The Cost of My Faith: A Conversation with Jack Phillips

this is an interview i've been looking forward to for a long time we're here with jack phillips author of a new book called the cost of my faith but you probably recognize him because he has been at the heart of a supreme court case and really what might be called a cultural battle over religious freedom owns a cake shop in colorado and refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and to put it bluntly all hell broke loose so to speak culturally speaking and jack is with us today as well jonathan scruggs from adf uh to wayne if any legal issues come up jack i'm so honored you would be on this call and let me let me just ask you a question i'm so curious just tell me the back story before we get into some of the issues of the case and culture what's going on how did you become a baker and why did you want to do this in the first place well in the cost of my faith i i tell about the story um i grew up with just i loved art so i was always drawing and painting and sculpting into things and then in my senior year of high school we had to uh sit down and talk with a career counselor he asked me what do you want to do i told him i'd like to be an architect and he looks in my transcripts and he says you don't have the mouth for it okay i thought that would be handy information a couple of years ago and then he said what's your next choice i'd like to be an artist there's no money in it so i end up getting you know a job as a laborer i guess but a man across this that lived across the street from he owned a large wholesale bakery and he was gracious enough to hire me and soon i fell in love with bacon so put the two together uh that's awesome that makes perfect sense now this book is titled the cost of my faith so your faith is at the heart of your decision to fight this cake and also open masterpiece cake shop masterpiece cake shop will you tell us just the story i found it's so fascinating the book of you coming to faith yeah it's uh i was coming home from work i worked at at this bakery still the wholesale bakery with like 100 employees and i worked the night shift so i'd get up at you know anywhere between 6 and 10 in the morning and one morning my buddy says you want to run over to the bar with us you know i said oh no thanks i think i'll just head home so i hopped in my car and i was driving home and i was like five minutes from home and suddenly i felt that there was a a person in my car a presence in my car i'm not sure there was just no i wasn't alone and i knew immediately it was the holy spirit and as i drove down the road you know on the road that's like 40 miles an hour this whole thing takes like seconds and the holy spirit convicts me that i was a sinner and i grown up in church in sunday school and none of it made any sense i quit going to church like five years before okay and suddenly the whole plan of salvation christ dying on the cross paying for my sins all those things my guilt before you know holy god just was so clear from all the sunday school stories everything and uh i realized i was a sinner i needed a savior there was no other possibility but then it was jesus christ this was the holy spirit rescuing me and so uh you know tried to negotiate so you know let me clean up my life a little bit and you'll get a better deal he says yeah you can't and i realized you're right i can't i'm yours so just like that i became a follower of christ and and never looked back so my faith then has had an impact on everything that i do the way that i raise my kids where i run my business all those things there's so much about your marriage and your back story and your experience that we're skipping over here that you go through in the book and i honestly i couldn't put it down i really hope people will pick up the cost of my faith because it's well written it's fascinating it's timely but let's let's jump to you starting master peak cake shop i'm curious why did you start it and what's significant about the name well shortly after i started working in the bakery i thought this is a job that i can do long term you know there were people working at this wholesale place that were like 50 60 years old and still enjoying the job you know i can enjoy doing this too but eventually i'd like to own my own bakery and then the owner of the bakery bought out another shop that had cake decorators and when i saw how they could employ their art on a cake turn a cake into a canvas that's what it's that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna open my own bakery and it'll be a cake shop and i knew the name immediately would be masterpiece cake shop because masterpiece says our cake shop says cakes so um you know you're not going to go in looking for a loaf of bread and also then in masterpieces a new follower of christ uh the sermon on the mount jesus says no man can serve two masters and so i wanted to use that part of masterpiece to remind me every day when i come to work who am i gonna serve so all those things came together that's a brilliant double name that masterpiece tells people they're getting something of the highest quality but also kind of subtly in there is the master that you serve so so people understand from the beginning opening this bakery always has been an expression of who you are and who you are is tied to your faith is that true absolutely the you know every decision i make the way that i treat my employees i say the way i handle my marriage my money raised my kids all those were based on my relationship with jesus christ now i don't have a clue how to bake a cake i was interested reading through your book like i really don't i was more athlete background and really can't cook anything but i was reading through you're describing your backstory some of the cakes that you've made just pick maybe two or three over the decades of doing this that were just the most special or fun or meaningful cakes that you made for some event or some person um there's a picture in my book of a warehouse cake that we made a new uh you know grocery store distributor or food distributor was opening up a brand new warehouse and so we made a cake that was like on a board that was ten feet long and six feet wide or eight feet wide whatever we had to transport it in sections to get it to the site um trees that we you know bought the trees but we made everything out of icing and it was a lot of fun or just simple cakes like um i did one recently for you know a woman who just turned 103 and just like what is she like and so in a cake that we do quite often but a beautiful flower basket and just sometimes it's just the cake is simple sometimes it's really dramatic but it's always who you're making it for what the event is it really makes it special sometimes jack one of things that jumped out to me in your book is how you talked about your bakery brought your family together i'm close with my parents with my kids the mcdowell's just we are family oriented people so when i read that i just because i haven't owned a bakery and been there i had not really thought about it on that level but you talk about how this