Jesus & Politics with Bunni Pounds at the NRB in Nashville

0:00 Hello everyone, this is Stephen Strang and welcome to this very special edition of the Strang Report podcast. Well, today I'm in Nashville, Tennessee and with the, because of modern technology, we're able to use an iPhone and to record this at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, which happens every year about this time of year. It's sort of where everybody who's in broadcasting or print or media of any kind come together.

0:42 And today I'm with our author, Bunny Pounds, whose book, Jesus and Politics Just Came Out. I'm a little excited. And I've been wanting to do a podcast with her and normally we're live every Tuesday and Thursday. Today is Tuesday, February 20th. So I said, why don't we do this? We got a little booth. It's not a very fancy setting, but here we are at NRB. There's all kinds of interviews, TV interviews, podcast interviews going on. You probably hear a little bit in the background. And what I want to do is talk about this book because it just came out. And so Bunny Pounds and I, first of all, start by asking you about some of the media you were telling me earlier about being on 700 Club and meeting with Michelle Bachman.

1:31 So tell me the response that you're getting to this book. It's been amazing, Steve. And I just want to say thank you to Charisma for believing in me as an author in our story. But yeah, I mean, I was on the Steve Dacis show. I was on 700 Club on with Dr. Jim Garlow last week on World Prayer Network, on with Dr. Michael Brown for an hour and just doing tons of media here at NRB. And it's just been awesome to see people really love, you know, really gravitate towards wanting to see a book that inspires Christians to get involved with government and politics, but to do it with the nature of Christ, with the spirit of Christ behind us, that we need to get involved and we need to get involved in the right way.

2:15 Well, that's important, especially on this election year. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But I've published a lot of books. We're not sure how many. I think about 2000. And rarely have we had an author as enthusiastic as you. I'll take that as a great trophy. It is a compliment. You know, you are just like a one woman marketing machine because you believe in this. So just tell a lot of my viewers would not even though we've written about you, I've done a podcast book once before with you. A lot of people don't know your story, which you do tell in here. Jesus in politics. So bring us up to date on what your story is and what motivated you to write the book.

2:58 Yeah, well, I was a homeschooling mom that got involved 20 years ago. I went down to a state convention in my state in Texas and I testified in front of a platform committee on a school choice issue on homeschooling issue. And I got hooked that man, I could make a difference. I could, you know, testify and change a platform plank in a party platform. That was like unbelievable to me. And I thought, well, we as Americans have so much power that we don't use. And that led me into going back to Dallas Baptist University, finishing in my degree in political science at night while homeschooling my kids. And then I landed a job with a U.S. member of Congress, Jeb Hensreling, worked for a congressman Hensreling for 10 years as he went on to become conference chairman in the house, financial services chairman in the house.

3:50 And then I started my own consulting firm helping solid Christian conservatives run for office from county, state and federal level became one of the largest consulting firms in Texas by the grace of God. And then I affectionately say I blew up my life running for Congress in 2018 and ran a million dollar campaign and, you know, barely lost, but, you know, God had other plans, Steve. And so the kind of the vision behind this book is to take my little individual story, which is just one of many stories of Americans out there that are actively pursuing government and politics with Jesus, but to say everybody can make a difference.

4:30 And now I lead a ministry called Christians Engage, helping every Christian in America pray, vote and engage regularly. Why do you think so many Christians who would be sincere church going, you know, Bible reading Christians, why do you think they're so hesitant to get involved? Well, I think we still have some sort of division in our minds, whether we admit it or not, that some things are secular and some things are sacred. You know, I grew up in a very charismatic Bible college at Christ for the Nations, you know, the Lindsay family. And back in the early nineties, we didn't have really anybody in the pulpit there that was not in full time ministry that was not a missionary, evangelist, pastor, etc.

5:14 And so there was not really a grid when I was growing up of, man, God can call you into these places of influence. Thankfully, we now have an understanding that God's calling Christian leaders into education, media, politics, government, business, and then we can make a difference. But frankly, we hear a lot of pastors go, take Jesus to your boardroom, you know, to the businessmen or take Jesus to your classroom as a public educator. But very rarely do you hear a pastor go, take Jesus into the halls of Congress, take Jesus into your state legislature. But that's exactly what we should be doing. We should be taking Jesus wherever we go. And most importantly, in our government, that government can ultimately shut us down.

