The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 70 – Nicholas Meriwether

Episode 70: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

This episode of the Dr. Jeff Show features Dr. Nicholas Meriwether, a longtime philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who became involved in a significant legal case regarding academic freedom and religious liberty. The controversy began when a male student approached him after class requesting to be addressed with female pronouns and titles, which Dr. Meriwether declined to do in good conscience.

Alliance Defending Freedom represented Dr. Meriwether in a lawsuit that was initially dismissed by a federal district court but was successfully appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where Judge Amul Thapar wrote an opinion recognizing that public universities cannot compel ideological conformity and that the university’s actions violated both free speech and religious exercise rights.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Dobson (00:00):
Hi everyone. Ryan Dobson here for the Dr. Jeff Show. Summit camps are in full swing and kids are having a blast. In fact, my own son Lincoln is attending right now. There are so many kids who want to go to camp at Summit, but they just need a little help. A generous donor has agreed to match every donation to the Summit summer programs. Will you help a child learn the foundations of a Christian worldview at Summit? Donate online at summit.org/match and every tax-free donation will be doubled. Again, you can find that at summit.org/match. God bless and let’s join the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:39):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show’s available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, or wherever you get your podcast. Please take a moment right now and leave a review. A positive review helps more people find out about the show. It’s as simple as that. And we want more people to find out because this is the show where I interview major thought leaders to show how our worldview changes everything.

My guest today is a longtime professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. He ran into opposition from his university when he took a principled stance by declining to use a male student’s preferred female pronouns. Does this sound like something right out of the headlines? This is the headlines. We will talk about his case and how Alliance Defending Freedom came alongside to protect his free speech. Dr. Nicholas Merriweather, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (01:34):
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:36):
I’m really glad to have you on this show. I’ve been really looking forward to hearing your story and one of your attorneys, Logan Spena, is here with us today, and he’s just here as part of the conversation because we might get into some legal and technical issues and we want to make sure that we’re saying the right thing. Logan, doing the right thing.

Logan Spena (01:54):
Thanks very much. Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:56):
Yeah. Well, Dr. Merriweather, you’ve been a philosophy professor for 20 years and in being a professor, you’ve developed a way in the classroom of developing a respectful environment for discussion, dialogue that involves students. I was just thinking as I was reading over your biography, this is the kind of professor that I wish I would want all of my own children to have, and I’d want my students to be able to have. Tell us what you do specifically to create that kind of environment.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (02:34):
Well, that’s a great question. One thing that is very important to understand about philosophy is that it’s very social. I mean, if you look at Socrates, there’s a lot of dialogue, and I think that is absolutely central. The other thing is that I teach ethics and political philosophy, and these are enormously controversial. So you’re exactly right.

I have to work very hard to create an environment where students feel very, very open and free to offer their opinions and so forth. So the way I do that is by using titles. And yes, ma’am, and no, sir, and so forth and so on, in part because of the controversy, but in part because it creates an atmosphere, an environment in which people feel like they’re more free to speak their mind and offer their views. So I try very hard to facilitate that, that’s for sure.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:28):
Yeah. And in doing that, creating that respectful environment, I mean, do you expect students to agree with the conclusions that you draw?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (03:36):
No. No, I certainly don’t expect them to do that. And I try to make it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:40):
Yeah. How do you help them arrive at an understanding of the truth without leading them there through lecture? I remember sitting through interminable lectures with 46 points and feeling like, “I think the professor may be closing in on this, but I certainly am not.” How do you help?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (04:00):
It’s a very difficult balance to strike. Let me just say it’s more like an art than it is a science, as a lot of people have said. I’m not the first one to say that. I do offer my view because I’m afraid that if I don’t, then it would sound almost relativistic like anybody can think anything and there’s no truth and I have to be worried about that too.

