Dr. Eric Patterson of the Religious Freedom Institute

International Religious Freedom Summit 2024

Transcription completed by AI software, please excuse any misspellings or typos present.

Leray Heyne  0:00  

Hello, my name is Leray Heyne and when the Lord gave me the vision for the Jesus Christ CEOs Media, I asked him why he wanted a state-of-the-art media ministry that would rival the best media organizations in the world. And Holy Spirit replied, I want to tell the world what Jesus is doing in business. I think you will agree. CBS is not sending 60 minutes to my door anytime soon asking me to do a weekly segment on what Jesus is doing in business. Amen. It is for this reason we are asking for your corporate covenant partnership. When your company gives to JC CEO Media, you are giving to a ministry that is committed to revolutionize the Christian Broadcasting with virtual reality filming studios at the core of our content creation strategy, our studios around the world will be immersed in cutting edge technology that gives JC CEOs Media professional capabilities for creating visually stunning TV shows, documentaries and movies that will tell the world what Jesus is doing in business. Owners with your company's faithful generosity JC CEO TV will proclaim in 190 nations on seven continents, the power and good news of what Jesus is doing in their nation's public squares of business. So right now, we are inviting you to join JC CEOs TV as a corporate covenant partner of the world's first Christian television network consecrated to tell the world what Jesus is doing in business. Thank you for your corporate partnership, and may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. God bless you.

Leray Heyne  2:09  

Leray Heyne again here with Jesus Christ's CEOs, and we're here at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, DC. And I have Eric who has agreed to sit down with us and share some of his wisdom and insight. Thank you, Eric, for sitting down and being with us. 

Dr. Eric Patterson  2:24  

It's a pleasure to be with you today. 

Leray Heyne  2:25  

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about you. And, and, and what you're doing today.

Dr. Eric Patterson  2:29  

Sure. So my name is Eric Patterson, I serve as President of the Religious Freedom Institute here in Washington, DC. Our mission is to advance religious freedom as a fundamental human right, as a source of individual and social flourishing as the cornerstone of a successful society. And as a driver of international and national security. And we mainly do that through education and training, military chaplains. We have student programs. In fact, yesterday, we ran the all day student program for 50 university students on religious freedom right here at the Earth Summit.

Leray Heyne  3:00  

And what was what was the goal for that? 

Dr. Eric Patterson  3:02  

Yeah, so for one thing, students these days, you know, they really are justice and human rights oriented. But that often is a vague and amorphous concept. And so what we took them through yesterday, was a set of of sessions with experts, such as the British Special Envoy for religious freedom, Fiona Bruce, what religious freedom is, what does it look like around the world? And then we finished the day with a policy session, where they were in groups with our senior fellows, former diplomats and whatnot, on how would you move the needle policy wise, in a very specific real world case? on religious freedom? How would you actually help people, that's what we're trying to do raise up the next generation of religious freedom champions. 

Leray Heyne  3:43  

So in business, we talk a lot about especially in the Christian circles about the next generation. And as you said, there's you've experienced the same thing we have people think it's lost, but you see a different vigor in them. Tell us a little bit about that.

Dr. Eric Patterson  3:55  

You don't have a lot of hope for this generation. They work very, very hard. They may not want to work the same hours that we think. But then again, they'll start working again at 10pm. And we'll work till two in the morning, right? They want to be more connected. In a town like Washington, that's hard. Because if if a security clearance, or in a business setting where there's secret things, often they have to put their phone away, they can't go to social media during the day, whereas their generations kind of used to being connected, if we can channel those types of things. There's a lot of energy there and on these issues, you know, there really is a sense among this generation, that every human being is worth. It has intrinsic value based on being created in the image of God. And you know, that's what drives Religious freedom is that recognition of the value of the individual so we need to be tapping into that and not not discounting younger people is hyper narcissistic or something like that. They're gonna live up to our expectations if we help them.

Leray Heyne  3:57  

And they want to be helped, don't they? 

Dr. Eric Patterson  4:52  

We find that all the time. I mean, you know, 50 students took a day off of university yesterday to be here for this they traveled in from out of state and now They're here for the entire international religious freedom Summit. Yeah. I think there's really a hunger on these issues that just need to be helped about how do you unleash your energy in a constructive way?

Leray Heyne  5:10  

I think you're the right guy to talk about how all freedoms are tied into religious freedoms. Talk a little bit about that. And for maybe the average Christian that maybe doesn't really know that all the freedoms that they enjoy how that's anchored, and primarily this one. 