brought you closer to your dad before he passed away and right now it's brought you closer to your daughter would you share a little bit about that well with my dad my dad was a meat cutter and he worked in retail he worked in like packing houses and different things when he was young but while i was growing up he worked in meat markets and he just hated working with the public and he said i don't care what you do son just don't work with the public and then i've got this brilliant idea to open a retail bakery and i i wasn't afraid to tell my dad because my dad and i get along great you know i was like yeah this is probably the dumbest decision in my life you're going to think i'm going to open up a bakery really when where and he came in the very first day he helped me filled out the store and he was there virtually every day until he passed away back in 96 but that was a really special time getting to meet my dad sit down and talk and have breakfast and he befriended everybody that came in so it was always fun that's special now your daughter works for you too is that right or she did for a while yeah i have three kids and they all worked there at different points and uh one of my daughters was all excited that i was going to be on your show because she watches your show all the time so she's watching tonight oh my goodness i i tell her i actually i'll just say hi right here give her a shout out what's her name jennifer jennifer thanks for watching you have a great day and a great family you are more blessed than you know um in a second i want to jump to the day that changed everything for you when david and charlie came in and asked you to bake a same-sex uh bake a cake for a same-sex wedding but i'm curious do you remember the very first sale that you had at the bakery do you remember that i do i write about it the cost of my faith because we're up you know spending weeks trying to get the cake shop ready to open and then the night before i'm pouring cakes out of the oven and i get up in the morning and ice the first one i'm ready to put it in the store it's not an order or anything it's just hopefully somebody will come in and sell it or buy it and so this this gentleman walks in and he says yeah i need a cake and um well i have this one right here great can you write something on it for me i sure can so i write on it hand it to him box it up you know you're my first customer really like the first one today no my first one ever we just we just unlocked the doors and this man still comes in he was in probably february so that's so cool what a great story you served for years uh talked about how the love of christ motivated the way you treat your employees people that came in but on a specific day a gay couple came in david and charlie asked you to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding you said no and in the book you say there was 20 seconds that changed everything describe that scenario for us if you can yeah so it was a beautiful july afternoon it was thursday july the 19th 2012 and it's about 4 4 30 in the afternoon and i had two girls working in the store and i was working in the back and you know the protocol was that one girl would take care of the customers that came in the other would answer the phone if they're both busy then i would you know pick up the phone or wait on whoever and as it happened these two men came in sat at our wedding desk in a special area we have designed just for weddings wedding cakes on display and i looked out because uh both of them were busy and i want to make sure and they you know they're both busy and one of them motioned to me my other daughter lisa at their two guys over there so okay and so i went around to the wedding desk and i sat down and said i'm you know worm says i'm david i'm charlie and i didn't hear what he said excuse me oh charlie oh okay i'm jack what can i do for you david said we're here to look at wedding cakes and charlie says it's for our wedding and right away i knew what my answer was gonna be i just didn't know how i was gonna phrase it or how they would accept it i was like sorry guys i don't do cakes for same-sex weddings they just stared at me like what like you know i'll make you birthday cakes shower cakes sell you cookies brownies i just don't do crate cakes for same-sex weddings david immediately jumps up and he flips me off he storms out of one door and he's just yelling all the way and the other guy charlie picks up his folder that he had with him and walks over to one of the tables there was a woman sitting there that i hadn't noticed it turns out that that was his mom and so they gathered up their stuff and went out the other door wow that's not what i expected the whole conversation was like 19 words 20 words and 20 seconds and i was stunned now you make this clear in your book but you emphasize because it feels like people misunderstand this that you are not denying them service because of their sexual orientation you have served gay people it was about the message itself is is that fair that's yeah absolutely fair and accurate um if you look at a wedding cake think about a wedding cake say you were on a business conference and um you're headed down to the room at the hotel and you don't remember which one it is and you open up you know door number one and you see a cake standing in the corner on the table over there you don't think it's a business meeting it might be yours it could be something else you know instinctively it's a wedding because of that cake that wedding cake is a message in and of itself it's very iconic so when they asked for a cake that was to represent a wedding that was you know against the biblical teaching that i believe um that was just something that i couldn't create and i try it in those few sentences you know tell you i'll sell you cookies and brownies i'll make other custom cakes for you i just can't do that one now talk to me about some of the other cakes that you had decided you wouldn't make and it sounds like this wasn't a decision when they came in but when you opened up the shop you had already made a decision with your wife about this so give me some examples of other times you've said no to baking certain certain cakes yeah um when i had the dream to open the cake shop at first you know it's not like okay let's do this and next week i'm open it was you know years and in the process planning everything and one of the things that we had talked about was which cakes we would create in which cakes we could not and we decided you know we're not going to create cakes to celebrate halloween which is a huge money-making part of bakery life um we're not going to make cakes that are anti-american or that are racist or even disparage other people you know call them other you know call people names or tell people even people who identify as lgbt um we would make cakes with you know profanity on them so there were a number of cakes and the media kind of tries to make it look like you know he picked out these two guys and he won't serve days but it's it's the message of the cake and there are a lot of cakes that we can't create so if there was another