So when I offer my view, I really encourage them to analyze it, take it apart, offer objections. So what do y’all think about that? Can you think of any problems with it? And so forth. And I had a lot of atheists, skeptics, agnostics, people of all kinds of sexual orientation in my classes, and typically they don’t object to my method. They feel very free to offer their views.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:51):
Do they accept, the students you work with, the idea that there is such a thing as reality that exists, or do they come into class fairly well convinced that truth is up to the individual?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (05:05):
Well, I think you get a total, you get a complete range. I mean, I’m in Southeastern Ohio. People would think of this as a rural area, but oh yeah, our students, my students are just like the rest of the students in the United States. Some of them are relativists. Some of them think that there is no such thing as truth. Everything is a matter of perspective. Some of them are relatives, but they’re also Christians and there are non-Christians who believe that there really is in fact truth and reason and logic and that it applies to reality. So it’s very much a very broad range.

It’s very interesting, I must say. It’s one of the most delightful things that I do to probe what students think and how they think and so forth. So it’s a wonderful job, but oh no, there’s quite a range. It’d be hard to say they’re predominantly A, B or C, but there are many of them that doubt that truth is accessible or they doubt that anybody actually knows what it is. There certainly is a pretty strong contingent that has that view.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:12):
Yeah. I see different studies or statistics on this and one said that 58% of Americans now say that truth is up to the individual.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (06:21):
Yes. Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:24):
Yeah. 91% say they think the best place to find yourself is within yourself. So just before, because we want to talk about your case, because this is super significant and I can’t imagine a more timely topic, but when students come in and say things like that, how do you, through the dialogue and your time in class, help them consider the idea that truth might actually exist, that reality might be real and that it’s our obligation to discover it, not just to speak our truth.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (06:56):
Right. Well, I actually start with that issue in virtually all of my classes, we could call it the issue of relativism or we could call it skepticism. My intro to philosophy class is almost completely devoted to the problem of skepticism. But one of the things that you do is you use what are called reductio ad absurds. Maybe it’s reductio out absurd. I don’t know. But you say, “Well, if you say this, then what about that? If you say this and what about that?”

And that is a kind of Socratic dialogue so that they can see the implications of their views because sometimes students, they just haven’t had the opportunity or taken the time to think through the implications and that can do quite a bit. You understand what I mean by reductio ad absurd and so, well, if you say X, well then the implications of that would be something that nobody would actually want to hold. And so that’s sometimes enough to get them to sort of stop short and think through their views again.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:57):
Can you give us an example? I’m thinking of people who are listening to this right now, riding in their car or maybe they’re out for a walk and they’re thinking, okay, I think I get that, but what would that actually look like?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (08:09):
A very good example of this is that students will say that morality is relative to culture. That’s very, very common, that we have our views and another culture has its views and no one’s in a position to evaluate the morality or the morays or the values of another culture.

And so I just use examples like female genital circumcision. So does that mean that you think that that’s perfectly okay in another culture, that we cannot judge that? Of course, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis get trotted out very frequently, but that’s very effective. I mean, ultimately they’re going to have to answer the question whether if the Nazis had won, that that would be okay what they did in the Second World War.

And so there are many examples like that. Honor killings is another example that I’ll use. So if a student really wants to bear down and insist that it’s still relative, I’ll leave the student the opportunity to do that. I don’t tell him he can’t do that or I don’t change his grade because he says that, but ultimately they have to grapple with it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:15):
Right. Because they’re learning to think.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (09:18):
They’re learning to think it through. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:20):
Yeah. Well, the legal case that got national attention involving you really went back to the respectful environment that you created in your classroom where you would say, yes ma’am or yes sir, no ma’am, no sir. That you treat the students with a kind of respect, a deference, and hopefully they reciprocate that, but you create an environment where this is a very grown up kind of place and we recognize each other’s dignity and we respect each other. But that led to trouble in your class. And I wonder if you’d just tell a little bit of the story.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (10:01):
Well, essentially what happened is that on the first day of a political philosophy class, I had called on a student and said, “Yes, sir.” And the student approached me at the end of class and said, “You must refer to me as a woman using female titles and female pronouns because I use them in the class constantly.” And I explained to the student I really couldn’t do that in good conscience.

So ultimately the student went to the administration, complained to the administration. Initially, the administration supported me. They said, “As long as you don’t use the titles and the pronouns with that particular student, if you just use the student’s first name or last name, then that’s acceptable.” But then the university changed course and decided that I would have to use the pronouns and the titles with that student that would imply that I believed them to be a woman.