6:01 That can control our life. Thank God we don't live in Korea. We don't live in Venezuela or Cuba. We live in America. So we take things for granted and we become apathetic, instead of realizing that we should be engaging. Yes, that's changing. In fact, I met a man here at NRB, met him briefly, somebody I'd never known before. He's here pushing his book, telling his story that he was in the CIA for, I think he said, a dozen years. Then he was a whistleblower and got totally shut out, shut down, wrote a book about it. And he was telling me that this has happened to a lot of people.

6:42 Now, I'm under the impression that there are laws to protect whistleblowers because we need whistleblowers. But you know, since Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department, has actually targeted pro-life people with something called FACE, which was a law passed in the 90s, that they are now, or they'll use the RICO laws to come up with some way. In fact, one of the things that's very, very concerning to me about President Trump and all these lawsuits and stuff is if the system can bring down a former president of the United States, what can they do to the rest of us? It's true. We're all vulnerable. Yep.

7:22 We have to get on somebody's bad side. And more and more and more, if you stand for any kind of conservative, traditional values, you're on the bad side of certain people who want to drum that out of society altogether. So really, in a way, when you stand up, as you have done in so many ways and are going to continue to do, it's almost like you're putting a big target on your back. Have you experienced that or do you fear that at all? Well, I tell a story in the book. We were in the ministry in 2021 that was denied our tax exempt status by the IRS. You can't have more of a bullseye on your back than getting denied your tax exempt status.

8:03 And so they said in writing, the Internal Revenue Service, here we were just teaching Christians from a nonpartisan Christian ministry perspective about prayer, voting, and engagement, not endorsing candidates or political parties. And they said, Bible teachings are inherently Republican. Bible teachings are typically affiliated with a Republican Party and candidates, quote, ending quote. And then they went on to say, because you're teaching on the sanctity of human life, biblical justice, debt, taxation, Israel, these things are inherently Republican. Therefore, you're not nonpartisan. And so, you know, number one, the IRS was so what do you have to do? If you've wop philosophies worked in, so you're even.

8:48 Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Just move over to their side. And then they would think that that is subjective. Well, and you would have thought that every Democrat in the country would have railed their hands and go, the Bible's not Republican. How dare you say that? But you know, what happened was that I just walked that letter over to my friend Kelly Shackifer at First Liberty Institute. I said, Hey, have you guys ever taken a tax exempt status denial? And they're like, no, but we want this one. They're literally saying the Bible is Republican. So we filed a beautiful appeal with the help at First Liberty Institute. They did it pro bono for us. We were a very small ministry at the time. But the beauty of that was we went on Fox News three times.

9:31 We were the top story of epoch times, Breitbart, all of that. And thousands of people, Steve, started waking up. The very thing that God called me to do was to find the awakening church and plug them into habits of prayer, voting and engagement for the sake of America. Well, thousands of people started going on our website, taking our pledge to pray, vote, engage. And I had this one man, he emails me and he goes, I'm writing an angry letter to the IRS right now. And I was like, well, please do that in the spirit of Christ, you know, kind of tongue and cheek. But what happened was 16 members of Congress wrote a letter to the IRS commissioner led by Chip Roy from Texas.

10:13 And then Senator Mike Lee and Senator Ted Cruz wrote a letter on the Senate side. And people were calling their offices going, how dare we shut down a Christian ministry? And that would have affected every Christian ministry in church in America if that had stood. Well, if they could just arbitrarily say, if you believe this as Republican, I mean, why right do they have to say it? Well, but it's a mindset that a lot of those people have. Now I want to give a disclaimer. I've been both a Democrat and a Republican. I'm not a big fan of either. But with the way that the issues have come down recently, the Republicans will at least give lip service.

10:54 But you know, I think that both parties are part of the deep state, which is part of the problem. Both parties have a significant problem. What we have to look at as believers is what is in the party platforms, what are they saying they believe, what are the individuals in that party that works from the precinct level to the Senate level to the state level to the national level, saying that their values are and how can they hold those elected officials accountable to it? You know, it's a it's a hard process, but it's really we, the people have to speak, not the elites. You know what you said about your experience with the IRS makes me think of that scripture that says talks about woe to he who calls good, bad, evil and evil, good.