christian baker who started their bakery and called something else but similar vision and said you know what i don't have a problem baking a cake for a same-sex wedding would you say no you shouldn't or would you say then make it according to your conscience i would say the latter you know it's up to each person and it's up to our government to protect the rights that god's given us that we have written down in our constitution the right free speech and the right to freely exercise our religion so for that person i'd say you know that's up to you i have to answer for god answer to god for my own actions fair enough so you say no within 20 seconds later get flipped off yelled at talk to me about some of the ensuing things that happened over a few days the response positive and negative that you received well the first couple days it was entirely negative starting 20 minutes after the two men left my shop um the phone rings and i said earlier the you know two girls working for me one would answer the phone the other would be waiting on the customers they were both busy so i grabbed the phone and uh so are you the guy who just turned away the gay couple he's like what are you talking about you know nobody was here but the three of us and the two men so that would never turn away anybody um well actually i would never turn away like you did refuse to make a wedding cake for him um trying to explain everything and then demand spews out a bunch of profanity hangs up on me like i was as stunned at that as it was for the two men you know starting out in my shop and then the phone rang again and then it rang again and a ring again and by the time i closed up just like 45 minutes later i'd probably taken six phone calls like down like what the world's going on and then the next morning friday morning i came in and i was here before seven we opened at seven i was here like an hour before that and the phone was already ringing and i decided i wasn't gonna answer the phone i stopped ringing i stopped answering the phone that night on thursday night at six when it closed and for me normally if you if i'm here at 10 o'clock at night the phone rings i'm gonna answer it you come up to my door i'm gonna let you in but that night i thought i'm not answering the phone tonight and in the morning it was ringing at seven o'clock i picked up the phone and the same thing continued all day long just profanity and threats and just hateful phone calls it's crazy and that continued i continued all day friday and saturday and monday tuesday oh my goodness so it just kept going for a while non-stop yeah now you you told a couple specific stories that frankly i stopped and i was reading last night i told my wife i'm like can you believe what happened here and one was about a man who threatened you with a gun explain what happened there and how you responded yeah so this was early i'm thinking it was probably the first week that this all started and uh um it was just the phone calls just kept coming and i decided you know while i'm open i'll answer the phone and i'll also open it and i'll be polite and i'll be you know as charming as i can be to whoever calls and if i have a chance to share the gospel i'll do that and i pick up the phone and this man says i'm on my way to your shop okay and i've got a gun wow i'm gonna blow your head off holy crap then he hangs up and then he calls back and he called back he called back he says i'm on this street i'm on that street and i'm about 10 minutes away and so i don't know what to do you know i'm not afraid to die but i don't want to do it with my daughter in the back and my three-year-old granddaughter with her and so i went back and told her i just got this phone call i'm not sure what to do but you guys stay in the back i'm gonna go call the police so i'll call the police and explain to the dispatcher you know i just have this man threatened to come kill me and so could you send a an officer out and so he showed up pretty quickly and uh i you know explained to him what was going on the story of the two you know david and charlie coming in and uh then the phone keeps ringing and caller id just showed a series of numbers it didn't you know give a name or anything like that and i say you want to take the call he said sure so he tries to pick it up and there's nobody there hang up call again hang up call again hang up call again and uh i don't know if maybe the guy was it was just a crank call or if he you know pulled by the parking lot saw the police car brunt and you know got better of his decision and uh but to my knowledge i never heard from that man again that was that was a wake-up call now all of this you're talking about is negative but you did receive some positive feedback of people who appreciate the principle and you tell one story about if i remember correctly a big guy muscles everywhere tattoos served in the military tell about this guy yeah he's just and he could be 150 pounds i don't know but in my mind knowing his background he was just one tough guy who's my age and he came in and he was in vietnam he was in black ops and and he said you're my hero wow just i was just overwhelmed we had a long conversation we've had many conversations since but he brought a special medallion not a war medal like a purple heart or anything like that but a medallion that um his company had created for each other and he gave me one and so i got that a special place in my office but um i'm talking to him and i don't know if you can see with the camera here but you know it chokes me up when i think about the share you know that conversation in this man and he black ops vietnam you know behind the lines doing all the crazy things and he's in tears telling me that i'm his hero jack because of what i do i receive a good amount of criticism pretty much daily on whether it's this youtube channel or it's on social media but when i was reading your book i thought i have two percent at best of what you've received how did you just emotionally or spiritually even cope with this well we're just talking my daughter just is reading the book and she's like i'm on chapter 15 and you know telling me different things but the night after david and charlie came in i closed up the shop and i stopped at the grocery store on my way home and i'm just stunned i don't i don't remember what i was thinking it was probably on autopilot but it was just not a normal run into the store pick up something and go home but i'm thinking everybody here knows what just happened and everybody hates me and i don't know you know what's going to happen and i walked through the double doors and then into the store and suddenly the holy spirit the word of god comes to me from timothy says god has not given this a spirit of fear but of love and power and the sound mind wow and suddenly i realized the sound mind came apart sound my part came through like nobody here knows this is just something that happened to me you know maybe it'll blow over i don't know but suddenly all the fear was gone and i've never had any any concern or worry since then it was just from the time that david and charlie left got the