(10:55):
And I said, “Well, look, I can’t do that. I’ll avoid them, but that wasn’t good enough for the university and they essentially were compelling my speech in the matter.” And that’s when the lawsuit was filed.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:07):
Well, and we may get into some of the legal issues here, but I’m curious, do you know why the university changed its position or was it pressure from something or somebody? And Logan, if you have to weigh in on that.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (11:25):
Yeah, I might leave that one to Logan. I can’t say that I know exactly why it was that they changed. I would only be speculating.

Logan Spena (11:31):
I don’t think we know exactly why either. However, the point is they interpreted their policy to claim that what Dr. Merriweather was doing constituted discrimination on the basis of gender identity. That’s of course not true because Dr. Merriweather would refrain from using pronouns inconsistent with a student’s sex to address any student. So he wasn’t treating a student differently because of the student’s gender identity, but the university interpreted its policy to mean that, and so they punished Dr. Merriweather on account of that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:02):
Yeah. And what did your particular punishment involve? This is just shocking for a professor who’s taught for decades at this institution.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (12:11):
Well, initially you get a letter in your file, and so that looks like it’s really not any big deal. I mean, just having a letter in your file, but that is the, as it were, the prelude to being terminated. So if that incident, a similar incident, had occurred again, I could have been terminated. So it was very serious to have the letter in my file.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:32):
Yeah. Well, Alliance Defending Freedom and their attorneys worked with you. I wonder, is this, I just can’t imagine the shock of having such a good record and then all of a sudden you’ve got this letter and you realize that this is all very tenuous. One student who has gender dysphoria, I guess we could say, or expressed in class that you’re not going to be able to operate based on reality, you have to do what I want, gets to determine the whole thing. I mean, did you think that this was a legal case from the beginning or how do you handle that?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (13:17):
Well, I anticipated that I could be terminated if I didn’t affirm gender identity ideology. I certainly saw it coming in the fall, so I was concerned about it, but I mean, I was aware that this was going on in universities and in workplaces and so forth. So I mean, at least I had, it wasn’t like I was utterly blindsided by it. I was a little bit prepared for it. I wasn’t completely prepared. I had no idea that it would ever even happen, but I knew that I could be required to affirm gender identity ideology. I knew that that was a possibility.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:55):
It occurs to me that, especially if you’ve got your colleagues there, you’ve got the university administration, you’ve been part of the community for a long time, that to have a legal action against your institution has got to be one of the most interpersonally difficult things I can imagine.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (14:15):
Well, I’m looking at, I really did not like having to do that, but I felt like I had to do it because I believed that academic freedom was very much under threat, not only academic freedom, but also religious freedom, was very, very seriously under threat. So it wasn’t just about me, it was not just about keeping my job, it was about academic freedom and religious freedom in higher education. So I felt that I really had to stand up to it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:47):
Well, you were standing on behalf of every professor.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (14:49):
Yes. I’m hoping this will have implications across higher education. Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:55):
Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about the case. I mean, sometimes things like this come to the public attention when we hear about it in the news or Alliance Defending Freedom sends out a press release or they make a video. We think, “Oh, so we now know that this is a thing and the courts are looking at this.” But tell us about that process, what that was like for you.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (15:19):
Well, if you’re talking about what happened following the disciplinary procedure by the administration.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:24):
Yes, following the disciplinary procedure.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (15:25):
Yes. Well, in the classroom, you probably would not have noticed anything. I mean, it was just a normal class. The student did very well in the class. We had a lot of discussions, interesting discussions. It was a great class. The student performed very well. So you would probably not have noticed very much. Matter of fact, I’m guessing some students were not even aware that anything was happening.

So it’s been, the faculty is divided, the students are divided, the country is divided. So there were those kinds of difficulties and so forth, but basically I was very, very fortunate that ADF stepped up and defended me in this. Without ADF, I think I would have been fired by now, for sure.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:16):
Tell us how the court processed the issue. So you have this lawsuit and what’s the claim and what are the judges trying to look at and trying to decide?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (16:29):
I think that one sounds like it’s one for Logan.

