Of political hacks who have sold their souls to the devil to maintain their political power. Good morning and welcome to a. M. Joy. One hour from now a group of alabama faith and moral leaders joined by reverend barber will come together to condemn Senate Candidate roy moore over multiple allegations of sexual predatory behavior toward vulnerable teenage girls when he was in his 30s, as well as a policy agenda that these faith leaders say attacks vulnerable communities. Well talk with bishop barber later in the show. And what youll hear from those voices on the religious left will stand in stark contrast to what we heard this week from the religious right. After evangelical leaders in alabama stood with roy moore, offering their fullthroated support for a man facing mounting allegations of a pattern of trying to enter into sexual relationships with teenage girls when he was a powerful prosecutor. Standing with him, even as the list of accusers grew to nine women, going on the record to claim moore targeted them with unwanted sexual advances, including sexual contact with a 14yearold girl and the Sexual Assault of a girl who was 16. Those religious leaders are preaching to a choir thats largely in harmony with their support for the former alabama chief justice, who was driven out of office twice for violating his oath of office and who now seeks to replace attorney general Jefferson Sessions in the United States senate. Half the adults in the state of alabama identify as evangelical christians and a new poll released this week from jmc analytics found that nearly 40 of selfdeclared alabama evangelicals say the Sexual Misconduct allegations against moore make them more likely to support him, not less. The support for an accused Child Predator appears to mark a moment of religious moral ambiguity for some conservative evangelicals, its entirely consistent with their politics. After all, this is the same group who overwhelmingly supported donald trump for president , even after they heard him say this. Im automatically attracted to beautiful i just start kissing them, its like a magnet. I dont even wait. And when youre a star, they let you do them. You can do anything. Grab them by the [ bleep ]. Joining me now, frank schaefer, author of letter to lucy, a manifest of creative redemption in the age of trump, fascism and lies, sarah rumf and mark burnes. Pastor burns, im going to start with you. As of now nine women have accused roy moore of Sexual Misconduct against them when they were children in alabama. How do you explain the continued support for him, including from selfdescribed evangelicals in that state . Well, joy, first of all, im always happy to be here on your show. Let me just say this, i have always openly condemned any type of Sexual Misconduct that if anyone were to be found guilty of such actions, i would believe would be unfit for office. Now, reference to the victims or the alleged victims, you know, unfortunately there is no real way to identify whether they are being truthful or being coerced or they have been used as political pawns. There is no real way to identify that. I do think that they should be heard. I do think that their voice 345r matters, but i also think that the voice of roy Moore Matters as well. As ive stated before, it is very suspicious that this would have taken place during this time. I also note that unfortunately we are living in a society where you are now becoming guilty until proven innocent, when thats not how america is set up. And people think you know, im here defending roy moore. Im not defending roy moore, im defending due process. Id like to believe that if you were ever accused of something that you know that you did not do, thank you would the people that are accusing you, you would believe people are treating you the same way that you would want to be treated if you were in that case, which is give you the benefit of the doubt. Look at the people who have surrounded you who also have proven history of doing good and doing well and for the good of the people. And so thats really all we have to go on. I really like to believe that this will be played out not in the public media but be voted by the people of alabama. Im quite sure ill never be accused of preying on teenage girls. Have you ever known anybody whos bnz accused by nine different people of preying on teenage girls and been banned from a Shopping Mall because of a history of predatory behavior . Do you know anyone ever accused of nine different people of preying on teenage girls sexually . Let me just answer that if i can, briefly. First of all, it is proven that the gadsden mall manager said that this story of him being banned from the mall is a false story. Ive never seen any evidence of that. It is 100 proved. Have you ever heard of anyone being accused of nine women joy, let me say this. Of preying on them when they were teenagers . You dont have to be akooufd of sexual morality. You can be accused of anything. No, no, no. Of sexual morality, do you know of any other man that youve ever dealt with whos been accused by nine different people or by any number of people of preying on them when they were teenage girls . You make it sound as if this is something that happens all the time. Well, i personally have never known anybody that has been accused of sexual immorality. But the thing that im saying is we need to also understand, we need to be wise with due process. What due process could there be . We want all of our candidates to be morality, but morality is not the only qualification for leadership . Oh, its not . We are discovering that throughout the history of the bible, throughout the scriptures, we discover god had used so many immoral people. We love the psalms of david but also know that the same person who wrote those psalms of david was also a murderer and an adulterer. He had issue. He was a liar. Thats interesting. Jesus was the only perfect man that ever walked the earth. Even dr. Martin luther king discovered that there could have been some possible infidelity. That did not disqualify him from leading us to the Promised Land and so im not saying that roy moore is guilty or innocent, im only simply saying let us listen to the facts. Let