first phone call until i walked through that grocery store oh okay god's in control nothing can happen outside of his permission of command that's that's powerful jack now you told about when this this couple came in tell me about the first time you realized you were being prosecuted by the colorado civil rights commission oh well shortly after like a week or two after they had a protest out in front of our store and uh some news media came by and and i did an interview with one of the newsmen and then they said that they were coming back for another bigger protest the following week and during that one of those protests when there was more media that came to interview me one of the uh reporters said do you know that you've uh violated colorado civil rights he gave me the wrong number he said 301 601 28 284 whatever okay who knows all these things said no you know i didn't know that so i knew that there was a possibility and then we finally got the uh paperwork from the state you know filing the complaint and then went to the colorado civil rights division they run it through the commission the commission checks it out and said yep we have probable cause to pursue this complaint and so i think we got the actual paperwork and john knows exactly probably the date but it was probably october so they came in in july as three four months later that we were actually certain papers now what was this not so much the legal details but if this was true and you violated it would you have to shut down would you go to prison would you be fine what would have been the repercussions for you at the time the uh statute said that i could be fined five hundred dollars per charge and up to a year in jail and there were two charges yeah so conceivably a thousand dollars fine that's not that big of a deal but two years in jail yeah the bakery shuts down and then the commission also ruled that i had to either stop creating wedding cakes or that i had to create wedding cakes for everybody same-sex couples whoever and i also wouldn't by the way they wrote it my understanding is they wouldn't be able to you know participate in what the order looked like if somebody came in and they wanted a pornographic wedding cake or whatever i couldn't say no i can't create that i would have to create what they asked for so it was a point where not just the wedding cakes but any cake order that came in i would be subject to either making it or face the route of the commission again so i'm sure you thought of it this way i think you maybe phrase it this way so let me play a skeptic jack why not just bake the cake it's just ingredients how much money and time and we have jonathan on here would have saved his effort alliance defending freedom why not just bake the cake and get it over with because it's not just butter and eggs and sugar it's something that i i put my heart into god's given me an artistic talent um he's put me out through a lot of training different bakeries that i've worked out different things that i've learned and the reverence that i have for marriage itself this cake is not just a cake it's a cake that speaks volumes they said a wedding cake is an iconic symbol of a marriage and this is a marriage that goes completely against my understanding of the bible's definition of marriage god's creation of marriage so it's not just a cake jonathan maybe weigh in here for a second tell us legally kind of what's at stake here behind the cake because part of me looks at this and goes it's just a cake i can't believe we're making such a big deal about this but it represents something more doesn't it absolutely i mean these cases are so vital because it gives the heart of whether we as citizens have the right to choose what messages we celebrate and support uh and it's so important to stress that as jack has repeatedly said that he's not just fighting for his own freedom but for all of our freedoms even for those who disagree with them because if the government can force him to create a cake that expresses a message that he disagrees with the government can force an lgbt artist to say a message that they disagree with or a different christian or a muslim or a jewish person and these principles should protect everybody the government shouldn't have shouldn't have the power to step in and force someone uh to convey a message that violates their core convictions it's really powerful to hear you say that a part of this case is you actually want to defend the rights of lgbtq bakers to not bake a cake with a bible verse on it that would say something they find offensive or a muslim who doesn't want to bake something that's offensive to their face so this is not just about your christian faith it's about religious liberty and freedom as a whole in freedom of speech that's huge tell the story about when you went on the megan kelly today show and she asked you a question and your response i don't know if she was speechless but she didn't expect it and was taken off guard share that story with us if you can yeah it's what i'm thinking of um megyn kelly um came to kristen wagner who represented me at the u.s supreme court she was on the show with me just before we went on and said that the two men david and charlie couldn't be on the show today so she'd have to kind of take their side and so i'm thinking well so this suddenly turned into maybe a hostile interview and uh and it was a short interview so i wanted to make every point that i needed to right away and so she asked me her first question i said well first of all let me explain that at masterpiece cake shop we serve everybody that comes in we just don't create every cake that people ask us to and i explained to her that we had decided not to make halloween cakes or anti-american cakes or those things or even cakes that denigrate you know somebody who identifies as lgbt and she said oh okay what somebody would ask you for that yeah people have asked me to make you know kicks and say god hates gays using the other word i'm like i'm not gonna do that because it's the message of the cake it's not the you know it's not the person asking for the king it's okay i can't do and i really think you did caught catch her off guard because she had like had her next question ready to go and stopped and back pedals gave me a point and the opportunity to make that point again that's such a powerful response i want you to both weigh in on this from your perspectives but at the heart of this is free speech as i understand it so jack tell me why making a cake in your mind is an act of speech when i when a client comes in a customer comes in and like this grandmother that's like 103 um i sit and i talk with the with the client and say you know so what do you need when do you need it get through all the basic points okay so who's it for well it's for my grandmother she's going to be 103. now okay so this has to be a very special cake this is not just flour and eggs and butter like what do we want to do to really impress upon your grandma that you love her you know that she's really special in this special time so we sit down and we design it i'll make sketches i'll you know take all