Jesse Boulden, Director of the ALERT Academy in Big Sandy, Texas, argues that courage is less a gift some men are born with than a capacity that has to be used. Scripture keeps telling people to be courageous, he says, and his own father’s hard years in the Navy made the point concrete. At ALERT, a gap-year program of discipleship, emergency training, and service, young men practice that muscle in small reps before they fight fires, dive, or deploy.

Boulden distinguishes real courage from the fake kind that talks big online and then refuses a face-to-face cost. He also warns that well-meant parental protection can bubble-wrap sons until they will not take a risk. Freedom and safety do not travel together. The conversation moves through public speaking, a broken obstacle course at officer candidate school, the leadership tests of 2020, and the fear of man that makes God look small. Boulden says a culture survives only if it has children and a pipeline that turns boys into men of self-control. Fathers do most of that work. ALERT tries to stand in the gap Ron Fuhrman opened in 1994: nine weeks of boot camp, emergency skills, a specialty, and a bias for service.

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:03:09 – How Jesse Came to ALERT
00:05:20 – Can Courage Be Trained
00:06:02 – Courage Like a Muscle
00:08:36 – False Courage Online
00:10:25 – Parents and Bubble Wrap
00:13:06 – Boys in the Creek
00:14:19 – Freedom Versus Safety
00:16:00 – Public Speaking Reps
00:18:31 – A Broken Obstacle Course
00:20:05 – 2020 Exposed the Cracks
00:21:11 – Courage Must Be Renewed
00:23:28 – Fear of Man
00:25:04 – Calls Based on Truth
00:27:16 – Harder Days Ahead
00:28:49 – Apathy Is Not Inevitable
00:30:22 – Boys Must Become Men
00:33:25 – Fathers Do the Forming
00:36:22 – What ALERT Actually Is
00:41:26 – Why He Stayed
00:42:06 – The Men Are the Mission

Find out more about Jesse and his work at ALERT Academy here: https://alertacademy.com/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Lathan Watts, vice president of public affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom, explains how ADF fights in court, in legislatures, and in public for the God-given right to live and speak the truth. He describes clients who never asked to become test cases, cases that can last years, and a public-affairs job that translates legal work so ordinary people can recognize when their rights are being crossed. Watts answers Christians who treat persecution as a reason not to use the law. He points to the Apostle Paul appealing to Caesar and treats American constitutional protections as a stewardship trust, not a talent to bury.

The episode surveys recent Supreme Court work: a Colorado counseling ban, a New Jersey pregnancy center fight, and women’s-sports laws in Idaho and West Virginia. Watts argues that gender ideology now touches speech, religious liberty, and parental rights at once. He rejects the claim that law cannot teach morality, walks through the Declaration’s theological assumptions, and contrasts ordered liberty with the French Revolution’s collapse into chaos. The charge is simple: keep using the courts, keep forming consciences, and do not surrender what was given.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:03:55 – Court of Public Opinion

00:08:00 – Conscience Protects All

00:12:19 – How a Client Case Starts

00:15:22 – Four Supreme Court Wins

00:16:04 – Counseling Ban Struck Down

00:17:28 – Pregnancy Center Harassment

00:19:05 – Women’s Sports Laws Stand

00:21:24 – One Ideology Many Rights

00:25:07 – Law Teaches Morality

00:27:43 – Theology of the Founding

00:32:17 – Ordered Liberty Not Chaos

00:36:22 – From Law to Messaging

You can find out more about the work Lathan Watts does at https://adflegal.org/profile/lathan-watts/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

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Tim Goeglein, vice president of external and government relations at Focus on the Family, argues that faith and public life were never meant to be strangers. Drawing on years in the Bush White House, the Senate, and Washington advocacy, he says the American story repeatedly turns on the church: the Revolution, the fight against the slave trade, the Cold War, and the pro-life movement. He revisits Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists and Washington’s letter to Rhode Island’s Jewish congregation to show that religious liberty was never a high wall shutting conviction out of civic life.

The conversation then turns to what Goeglein calls the permanent things: marriage, family, parental rights, conscience, and the meaning of words. He frames the country’s deepest problem as a spiritual crisis of moral relativism and defines conservatism as reforming in order to preserve. Goeglein discusses a hopeful turn among young men toward marriage and faith, the harder trend among many young women, and the “unmarriageable” pool of men who are neither in school nor at work. In Aaron Renn’s “negative world,” he says the local church is still the best place to teach friendship, dating, and the family before those goods are forgotten.

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:01:35 – Focus on the Family

00:03:13 – Speaking in Public

00:04:01 – Faith and Government

00:06:45 – Danbury Letter Myth

00:08:07 – Washington on Virtue

00:10:17 – A Moral Republic

00:12:04 – Church Family Government

00:14:40 – What Really Matters

00:19:12 – Conservatism and Christ

00:20:44 – Reform to Preserve

00:23:19 – Young Men Turning

00:24:41 – Restoring the American Male

00:27:27 – Living in Negative World

00:28:54 – Church and Relationships

You can find out more about Tim Goeglein and Focus on the Family here: https://www.focusonthefamily.com/contributors/tim-goeglein/

You can follow Chase Spears on X @DrChaseSpears. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your favorite episodes to keep the conversation going.

To learn more about the Herzog Foundation, visit HerzogFoundation.com. Like and follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram, or sign up to receive monthly email updates.

#Faith #ChristianLiving #Military #Discipline #Morality #Politics #BiblicalMasculinity #Masculinity #ChristianPodcast #American #America #Army #Navy #AirForce #Marines #CoastGuard #SpaceForce #NationalGuard #ChristianMen