me ask a question. Hold on a second. We have three other guests. As a pastor, do you counsel your parishioners that morality is not a necessary ingredient for leadership . Is that what you preach for your church . Because you just said it doesnt matter. You have just taken what i said out of context. I did not say morality is not important. But immorality is not qualifying for leadership in your view . If that was the case, all of us would be disqualified. I dont think all of us have been accused of sexually molesting children. The bible says we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god. I have been an immoral man. Even after i was saved, i have fallen by the wayside but by the grace of jesus im still here. Let me go to pastor Aaron Bernard and get your response to the theology just expressed. Im a little surprised. It is true that the bible is filled with leaders who had flaws, but to say that morality doesnt hold as part of the standard by which we judge someone that were going to give power to is an expression of the crisis that were in as a nation. The thing that separates the situation with judge moore from Everything Else or this candidate moore from Everything Else is that whats being exposed are immoral social norms that have been neglected and ignored and have been responsible for the exploitation of women for a long time in our culture. Its being uncovered. And to say that were downgrading our values and lowering our standards so that we turn a blind eye to these things, thats a problem that has to be addressed in our society. And, frank schaefer, i want to go to you on this. First of all, i want to play alan keys, who is one of the people who showed up to support roy moore and get very angry with the media for bringing this up at all. This is what alan keys had to say to reporters after the event. And i believe this was women supporting roy moore was the event. Heres alan keys afterwards. Asked and answered, again and again. He could answer that question a thousand times. And if a thousand accusations were made, he could answer every one a thousand times. And you would prove yourself a liar. Frank schaefer, you know, there were a lot of very angry supporters of roy moore there essentially accusing the media of attacking roy moore and saying its all lies. All these women are lying and being used by moores opponents. I think a lot of americans are looking at whats happening in alabama with consternation. Can you make sense of whats going on down there . Well, let me broaden the framework a little bit. You know, i grew up in an evangelical home. My father, francis schaefer, became an international evangelical leader. I remember being with dad one time when billy graham was sitting down having tea with him telling dad i will never, ever endorse a candidate again because im so shocked at what nixon told me about his antisemitism and profanity that hes been caught with on tapes. He was crying, he was confessing, he was asking me to pray for him. I listened to the tapes and i told him why did i ever support you. Now thats billy graham with nixon. Fast forward to our own era. Franklin graham defending donald trump, grabbing women by the crotch and saying, well, we all sin. I just want to tell you something. In my short lifetime of 65 years, and im long out of the evangelical movement and i talk about the journey in the book letter to lucy, if i my dad and oldtime evangelicals came back, or even billy graham, i knew him personally. He came to our house and would stay, his daughter and i just had breakfast down in North Carolina a few months ago. He was shocked at nixons profanity and wondered why he had supported him. Look at franklin graham, look at Jerry Falwell jr. , look at ralph reed, the movers and shakers of the politicizing of evangelicalism. Let me tell you whats happened in my lifetime. Evangelical White American christianity is now a revelistic religion. My dad used to always rail with relativistic situational ethics. That was the talk back when i was a kid and he was Holding Forth on these issues. Who is now the propagator of situational ethics . A guest on your show saying moral rectitude is not a qualification thats necessary for leadership. Let me just say one other thing. Theres a huge difference between the psalms, i just want to stick up for good ole king david, when he wrote them all in pen tent confession in tears for his sins asking god to forgive him, not only admitting what he had done but spending a lifetime of poetry writing about the horror that he looked back on his own failings with. Thats a far cry from donald trump who said he would sue any woman who said he had done anything, denied anything or Roy Moore Supporter even worse calling god as their kind of witness to his innocence up against nine living flesh and blood women. The evangelicals are expert at discounting womens points of views anyway. And if you look at the literal interpretation of the bible, of st. Paul telling you, and this is not a paraphrase, its literal. Women should sit down and shut up in church and not be heard from. And not just church, any situation, and be in obedience to your husband. That is the context in which these good women of alabama are standing up supporting not just roy moore but an entires so sociological system. During the apartheid area, you could have 20 black witnesses talking about it and none of them counted. Evangelicals treat women that way, discount what they say and now are preaching moral relativism. I just want that to sink into the audience, moral relativism being preached from evangelicals. How the world is now upside down. I dont want to discount the voice of the woman we have on our panel. We do have an evangelical christian woman here. How do you explain, because there are women standing there supporting roy moore, including the governor of alabama. How do you explain that to people who may be looking at that and saying what is going on here . Well, while i am very opposed to roy moore, if i were an alabama voter, i wouldnt be voting for him, let me say that from the outset. But i am sympathetic to some degree of the situation that these christian voters find themselves in because in the situation from a