the time that i need to make sure that i've got the colors and the idea that they want and then i'm going to go back with my hands and my tools and i'm going to create something hopefully very artistic well it'd be very artistic but hopefully something that satisfies their desire in you know the final product and it's it's always art to me that's why i came up with the name or god gave me the name um masterpiece because i want it to be an artistic expression and the us supreme court has protected art as speech we even have a a picture hanging in the short in the store in the show showroom of uh an article that came out shortly after we opened then the newspaper article said that walking into masterpiece cake shop is like walking into an art gallery of cakes bingo that's what i want this is this is art this is speech so the government has protected art as free speech bacon a cake is art at masterpiece cake cake shop you should have that free speech that makes sense jonathan do you want to add anything legally to that yeah i mean the u.s supreme court has a pretty broad definition they protected video games as free speech and as jack was noted when you walk into a room and you see a three-tier white cake everyone knows hey this is a wedding cake and the message is communicating is there's a wedding going on there's a marriage and let's celebrate that's what weddings are all about so to force someone to handcraft that that that piece of artwork really does send a message that this is a wedding this is america that should be celebrated and to force jack to do that for a definition of marriage that he disagrees with really does force him to violate his beliefs his core convictions like i said no one should be forced to do that uh whether it be the lgbt artist or anyone else that's really helpful we're going to jump to the supreme court and your experience being in the court the arguments what it felt like but one last question for me that really jumped out to me in your book again those of you who've just joined us we're here with jack phillips who's written a book the cost of my faith and you will recognize him because he has been the heart of a supreme court ruling that now has been weighed on uh tied to whether or not a baker would be forced to make a cake for an issue that the baker disagrees with we're here with jonathan scruggs who's helped defend him from the adf and one of the things you say in your book jack is you say that you believe you showed a loving attitude to dave and charlie through this now i'm sure they would interpret it differently probably because they have a different understanding and definition of love but from your perspective tell me why that's important to you and what that looked like well it's it's my faith in my relationship with jesus christ that drives my relationships with other people including david and charlie and i said the conversation was 20 seconds long so i didn't get to sit down and explain my my opinions and you know my beliefs or anything like that um although charlie's mother called me up the next day and i had a short conversation with her about those things okay but if we did i would really you know want to impress on them that there are two men that i would love to serve i'd love to get to know them and serve them every other you know cake for every education that i could but there are some messages that i just can't create and so in the 20 seconds that we had the media wants it to sound like i just told them you know get out of my shop i won't serve you but that's the farthest thing from my mind my faith compels me it's not a rule you know the holy spirit living inside me wants me to you know treat everybody the way jesus christ did through love and if i would have had more time we could have maybe gotten past this but we didn't so as gently as i could sorry guys i can't create that cake what i'll so you know serve you in every other way that i can but i can't create that cake so i try to express it gently and compassionately with love but two sentences it's difficult but at least it wasn't a text it was face to face and they could see okay what i meant good i i love that now tell me a little bit this is in your book how you personally suffer because of this you mention relationally your reputation your time your finances just walk us through a little bit of how this personally affected you and your family um going through this case for years yeah well the uh when the commission ruled that i had to start making every wedding cake that came across my thing and i had to actually they required me to report to them quarterly for two years for any cake i turned down for any reason if i didn't have enough flour or you know my schedule is full i would be forced to you know report to them and then when we had to make the decision do we keep making wedding cakes or do we stop wedding cakes were a huge part of our business and you know i had employees just specifically for wedding cakes basically a delivery man who gives up every saturday of the year basically because you never know when a wedding can come in and he could come in at seven in the morning on saturday and be running cakes from one corner of the city to the other all day and then you know on friday and saturday weddings or other deliveries we had then part-time people working for me out front to do the wedding consultations and i jump in and you know make sure that we got everything right but they would handle all the samples and everything um just the bookkeeping there were just so many aspects to this and when they took away the wedding business we went from ten employees down to four and i was one of them my daughter was a full-time employee and the other two were part-time so um it was really hard not not hard to say you know like what's god doing you know i know what he does is good and right and i just want to be obedient and follow what he asked me to do i know that you know if we close down the have to close down the bakery i'd be fine with that so long as i did it for a reason that was honoring to him and if he got us through this that'd be all the more reason to say you know look what he did you know he got us through all this and he has so um but there were some really hard times you know through that you know financially watching my wife was afraid to commit to the shop you know just because you didn't know what the phone was going to be like or you know she early on i pulled up to the shop and she was talking to me on my cell so is there any graffiti there no but channel 2 is outside you know so you just didn't know what to expect and it was it was especially hard for them yeah i can imagine that would be just difficult and painful on a lot of different different levels um let's let's jump to the scotus case and i forget what chapter it is but you start describing that a d in fact let me ask one more question for jonathan yeah jonathan why did the alliance defending freedom take this case well i think we saw that across the country people like jack other creative professionals are really being targeted in this type of environment by these types of laws and