looks good. Uh we did kind of portraits and different things and different animations to uh for B-roll for uh you know, to cover the subjects as they talk about Roger Williams. Uh that and just the research, you know, and it's a pretty, pretty uh tough subject, I guess, you know, reading about it, some of the stuff you gotta read a few different times to like fully understand. So particularly Roger Williams.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

How did you get into filmmaking and being a director and all that?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

So I've always I always wanted to be in TV and film. I grew up uh when I was young for one Christmas, I got a little camcorder and uh would play with that all the time. I edit videos. I used to want to be like on Saturday Night Live, be a comedian type guy, but the Lord led me a different way. I went to college for um TV and film and I did the documentary class and that just it worked out well, you know, it just all came together. I did a short documentary about ADHD and um it turned out well and I was like surprised that it did. So I was like, so I just took that as you know, this is before I was a Christian, but uh I kind of you know took that and was like, well, I guess this is the path I'm being led in to do. So I just followed the Lord's leading on that.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

There you go. So these two documentaries that you've put together, have they been on the big screen?

SPEAKER_01 25:49

No, I did do uh premiere for them at uh movie theaters. So when I initially debuted them, I did a premiere for each of them at uh two different movie theaters. But uh Fearless Freddy is on Newsmax Plus, Newsmax 2, um it's on Tubi um in Amazon Prime, so it has wide distribution. Church and State is more Church and State is more, and it's sold, uh the DVD is sold in stores across the nation for Fearless Freddy. So Target, Mart, if you look for it online, you could get the DVD uh or Blu-ray of that. But uh Church and State is a newer film, so it does have some distribu it does have some distribution. It has it's on um uh it's on a platform called Fossum TV, which is like to it's like Tubi. Um it's on uh it's distributed by Vision Video, which is a Christian uh company. They're a very large uh distributor. They actually are the ones distributing Fearless Freddy and Walmart and Target all around the country. So you can find it on YouTube, Church and State. Um if you try type in church and state documentary, you can watch it for free on YouTube. Uh just remember there's another church and state documentary from the left, the leftist side of things, and it's all about I gotcha. LGBTQ and all this stuff. But this is actually rooted in history and facts, and it's just a reminder, it's church and state, Roger Williams and the founding of Freedom of Religion. It should, if you typed it into uh YouTube, it should be top five, if not number one.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Yeah, I'm gonna check it out.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

So so what about Angel Network? Have you tried to hook up with them?

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yes. So with Angel Gatu, you pay a pay application fee, it's like$250, and then you put it on their platform and it gets voted on by what's called the Angel Guild. So I made it right, right. So, you know, I think Angel's more focused on, you know, uh in more happy, friendly kind of films. Not that this isn't, I mean, it's not like it's just a factual documentary, you know. Sure. So but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

I like Homestead. I've been watching the Homestead. Yeah. I can't I can't wait for the next uh episode to come out.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yeah. Yeah, they were Homestead. Yeah, they were more cinematic and you know, that kind of thing. Uh I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it and heard that it's very good. So we did have Angel, but uh we got rid of it after a little while.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I guess I was bitter after I didn't get past the third round. Oh. Well, I'm done with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, I'm done with this. All this work. Yeah. How could this how could this be? Um how does your film connect America's founding principles to current debates about constitutional rights?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Uh yeah, so the whole point of the film and uh the the idea of the film is to educate people who want to know the truth about the founding of our country that'll help you to defend your arguments if you are right-leaning, Christian, conservative, and you believe in America and you love them. And it's good for ages, you know, ranging from 13 on up. You know, if you homeschool or you got kids who are interested in history, it's chocked full of knowledge, it grabs your attention, but yeah, you'll learn everything uh to equip yourself for to defend your faith, your freedom, your country, and the constitution.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

Great. So, in your view, how are religious freedom and the right to bear arms connected within the broader framework of liberty?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah, so that's very important. The First Amendment is immediately followed by the Second Amendment. So, you know, to have freedoms, you need to be able to defend yourself. And uh when the the countries that take away your guns and your gun rights, almost immediately they start doing things like they do in England, where if you post something the state doesn't agree with about Islam or whatever, they come to your house and they arrest you or fine you. But you know, you have some teeth in the game um if you have uh the right to bear arms. Uh there's a comedian, I forget who said the same exact thing. The first thing they wrote was the first amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and immediately after they wrote the second amendment, the right to bear arms, because yeah, they knew that um if you're gonna have freedom, uh you can't just uh rely on the government to and trust the government to uh uphold constitutional uh authority and their own, you know, with their own uh convictions. They're not gonna be like, well, this is wrong. We're not gonna do that. No, they power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's a form of checks and balances, and uh so it's uh it's a great thing that we have here in this country.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Amen. So what what do you hope audiences and especially defenders of constitutional freedoms take away from your documentary?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

I I would hope they would take away um from my documentary that the Constitution is one of the best documents in the history of the world. It's established one of the greatest countries in the history of the world, if not the greatest, that freedom of religion and freedom of speech are vitally important to a free thinking and uh open society. Uh it does not mean, and Roger Williams was not an anarchist. This does not mean that we endorse when you endorse freedom, it doesn't mean you endorse anarchy. We have uh rules, regulations, borders, boundaries that we should all live in and live and abide by. So but this is we need government, but limited government, and that was what the others intended. You know, government has its purpose, it's established by God, we need it, but uh the less we can have of it the better because men are corrupt, and when they get in power, they get even more corrupt and destroy everybody's lives. So right.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Well, Andrew, I appreciate you being on the Liberty and Gun Rights podcast. Appreciate the work that you're doing with these documentaries, and uh I hope that you continue down that road and uh produce more stuff. Absolutely, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah, so to the listening audience, I'll say thank you for the privilege of your time. Thank you for tuning in to the Liberty and Gun Rights Podcast. A special thanks to Andrew Lynn for joining us and sharing his insights on the enduring importance of religious liberty and America's founding principles. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave us a review. Your support helps us continue the conversation and defend the freedoms we hold dear. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and stand firm for liberty. Thank you, Andrew, for being here.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Thank you very much.