conservative christian perspective, there has been a lot of years and years of media bias. Look, theres media bias on both sides. And that makes it easy to discount news you dont like. And the media on both sides plays up on that. I mean i see all the channels pick on each other and the different slants that people take, but what we have now is roy moores defenders are attempting to make a lot of noise around the edges of this story and trying to draw attention away from the heart of it. The heart of it is that roy moore admits knowing a number of these women. He admits that he dated teenage girls. One of the prosecutors, a woman who worked with him during this time, has said on the record that he was known to date teenage girls. His denials of what has gone on are confusing and contradictory. As far as innocent until proven guilty, those are constitutional standards that we apply in courts of law when the government is trying to deny you life, liberty or your property. Thats not what we do when were voting. The voters of alabama are intelligent people. What i beg people to do is look at what roy moore himself has said and what he himself has admitted, what people have said on the record and you use your own judgment who is credible. These women are getting Death Threats and harassment. There is no benefit to theres no real good benefit from coming forward and getting all of this heat on you and all of this pressure unless you feel morally compelled to tell the truth. Yeah, indeed. Joy give me a second, pastor. Were going to take a break. When we come back, well let everybody else back in. We have much more of this conversation after a quick break. My experience with usaa has been excellent. They always refer to me as master sergeant. They really appreciate the military family, and it really shows. Weve got auto insurance, homeowners insurance. Had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. Usaa was there handson very quick very prompt. I feel like were being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. Were the webber family and we are usaa members for life. Usaa, get your insurance quote today. If you can train oxford to sit. Sit you can train yourself to cook with less oil. Introducing new pam spray pump made with extra virgin olive oil. Now you can pump instead of pour, plus get the superior nonstick you love. New pam spray pump. Before i hadburning,oting, of diabetic nerve pain, these feet. Loved every step of fatherhood. And made old cars good as new. But i couldnt bear my diabetic nerve pain any longer. So i talked to my doctor and he prescribed lyrica. Lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions, suicidal thoughts or actions. Tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worse depression, unusual changes in mood or behavior, swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or blurry vision. Common side effects dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, swelling of hands, legs, and feet. Dont drink alcohol while taking lyrica. Dont drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. Those whove had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. Now i have less diabetic nerve pain. Ask your doctor about lyrica. Welcome hhi s it going . Okay, so youve got two friends here. Yes. This is the j. D. Power award for dependability. Now i want you to give it to the friend that you think is most dependable. Ohhhh. Ughh. Wow. Thats just not fair. Does she have to . She doesnt have to oh, i dont . No, but its a tough choice, isnt it . Yes. Well luckily, chevy makes it a little easier. Cause its the only brand to earn j. D. Power dependability awards for cars, trucks and suvs two years in a row. Thats amazing. Chevys a name you can trust did you stop beating your wife . Answer yes or no. I said yes or no. You dont have an answer for it because its a logical fallacy. Sir, you are a clown. You are to ask questions about the issues. They dont care about doing that. The issues about our country. You are not asked to ask personal questions about mr. Moore. We wanted to hear what he had to say about the issues, and you did not allow it because you are the fake lying news from the swamp. That was the scene thursday when roy moore defenders confronted members of the media after an event where evangelical conservatives stood in support of moore. Pastor a. R. Bernard, sara rumpf and others are with me. What she said about women are now coming forth, its more that its the climate for it. History is not written by the victims, its written by the victors. History is written by those in power. But during the course of time when those who have been oppressed emerge the positions of power, like women, they begin to reevaluate the narrative and thats whats happening. 40 years ago, women couldnt say a thing. It was a social norm in that culture to keep quiet and just turn a blind eye. Here it is 30, 40 years later. Women are empowered, in positions of strength and are now coming out and saying we cannot allow this to continue. Im surprised we even have a conversation about the role of morality in leadership. How can we and me as a pastor even take on the notion that i can be in a position of leadership and have people respect me as a moral leader in a religious context when i put that aside and say, well, its okay, i can do what i want. Pastor burns, how do you answer that . I wanted to be clear as i stated in the last segment, i did not say that morality was not important, what i said was it wasnt the only quality. Leadership and faith goes along as my good friend, pastor jeffers said, it goes along with being a good leader. Hold on just a second. One moment, hold on, hold on. Im going to let you back in. Youre not a lawyer, youre not a judge. Youre not here to judge whether or not in a court of law roy moore would be found guilty after nine women accused him of sexually molesting children. We have you on because youre a pastor. What your job is in theory is to provide a moral framework for the people who go to your church and listen to you. How can you say that in your moral framework, youre not here to adjudicate the case, but youre saying that morality is not the only important thing. Arent you a moral leader