Logan Spena (16:34):
Yeah. So I’d be happy to address that real quick. So Dr. Merriweather, of course, raised claims both relating to his right to free speech, not to be compelled to affirm an ideology that he thinks isn’t true, and his right to free exercise of religion, because of course his faith obliges him to be honest and not to contradict what he believes both as a matter of religion and as a matter of science. So he sued the university on account of the violation of both of those things.

The district courts, the federal trial court where he filed his lawsuit, said that he did not have a claim at all. It dismissed the lawsuit. So both as to free speech and his free exercise of religion, it says the university can simply force you to say what it wants in this context. So Dr. Meriwether appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and that opinion written by Judge Thapar is excellent.

(17:25):
And it recognized that academic freedom is critical. Diversity of voices in higher education is critical and that American public universities have no authority to, in the words of the court, compel ideological conformity. They can’t do that under the free speech clause, and the actions of the university against Dr. Mayweather also violated his right to free exercise of religion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:54):
Of those two claims, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, is there one or the other that courts are most likely to take seriously?

Logan Spena (18:05):
It really depends on the facts of different cases. I think the easy one to apply across the board is the free speech one because different professors have different beliefs. Some may not raise a religious belief at all, but the point and the logic of this is that regardless of the nature of the opinion in question, the government doesn’t have the authority to force a professor to take one side or the other. The court applied its reasoning in other hypothetical cases.

It said, for example, you could not compel a civil rights icon to condemn the freedom writers, or you could not compel a Soviet immigrant to address everyone in the classroom as comrade. So these free speech principles apply across the board, but free exercise is a critical part of our constitution. And depending on the facts of the case and the nature of the plaintiff or the professor, it’s certainly a strong claim as well.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:57):
And I don’t know, Logan or Dr. Meriwether, who should address this, but I’m just curious about. So Shawnee State is a public institution, government funded, taxpayer funded institution. Would it be different if it were a private institution?

Logan Spena (19:16):
Yeah. So I’ll speak to that real quickly. It would be different. Private institutions have their own constitutional rights to free speech and free association, et cetera. It doesn’t mean that students and professors at private institutions have no rights, but they come from a different place.

The constitution binds the government, but students and professors at private universities may have contractual rights with the university that protect their speech, or they might have speech rights or rights against certain types of discrimination that come from federal or state statutes as well. But in terms of the First Amendment, that binds public universities.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:53):
Okay. That’s a really helpful consideration. And probably someone, if they’re looking at becoming a professor, taking a job at one kind of institution or another, you’d want to look into ahead of time.

Logan Spena (20:04):
Definitely one consideration. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:07):
Yeah.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (20:08):
If I may add here, I think the public university has an incredibly vital role in civil society and a pluralistic society like ours. It has a very unique role, and that role is to be a marketplace of ideas where ideas are tested and where almost all views are welcome. And so for the professor’s speech to be coerced or compelled, just runs totally against the idea of a public university that serves that role.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:39):
Yes. Yeah. Would that be true of other people who are civil servants and other government institutions or would that be unique to higher education?

Logan Spena (20:52):
It’s true that public servants have constitutional rights, that the Supreme Court has consistently held that you do not surrender your constitutional rights just by virtue of taking a government job. It is true that the nitty gritty of the legal arguments would be a little bit different outside of the public university context, in part because of what Dr. Meriwether just said, right?

The whole purpose of the public university is to serve as a marketplace of ideas, whereas other government employers, they have a different purpose. They’re providing some kind of service. And so the courts do a little more of a balancing to look at what kind of service the government’s providing and what interest the employee has in speaking to resolve any tension there. But the rights of professors typically have a slightly higher place.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:40):
Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I understand that. But it’s not that if somebody goes to work for a government agency, then they can only speak, they have to speak for the government only. They can’t have a private opinion.

Logan Spena (21:55):
You’re exactly right. They are able to have a private opinion. They don’t surrender their constitutional rights just by virtue of accepting a government job.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:05):
Okay. Well, tell us how the case was resolved. It sounds like this is one of those court cases where we all need to be reading the opinion. And I think when you cited from it, Lucas, I remember now having read that actual opinion because I remember that language, but that’s not something that people would ordinarily do, I don’t think. If somebody wants to read it, where do they go to find it and to get a copy of that?