that's actually proven even after jack's supreme court case that people are using these laws as almost as an arm of cancer culture right to isolate people that hold certain religious views particularly about marriage and to target them and come after them and it is really unfortunate because if that happens then you know where where are the christians going to be involved in these industries to live out their faith to love and serve the people they interact with so we need this is a vital principle to say the government shouldn't have this power and the people of shake should be able to bring their faith into their works into their jobs and into the public square that's the that's the best thing in a pluralistic society that we learn to live with each other and to disagree with each other with tolerance so very quickly were there other bakeries that would have designed a beautiful cake for this same-sex couple proximate to where your shop is jack there is one i could walk there in two minutes and a wonderful cake shop they do beautiful work um you just go out of my parking lot through the intersection to the next parking lot and they're right there and i think the supreme court briefs uh said that there were 67 or 87 bakeries that advertised in gay friendly magazines that they would create wedding gigs so it wasn't like i'm the only game in town they could have gone pretty much anywhere and then they actually did get their cake given to them for free oh wow on top of that very interesting okay describe for me the day you're waking up and you are going to the supreme court of the united states like i i'm reading this in your book and i'm putting myself in your shoes going my alarm goes off i'm putting on a suit presumably and i'm going into the most powerful court in the world what were you thinking and what are some of the things that stand out that you saw during that day going into the court and then we'll get to some of the oral arguments yeah we went in through a side door but out on the sidewalk in front of the court there was a rally going on i don't know how many people just hundreds of people maybe i don't know dozens but more people than i would expect and uh three quarters of them were supporting as they were holding signs and banners and yelling and screaming and there were people who hated us and you know holding the opposite signs and and just going in the court then once we get into the court um you have to go through one hallway down this hallway over here and wait here and the halls were full of people and you don't know which ones are on your side which ones aren't and so they you know the attorneys you know follow me go over here go over here and then there were federal marshals court martials there in the hallways maintaining absolute science silence it will be quiet in here and then noise drops down to nothing and it will start murmuring and the volume builds up it will be quiet in here you will be just to make sure that you understood that this is not traffic court this is the united states supreme court so then you finally go up through you go through security a couple of times and you're not allowed to take anything in there about a pencil and a paper no cameras no phones no anything and then you just when they lead you into the room we were there quite a while before the justices came in and before it started i'm thinking 45 minutes to an hour before we have to sit there again in absolute silence because there are marshals in there too and uh i looked from one corner to the other and i realized that not only was i you know the center of the of the arguments here i was actually like seated in the very center of the room that that was wow that was kind of cool wow but uh then when the justices come out you know all rise and we all stand up and there's ginsburg and there's thomas and robinson kennedy and he's like i've been reading reading about all these people and here they are and you know there's gonna they're gonna rule on my future but not only my future because i've realized before this this isn't just jacking making wedding cakes this is every american's right to live and work according to their conscience without fear of punishment and they're gonna listen to the arguments today and then they're gonna retire and they're gonna make their decision and uh you know people ask me what's it like to testify there and there was no testifying on my part it was just yeah kristen wagner the attorney goes to the podium and the nine justices just start asking questions and she has to feel them and answer every question accurately quickly compellingly go to the next question go to the next one and go to the next one you don't know what the subject's gonna be but she was completely absolutely stunningly prepared for these arguments it was pretty cool jonathan i'm going to ask you to paint the pictures so we understand legally what's going on but one of the things in your book i didn't know i think you said about 70 seats for the public it's first come first serve and people camped out for five days brought their own food to get in that's amazing to me now jonathan paint kind of give us a sense of how long does this go who testifies what are the judges trying to accomplish as if we are viewing this what would it be like if we were sitting there watching this take place well there's no testimony from witnesses as jack said it's just nine justices up there and asking questions to lawyers to two lawyers one from each side so our our attorney christian ryder went first and any justice can answer ask any question about really anything at any point so it's really a quick fire situation you've got to think on your feet the justice can ask any type of legal question any type of factual question what happened on this day or what about this case about this detail and there's a lot of time and effort that goes into that right in preparation sure to do walk run throughs and asking question after question to practice the whole thing lasts about an hour and it is a very intense session as you can imagine but kristen did a great job and i think it it showed in the result that you know ultimately in the day the supreme court ruled seven to two uh you know two away from the unanimous verdict that the state of colorado showed hostility towards jack's fate and that's really unfortunate that it came to that that that's the reason we have this constitution is protect people of different ways different views and the government should doesn't have the right to show hostility to single out jack just because of his religious police jack one of the things that seemed to be most biting to you from the colorado civil rights commission was that they compared your refusal to bake this cake to the holocaust those who perpetrated it now you share a personal story about if it was your father grandfather i forget when i read that share that story if you don't mind yeah and again because of opening the cake shop and my dad coming down you know pretty much every morning got to know him better but one of these commissioners called religious freedom a despicable piece of rhetoric and then compared