Dr. Eric Patterson  5:27  

Yeah, let me say I'm an evangelical Christian. So I'm happy to talk very specifically in that tradition. But thinking more broadly, we believe that every person is created in the image of likeness of God. And then it's really between those individuals, and God, in terms of their path to salvation. And I'm not talking about being a universal, some, I'm saying in humility, we leave that to God. And so there should never be government coercion, in matters of religious faith. And so at its heart, religious liberty says, We want to protect the fundamental rights of individuals and their collectives, the family, the local Christian school, the church, other houses of worship, the faith based nonprofit, we want to protect their autonomy, government should have only the tiny littlest role in protecting that religious freedom, rather than coercing or violating.

Leray Heyne  6:18  

And what do you think the state of America is? With religious freedoms?

Dr. Eric Patterson  6:24  

Yeah, well, the good news is, is that a number of court cases from our allies like ADF, and Beckett, First Liberty and others have been won in recent years that protect the individual. But usually those court cases are very expensive, they take 5-7-9-11 years, look at the baker, Jack Phillips, who's been sued a third time, look at the Little Sisters of the Poor, this great Catholic charity up in Philadelphia, that was sued multiple times before Beckett, one at the US Supreme Court. The other side, bullies, believers, bullies Christians to send a shockwave through society, so that everyone else is scared, scared to speak out, scared to stand up for their faith in the current marketplace of ideas. So in our culture, there's a real attack on Christian faith, there's real attack on on on religion itself. And we're not in good shape when it comes to our culture is.

Leray Heyne  7:19  

You know, I discovered that being here last year is that you know, when you're around people like Ambassador Sam Brownback and yourself who have been doing this in Washington for a very long time, when you guys say that, we need to be concerned. But the average Christian and the average American thinks, yes, we see what we see on the news. But when you guys say we need to be concerned, I think we need to be concerned. Can you just elaborate a little bit on that, and especially for the Christian business owner that thinks I'm good? I don't need to get involved with that.

Dr. Eric Patterson  7:48  

Yeah, I think that we're at this point right now, where whether it's in the nonprofit or the for profit sector, a Christian leaders need to be thinking about all the vulnerabilities for the ways that worldly ideas will be attacking. And it's in so many areas, accreditation, licensure, getting that business license standards of care in the medical industry, the having, and let me give a few examples. So these days, many, many medical schools or nursing programs are forcing potential students to sign an affidavit to participate in an abortion. We're seeing in the mental health field, practitioners who say it's not good science, and it's also against my religious convictions on say, pronouns or transgender surgeries, that they are being coerced to participate or even driven out of the profession. I could go on. Yeah, the accreditation of Christian colleges, at the national level threats when it comes to say sports under Title Nine, maybe we could go on and on and on. But the Christian professional should really be asking themselves, you know, where are those areas? Where are these, this these new set of ideologies that are anti reality, right? They're anti male, they're anti female, etc. And they're anti faith. They're anti Christian in particular, where are those in my business space? And how do I protect myself? At RFI, we've created a set of crisis toolkits, really crisis prevention, toolkits for nonprofits, and also businesses to go through just a checklist. What are our contracting policies? What are our hiring policies? What is the constitution of our board? Do we have a core value statement that everyone adheres to and believes in? And is that online somewhere, and that is on our website, and it's freely available? 

Leray Heyne  9:29  

So tell them what that is. And so they can go get that? 

Dr. Eric Patterson  9:32  

That's right. So if you look at religiousfreedominstitute.org, you'll be able to find those resources. If you look for the crisis toolkit series, you'll find many of those resources right there. 

Leray Heyne  9:42  

Awesome. So before I let you go, you're just so just a fountain of wisdom here. What last piece of advice or counsel or just thought you would like to share with folks about this whole idea of religious freedoms?

Dr. Eric Patterson  9:57  

Yeah, I would just say this, that natural to our to our American identity, those first amendment rights, the right to assemble freedom of the press, freedom of religion, you know that these things are all inextricably tied up with our faith. Because as Christians, we believe that there's no higher allegiance than what we owe to God, right? That's why the Chinese Communist Party or the government in Cuba, that's why they crack down on Christians because they have an allegiance of moral structure that's above government. That doesn't mean want to get rid of government. Just what we just mean is, government doesn't get to make the rules for what's right and wrong. And it's natural to us. So Americans who want to live out their faith publicly, do it and they're doing, they're being good witnesses. They're being good neighbors. They're living off the golden rule by doing that.

Leray Heyne  10:45  

Awesome. Thank you for sitting down and taking time out of your busy here.

Dr. Eric Patterson  10:49  

Thank you very much. God bless you.