11:36 You know, they were calling good evil. And the thing is that unless we stand up, they will get away with it and then do it again and again. And then it becomes the norm and we almost lose our right to say anything about it. And so, so well, and that's in chapter eight of the book. So everybody read the IRS story in chapter eight. So kind of walk through the book to peak people's interest because I want people to, you know, we don't publish this just to do it. We do it to get resources in people's hands where they can read it, take action, share it with others and so forth. So walk us through the book and tell us what we'll learn when we read Jesus in politics.

12:19 This is not a boring book, Steve. Now we've all read the political books. There's like, oh, gosh, this is hard reading. This is not that. So this is fun stories. It really is an intimacy with Jesus book disguises a political book a little bit. I say that tongue-in-cheek because I want people to walk with Jesus. I want them to understand that they can make an influence and impact in their world. So I share like stories about being willing to go to Washington, DC, my race for Congress, how I was the only person in the country in the 2018 primary endorsed by Vice President Mike Pence, and that was because we had developed a relationship and a friendship and I prayed for him and we'd shared our testimony to each other and a whole bunch of things that happened before that point.

13:06 I share stories of ministering to Congressman Lee Zeldin from New York, one of my clients, Congressman Sean Duffy. I share a dream I had about a member of Congress that wasn't from my party, Beto O'Rourke, and how three months later I'm standing in front of Congressman Beto O'Rourke in the middle of a gubernatorial race where he was running against our governor, Gary Gabbett, where I got to deliver the word of the Lord to him that I had seen in that dream three months before, which was really crazy. Walking with friends of mine that have had moral failures in Congress, walking with friends of mine that have had terminal cancer diagnosis as a member of Congress and praying over them, greeting God for their healing, seeing them go to Congress, even when the doctor said that they were going to die, Congressman Ron Wright and others.

13:58 So you're going to hear a lot of names in the book that you'll recognize, hopefully, but it's not just about the who's who and the political movements. It's about, man, I'm just a girl that loves Jesus, Steve, and somehow if God can use me, just as a staffer, as a consultant in this space, man, he can use every single one of us. And that, I hope, is what people take away from the book, that God wants to use them. And what kind of response are you getting? The book's been out now, what, two or three weeks? And you've been doing a lot of media, good media, as you refer to, but what are some anecdotes of the people that have told you?

14:41 Well, the few people that have already read the book have said that they are just really inspired for their own life to go deeper in God, number one, to not just be complacent, not be apathetic, but to really push forward in what God's called them to do. I hope that people identify, even as they read some burdens that God's put in their heart, you know, sometimes we just look at the news and we just want to yell at the news and we see the injustices, Steve, we see what's happening. We see what's happening on our border. We see what's happening with drug overdoses in our communities, with still dealing with the unborn and the sanctity of human life, justice issues, different things.

15:24 But sometimes we don't identify our part we can play in that. So I hope that people, as they read the book, will just start seeing themselves and the burdens that they're carrying and how they can step out and be obedient to the Lord and that. And God can use people. How has all of the things you've been talking about affected your family? Well, running for Congress was really, really difficult for my family. You haven't lived until you've had a million dollars spent against you. It was really difficult for my husband. I actually dedicated this book to my husband, Tim. We've been married 28 years and we have two sons and two daughter-in-laws and two grandbabies now.

16:06 I wanted him to be honored because nobody understands the effects that it takes on you and your family and your loved ones when you are brutally attacked. I say, in the very beginning of the book, I don't know what Muslims that have converted to Jesus feel like when they have to abandon their families or they're attempting to be martyred for Christ. I do know a little bit more about suffering and persecution than the modern, normal American, right, just going through political campaigns. So I hope that people understand that the families of the candidates, the families of the elected officials all go through deep things and they need to be honored.

16:52 Whether you agree with a person or not, you need to see about the toll that is taking on that family and those people are individual families. We treat politicians and candidates sometimes as these caricatures, right, and we don't sometimes see them that this is a real person with a real family, with a real children. Even Senator Ted Cruz, who I'm very close with his family, you probably remember during the time we had this Texas freeze and our grid was shut down and he was going off to Cancun with his daughters, right? And people just made fun of him that he was escaping this freeze to go to Cancun with his daughters.