my faith to you know perpetrators of the holocaust and slavery and it's like you either have no understanding of the holocaust or i don't know but my dad served in world war ii and he landed on normandy and he fought in france and he fought in germany and he took a a terrible wound in his back in a mortar attack and they shipped him back to england and patched him up and sent him back into combat and he ended up being part of a group that liberated buchenvault prison concentration camp and he talked about the smells and just the horror of that you can look up pictures of book and ball that's not just like a county prison it was one of the you know horrific prison concentration camps of the nazis and for this woman to compare my decision not to create a cake that violated my faith to that horrible situation was just ludicrous oh my goodness that seems to bite as deeply as it could that you almost wouldn't be here presuming you were born after that maybe that's not the case much after that yeah lunch after that yeah actually that makes no sense mathematically for me to pause of course much after that got it um god i can't believe that that comparison would be made i'm sorry you had to go through that now so that case is done it's all in one day you don't come back was it about six months until you heard is that the time span yeah we went to the supreme court december the 5th 2017 and we were in there for about an hour and a half they extended our argument time and and that was pretty cool then we went out and did the rally and and did some things in dc and then headed home and waited for the decision and the decision didn't come until june of 2018 and i really expected the decision to come on the last day of the of the session which we were had our case granted in 2017 june 2017 on the very last date last thing that they were doing that they was announcing the cases they would take and releasing the opinions so i was expecting it to be the last day this time too and one of my sisters called me up and said are you you know keeping track of scotus blog and scotus is supreme court of the us and there's a website that attracts the united states supreme court i said oh no i really haven't because i'm not expecting you know to hear anything until you know next couple three four weeks but i turned on my computer that morning and i was watching scotus vlog and i see the vlog it says looks like we have i can't you know i lose my voice even now a couple years later but that morning i could not speak we have um we have a masterpiece cake shop and looks like they win seven to two wow so i just i can't call anybody because i can't talk so i'm texting people and the phone starts ringing cars are driving by our shop they're honking they're waving the newspapers are calling it was just a crazy day and you know i i think that god gave the united states 200 years ago some very brilliant people to put together this government that we have from scratch including the justical judicial system and it worked it worked well that time unfortunately it's populated by people so it doesn't always work but i know god was gracious to our country to give us this wonderful system that we have and to be there that day and and know what was going on and how powerful this court is and what that meant that's again not just for me but for all americans was just overwhelming jonathan what was your impression of this case were you surprised in any fashion what did you expect going into hearing the ruling well i mean we're confident our arguments uh we are hopeful that we are going to win whether on free speech as we talked about or the free exercise religion and we are just excited not just that we wanted but it was a 72 victory this one a close call in some ways and again to get the vast majority of the court on the same page saying the government can't sing well religious people even when they're expressing their views on marriage because in our day and age some people dislike this and some people consider them controversial and to get that clear statement from the u.s supreme court uh it's so vital that freedom of speech should go both ways it shouldn't just be for those who hold certain opinions should be for those who agree with the government it should protect people of faith across the board and so that was such an important decision uh to get reaffirmed in jack's victory now jack presumably you think this is done you can go back to baking cakes but there was masterpiece cake shop two too can you tell me what happened uh with a follow up yeah so the day that the court granted our case back in 2017 was another busy crazy chaotic day and on that day um we had a phone call from an attorney here in colorado and this attorney requested that we create a custom cake and the cake would be blue on the outside and pink on the inside and the colors were to celebrate a gender transition a changing from a male to a female and again we try to explain to this person that's not a cake that we can create that's a message that we can't promote but we'll sell it gladly sell you you know anything in our store or make other custom work for you but that wasn't good enough so this this attorney filed a complaint with the same civil rights commission that uh attacked us in the first case and they found three weeks after we get our victory at the supreme court and the united states supreme court um told the commission that you were hostile to jack and his faith and you can't do that and you didn't treat him equally with other cake shops and bakeries in town and you have to and they ignored that and you know decided that they were going to take up this new case and so they did but then then the following march they dismissed the charges and they dismissed the charges because we have a recording of one of their public meetings where they said that they were going to be even more hustle to me in my faith in the first question was that they embraced that and so the the commission dropped the case but then the attorney who's filed that complaint waited for a certain amount of time in a legal window whatever and then filed a civil complaint against me so we're back in court again for masterpiece three and just in march we just finished uh the trial bench trial with that case and this attorney in during mediation um the mediator asked me one time or asked us all have you two had a face-to-face conversation and we hadn't it's just a phone conversation asking for the cake that day that the court granted our case would that be something that could be set up and so um back in november this attorney and myself went to a cafe in a local community here and jonathan scruggs met me and took me over there and and we sat for a couple hours and and talked about these issues and toward the end of this conversation this attorney told me that well you know if you win this case or if it's thrown out on any technicality i will come back the next day with another cake and we'll start all over again my goodness and so part of this this attorney's reasoning is that um filed a lawsuit to uh correct the error of my thinking and if the courts back that up