Logan Spena (22:30):
There are a lot of great places. I would direct them into adflegal.org. If they were to Google Meriwether and adflegal.org, they’d probably find his case page and we have it linked there. And what’s a really cool resource for people in general who maybe are listening to your podcast is Google Scholar. You can actually pretty much read every federal court of appeals decision on Google Scholar. So if you want to look up the rights of public employees and explore that concept more, you can certainly do that there. But you can find information about Dr. Meriwether’s case in particular, I think really easily by going to adflegal.org.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (23:01):
Pops right up.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s wonderful. And tell us the name of the judge again who wrote that opinion.

Logan Spena (23:09):
Judge Amul Thapar, T-H-A-P-A-R.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:13):
T-H-A-P-A-R. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, it sounds like terrific writing as well as terrific legal reasoning.

Logan Spena (23:20):
Yes, absolutely. It’s a pleasure to read. He’s very clear.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:24):
Yeah. Well, Dr. Meriwether, as you went through that process and you got the resolution and the university had to make it right, there were quite a few significant things they had to do to make it right. So it’s unlikely that they’ll make a similar mistake, but what is it like now for you?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (23:45):
Well, I think that the legal issue is over, but I think that the cultural issue, the philosophical issue, that stuff is still going on at my university and my town and throughout the country. So it was a very, very, very important legal victory, but yes, the issues are still out there. It’s not like the one side or the other just says, “Okay, well, I lost in court, so I’ll go ahead and just give up on the ideology.” Things are not quite that simple. So it certainly continues in various forms.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:19):
Yeah. I wonder if, and maybe this is a question for both of you, if you would help me, help my former students a little bit. A lot of them are working for companies. They’re significant companies. They’ve got great jobs and they’re getting great salaries, but they’re working for companies that are enforcing their, and I’m wondering if you have any thoughts, principles, guidelines, encouragement for young adults who are in this environment who aren’t really established yet and they’re trying to feel their way through, but they want to do what’s right and stand for truth.

Logan Spena (25:01):
I think there’s a mix of issues there. So yeah, Dr. Meriwether wants to speak maybe too.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (25:05):
I will say one thing, and then this really is something Logan needs to address, but we have to be honest and I think that in the time that we’re living in now, being honest and being truthful and being faithful to scripture and to what God has called us to do is going to come with a price. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get around that. So we have to do the right thing. We have to speak the truth and leave it in the Lord’s hands as to what results from that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:38):
There is the matter of a biblical way of speaking truth. And that’s one thing I love about your case, Dr. Merriweather, is that you were respectful throughout and then the student’s dignity.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (25:53):
Yes. I tried to be anyway. Absolutely. Right. I tried to treat all of my students with dignity and respect, and I think that’s extremely important to do. I don’t roll my eyes, I don’t shake my head. If they say something I don’t agree with, I might say, “Well, let’s just think about that for a little bit. What kind of analysis can we give that?” And that, I think, improves the classroom situation. It helps them to think. So no, I did everything I could short of saying something that I didn’t believe in, uttering something that I didn’t agree with to make the student feel as welcome as I possibly could. And I do that with all my students.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:34):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m sorry, Lucas, I didn’t mean to jump in there. I just wanted to add that one little point.

Logan Spena (26:44):
Well, yeah, no problem at all. And I think what Dr. Meriwether said is critical in that as Christians, we have a duty to speak the truth in love at all times. And I think Christians can land on how to do that in different ways faithfully to what the scripture commands. And of course, your duties as a Christian are different from your legal rights as an American sometimes. So what listeners should be aware of is that if they’re part of a government employer, as we talked about a little bit ago, the government’s ability to control their speech is limited by the First Amendment.

And even at a private employer, there are laws that require private employers to accommodate a religious exercise if it’s reasonable to do that. And with regard to pronouns in particular, the answer is that it should be, right? Because you can simply avoid using terms, say, that a potential coworker thinks is offensive or something like that.