17:37 But number one, he couldn't do anything about the situation in Texas. Number two, he never sees his family. And his daughters were like, Dad, can we just do something for a couple days while you're actually stuck here and not in Washington, DC? And he's like, yes, daughters, let me help you. Let me be in your life. And sometimes we forget that these folks are real people with real families and real things that they have to deal with. Well, I'm on Ted Cruz's Christmas card list. I'm not sure how they did. So I've kind of watched his girls grow up with their picture every year. He's got a beautiful family. And of course, he's a great American.

18:18 Our country is so divided. We hear that all the time. And in some ways, it's been divided for a long time. In fact, I'm reading a book called Founding Partisans on how divided things were back when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were presidents. So I mean, this goes way, way, way, way back. And but it does seem that things have reached a new high when a former president of the United States has quite our really frivolous lawsuits of where they're finding technicalities to go after him. But also, there seems to be a great groundswell of support.

19:02 In fact, President Trump is going to be here at National Religious Broadcasters tomorrow. I should say Thursday. It's Thursday. So in a couple of days, I'll actually be home by then. But there's already a buzz. People talking about it. What do you think is going to happen in this election? Well, I think the American people have a choice. We can just continue to be apathetic and just continue to exist thinking that things are going to fix themselves or we can stand up and we can go, you know what, I've not really liked what's happened the last few years. And I want to see something different. I want economic prosperity.

19:42 I want limited government. I want family values to be upheld. I don't want the pride flag, you know, on the White House constantly. I want to see something different. And so we're going to have choices. We are picking, Steve, as you know, between imperfect candidates. Neither are perfect, but we have to look at the platforms of the parties, what they say they believe, but to say what the candidates say out of their own mouth. And when it comes to president, we need to consider that the president will be electing or will be putting in every person on that executive branch. Every person, all the cabinet members, the thousands of federal employees, and they will be putting in every federal judge.

20:25 The policies at the border. Yep. Having a strong stance militarily so that we don't invite the bad guys to attack. I was telling somebody recently that I really believe that if President Trump had been elected last time that the Ukraine war would have never happened. Putin would not have. He would have seen. You would have seen strength, not weakness. And there's other examples too. I mean, there's even a reason to believe that the Halas War might not have started. We can only speculate, but it's a very, very important time. And of course, as Christians, we believe that we have to pray.

21:05 And that sounds like a cliche. And for some people, it may be even a cop out, but the spiritual world is more real than the physical world. And we access the spiritual world with prayer. Yes. And I believe that God still has a plan of purpose for the United States. I don't believe that God is finished and there's been all kinds of prophecies and everything else. So. Well, and I'll say this to Steve as we close this, that the reality is I wish a civic engagement ministry such as Christians engaged didn't have to exist. I wish every Christian was voting regularly. I wish every Christian was engaging in their community, but we're not. But we have to exist because liberty has to be protected so that the gospel can go to the ends of the earth.

21:52 I'm not saying that America is special nation above all other nations, but I am saying that God has used America and the blessings that he's given our nation and economic prosperity to fuel billions of dollars into the proclamation of the gospel around the world. So I get up every morning and say, I want to mobilize Christians to pray for this nation, vote in every election and engage in our communities so that liberty can be infected. So the gospel can go to the ends of the earth. So well said. And I want people to connect with you. And as we wrap up, I want you to tell how people can get a copy of this book and also to engage with no pun intended.

22:34 With your ministry. But first, I want to ask people to, if you don't already subscribe to the Strang Report, hit subscribe at the little bell so you're notified when we're on live and we do different special things and share this with anyone you know that would be interested in this or who you think should be interested. Let's get the word out. If change is going to happen, it's going to happen from the grassroots. Yes. Not from the top down. I really believe that. So how can people get the book? Where's it? My charisma shop. So at charisma, you can get it at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Christian book.com, Bunny pounds.com and Christians engaged.

23:24 Join us join a movement of Christians. We have 200,000 Christians now in our system praying every week for America, voting in every election and starting to engage in their community with our on demand video curriculum. So go to Christiansengaged.org and sign up and take the pledge. And let's do this, folks. Let's reach a million Christians before the presidential election. Wouldn't that be awesome? Amen. And I'm going to sign up myself and I hope that a lot of my viewers and listeners will do that. So we're tuning in to this special live edition from the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville and tune in again on Thursday at four o'clock for another edition of the Strang Report on the Charisma Podcast Network.

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