that's a very frightening time for any american for any person in the world but for an american where we have these these liberties clearly written in our constitution um it's a very frightening thing jonathan on masterpiece cakeshop two and three how was the legal strategy a little bit different than the initial one that went all the way to the supreme court well it's similar principles but it is a different request for a different cage miss jack noted the facts i think of this reading more grievous right that this attorney at paul had also requested other absurd cakes like kids was celebrating satan uh satan you know or also had emailed uh the government and asked to ask the government to prosecute jeff uh numerous times so this was not some happenstance encounter this is really uh harassment pure and simple the someone using these laws to try to cancel jack phillips not because of what he's done or anything he's done because of what he believes and that that's why the first movement exists the person that exists to prevent uh whether it be a private party or the the private party using the judicial system or the government from trying to target someone like this so we're gonna we're using the same arguments with one in masterpiece one we've won in masterpiece two and we're confident we're gonna win this case as well jack what have you learned through all this i mean this has been years i can't imagine how draining it is what have you learned personally spiritually relationally about yourself give us a couple life lessons that we could take away from your experience yeah one of the obvious ones is if this can happen to me because i'm just as you know a small businessman in a small business here in lakewood denver colorado it can happen to anybody but we knew right from the start before we opened our cake shop that there were cakes that we couldn't create we discussed that a couple times here but we drew our lines in the sand and then um one of the things that we decided we wouldn't create was halloween cakes so every year uh people call us up and ask us to create these cakes and we get the chance to explain that we can't and i believe that was you know god's grace in giving us practice so that when the big event comes up it didn't catch us off guard we are already used to this is our line and we can't cross it because it would dishonor my god and i wouldn't be faithful and so when this one came up we knew where we would stand so that's one of the main things that i'm so grateful for that god has provided everything we need even those trials leading up to it were practiced to get to the big trial and then to watch his provision through all of this you know not just supplying adf which sure i i couldn't afford to take a lawyer lunch let alone have a team of lawyers working beside me all the way through for almost nine years now yeah just he's provided so many things and showing his grace and his love and his you know uh eventually he'll show his you know justice and and sovereignty that way too so it gives us the opportunity to share our faith so many times um we have a joke that we should open a cake shop because sometimes conversations have nothing to do with bakeries and people just come by to see the baker or whatever they come to encourage me and we get to encourage him so just seeing god's provision his faithfulness and his love has been just the most wonderful thing that has happened through all of this a final question for you if you could role play with me obviously there's people watching this there's people who see this very differently because they have a different world view and when interpret you not baking the cake as being discriminatory hateful and unloving if somebody says to your calls and says jack you're a bigot just bake the cake what would you say um you know it depends on how the conversation can unfold but hopefully i will share that my faith is in jesus christ that i have a strong relationship with him and i want to honor him but that it's not the person who's asking for the cake it's the cake itself and try and if possible like what do you do for a living and then show you know why paint houses or whatever it is and then try and find common ground where um you know i'm i'm a singer okay so if you were a you know a singer who maybe a muslim singer you would now be required to sing in an easter service you know would it be loving for me to make you do that or whatever you know just try and find some some correlation where they can understand that there's a reason that i couldn't create the cake and it's never never never the person who's ordering the cake and i want to show love and grace to the relationship that i have with christ well jack i'm sorry that you have had to go through this but i've been following this from afar and i'm just grateful that you've tried to honor the lord through this try to be loving towards people as best you can but also stand up and kind of take the hits so to speak you have a line in the book that says you know we lose liberty and freedom when people don't stand up and that's not going to happen on your watch so i love that it's a book of courage it's wonderfully written just draws you in the story is fascinating i hope viewers will pick up the cost of my faith and uh jonathan thanks so much for what you do at adf uh this is one of the most important cases today and we appreciate you coming behind jack all the things you do to preserve religious liberty not just for christians but for all americans regardless of their worldview regardless of their faith that's a good so appreciate a ton hey those of you watching make sure you hit the subscribe button this channel is brought to you by talbot apologetics and we have a fully distance masters program we would love to partner with you and train you to be a resource in your church your family your community there's information below and again make sure you subscribe a couple interviews we have come up with michael wilder has a fascinating book and it's a story kind of like yours jack where he actually was on a mormon mission trip and ends up from his perspective discovering the real jesus and paying the price for leaving the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints we also have an interview coming up with carl truman who wrote what i think is one of the best books i've read all year the rise and triumph of the modern self you're not going to want to miss this and by the way those who enjoy this channel i'm making some huge changes coming out in the next week so stay tuned some really cool stuff is coming jonathan jack hang on don't disappear but to the rest of you thanks so much for tuning in if you enjoyed this please consider sharing it with somebody it helps us here at talent apologetics to spread the word have a wonderful night thanks for tuning in

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 21,516

Keywords: faith, masterpiece, LGBTQ, sue, court, SCOTUS, Jack Phillips, religious liberty, religious freedom, the cost of my faith, Bake the cake

Id: BHQCwYLNYLk

Length: 58min 53sec (3533 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021