(27:38):
If you can simply avoid doing that, the employer ought to accommodate your religious belief. So whether you’re a potential government employee or someone who addresses this issue outside that context and you have problems with that, you should reach out to us at adflegal.org.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:55):
Okay. That’s great. But you’re making a good distinction, I think. I think a lot of what irritates some people in the workplace is they interpret your use of pronouns, “I want you to call me he.” Then using the term she is considered a microaggression, it’s workplace violence, all kinds of things stem from that. But there is a way to avoid that, you’re pointing out, but there are also rights that you have.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (28:26):
Right.

Logan Spena (28:28):
Exactly.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (28:30):
Disagreement. I’m quoting Jordan Peterson here, but disagreement’s painful. We don’t like to disagree with other people. We want them to agree with us, whatever it is that we happen to do. So it’s difficult, but we can’t compromise the truth. We can’t compromise our faith.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:49):
Yeah. That makes sense. And I think this will be really helpful to people who are in that difficult situation. They don’t want to be rude. They want to work well with others. They want their company to be successful, but at the same time, they do not want to compromise their religious convictions in the workplace. Yeah. Well, this has been a terrific phone call. And I wonder if you both just have, maybe, words of encouragement to this rising generation.

And by the way, Logan, thank you for putting ADF legal out there as a recourse because you’ve defended Summit Ministries on a couple of occasions, big brother, to help us in those situations, but any final words you have to encourage this rising generation in a time like this?

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (29:37):
I can offer a couple of words of advice. One thing is you want a strong faith family. So I have a wonderful Bible study group that my wife and I visit, and they were enormously helpful praying for us, supporting us. Our church in fact did that. Scripture is amazing. And if you are under some kind of discrimination or persecution, I think we want to call it that, you need to turn to God’s word because God wrote it for us under those circumstances. It will come alive to you in ways that it never has. So you want a good church and you want to get into the word. That would be my advice.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:20):
Yeah, hello again.

Logan Spena (30:21):
I would add, so there’s a Supreme Court case that’s about a hundred years old now. It’s called Whitney versus California. And I’m going to paraphrase a little bit, but what the court said there was talking about the relationship between liberty and a healthy society. And they said, those who won our independence understood that liberty is the key to happiness and courage is the secret to liberty. That’s what people need now. And I think that’s what Dr. Maryweather’s stand is helping to engender people who both have faith and are able to express it both lovingly and courageously. That I think is what our society needs now more than ever.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:00):
That’s incredibly powerful and helpful and timely. We do a lot of polling at Summit Ministries and not because we want to be a polling company, we just want to understand the cultural moment that we’re a part of. And what we found recently is, about a third of people in this country say that they believe something, but they won’t say anything so as not to offend anyone. Or they say they feel that they would be shamed or harmed. And what you’re saying is, unless we can regain the courage to pursue liberty, we’re going to be for a tough road.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (31:39):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:39):
That’s right.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (31:41):
You can’t be intimidated by the threat that you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings, but you shouldn’t, as Logan said, we shouldn’t be hurting people’s feelings on purpose, but we can’t be silenced or shut down merely out of concern that somebody might be offended. That is extremely unhealthy for civil society.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:03):
Well, I’m so grateful to both of you for taking time to be on the Dr. Jeff Show podcast today. I’m really looking forward to getting the word out there.

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether (32:11):
Well, thank you for having us.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:14):
Yeah, thank you so much. A special thanks to my guest today, Nicholas Meriwether. You can find out about his case and more from alliancedefendingfreedom at adflegal.org. I know we talked about that in the show. It’s in the show notes, but adflegal.org is the place to go. Psalm 139 reminds us that our inmost being is knit together by God in our mother’s wombs. It is in knowing our creator that we can fully know who we were created to be. Thanks for joining this show this week. We’ll see you next week.

Ryan Dobson (32:51):
Thanks for listening to the Dr. Jeff Show. And don’t forget, you can help a child attend Summit summer session by going to summit.org/match. All your donations that are tax deductible will be doubled. God bless, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time for another Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:10):
Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place. For your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show, that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I look forward to seeing you next week.