Out of Zion

Dr. Susan Michael: Welcome to today's Out of Zion podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Michael, and I am so happy to have with me today a dear friend, longtime colleague in Washington, DC, and supporter of Israel. She does such an amazing work, and that's Penny Nance. She is the President and CEO of Concerned Women for America and does a fabulous job. Penny, I'm just so happy to be able to introduce her to you and find out a little bit more about her work.

Penny Nance: Thank you. That was very sweet. Thank you, Susan. I'm also a fan of yours, so I appreciate all the great work you all do. We've known each other a number of years and are in the battle together in support of Israel, especially in the Washington, DC circles. I've also begun working with your Young Women for America, working on the campuses. That seems to be the big issue today. Everyone's very concerned about the younger generation. Are we losing them to the faith? Are we losing them in support of Israel and even other issues? I know that you've really got your thumb on the pulse of that.

We want to hear about your work with the campuses and what you're observing. You're right to be worried. I came back to CWA—I was a young lobbyist there in my 20s and then I got married. My husband worked for Prison Fellowship Ministries. We got married and had babies pretty quickly, a little sooner than we planned. Three months after we got married, I found out I was pregnant. Our first anniversary, I had to rush home to nurse. God's timing is perfect. That's our beautiful Claire, and then we have a son who's active-duty military.

When I came back to CWA in 2010, Mrs. LaHaye asked me to come back and run the organization as CEO and President. We prayed about it as a family, and I agreed to do it. When I came back, I realized our members had aged as an organization. That tends to be the case. Mrs. LaHaye brought people in, and there were people more in my age group, but we really were missing out on the younger ones. I started to look around and realized that conservatives have not invested in our young people, particularly young women, the way the left has. They spend billions of dollars a year.

That's wrong on many levels. It's foolish because this is the next generation, but also there's the biblical principle of Titus 2, for the older women to teach the younger women, and we weren't doing that. So we started Young Women for America, and it has just blown up. We have about 400 chapters and leaders around the country on campuses, and they are incredible. These are godly Christian girls who love the Lord, who believe their Bible, who are outspoken Esthers of this time, and they are the worst nightmare of the keffiyeh-wearing boys on college campuses all over this country. They're not having it.

After October 7, they led all sorts of rallies and prayer times where they brought in their Jewish students and friends and linked arms with them in a way that I've never seen before. Just out of kindness and compassion, I attended one of those in South Carolina at Clemson University. The head of the Jewish fraternity came, and he just cried. He said, "This is the first time since October 7 I've felt supported on my campus." I thought, how is that possible? This is red-state South Carolina. How is this possible? But it was.

So, it's been an incredibly life-giving, life-bringing opportunity for them. But the other thing that people need to be aware of is there has been—and I think people are starting to become aware of—this insidious movement. I call it a cancer on our movement, of antisemitism that has sneaked into the movement via some very prominent voices. Candace Owens is one of them. People that respect her, that love her, that have followed her, and all of a sudden she's saying out-and-out lies, and they're buying into it.

It's the same old tropes. It's always the Jews' fault. When Charlie Kirk was shot, somehow Mossad was supposed to be a part of it. It's just absolutely ridiculous, but you'd be surprised how many people listen. So, CWA has been very outspoken on that. We've said that we will absolutely call it out when we see it. There's no room for antisemitism in our movement, and we won't work with people that are.

William F. Buckley, in the 1950s, realized the KKK and some other conspiracy theorists had started to infiltrate the conservative movement. At that time, of course, he was the publisher of National Review, and he said we've got to root it out where we find it. He did. He managed to do that. Out of that came the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964 and Ronald Reagan, and sort of the flourishing of the movement. We have to be very serious. The Bible is very clear: "I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee."

We need to love Israel for many reasons. On a geopolitical level, Israel is the only other democracy in the Middle East. It brings gifts to people around the world, including medical technology like the PET scan. Your iPhone has all sorts of components in it—it makes me laugh like the anti-free Gaza people that are carrying around their iPhones. If you're going to join the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, you better put down that phone because you're not going to have it without Israel. Your computer, so many things.

So, even if you don't agree with me from a biblical standpoint, you must understand that the US-Israel relationship is potent, important, and strategic for the United States. Israel is going nowhere. It's the only Jewish state in the entire world, where there's 55 majority-Muslim countries around the world. So, one little state, the country the size of New Jersey, and all this to-do around it? I don't know how to explain that other than spiritual warfare.

Dr. Susan Michael: Absolutely. Tell us, I'm so encouraged to hear you have 400 young women on these campuses—well, many more than that, but those are the chapters. That's just the presidents and ambassadors. Give us some stories of what they've encountered on campus and how you train them to handle these situations.

Penny Nance: We bring them to Washington at least once a year, and usually, there's a seminar separately just for the chapter presidents, a couple of levels of leadership. We teach them the biblical principles, free market principles, and constitutional principles. We teach them the undergirdings of what they believe and why they believe it, and we train them to be ready to give an answer when they're asked, to do an interview like we're doing here.

We teach them to lobby. They go constantly. They're asked to come and give testimony before state legislatures and Congress on trans identity, the whole trans movement, and women in sports. They've been very outspoken. I think last week we had three different state legislatures that our young women were testifying in committee on bills that had to do with the unique dignity of women and women's sports only for women, because many of them are athletes. A lot of young leaders come up through athletics and learn competition and all the great things through that.

So, we are training them to be leaders, and they love it and they're growing. Honestly, the issue is I just need enough staff to keep up with them because they're all volunteers. I could grow that beyond imagination because, really, we're not just bringing numbers. There's a lot of mentorship involved. They're young people, they need a lot, and so we're working along with them and keeping in touch with them and making sure that they're really learning and growing and are okay because it's a lot. In some cases, it doesn't make them popular.

I think about CWA—we were ahead of a lot of people on the trans movement, trans identity, and women's sports. Ten years ago, we were trying to sound the alarm that when you put gender in a policy or in a law, this is what they mean. They mean 72 genders, they don't mean men and women. Literally, people laughed. They said, "What are you talking about? That can't be true. Don't be alarmist. Don't worry your pretty little head about it." We said, "No, this is real." We kept going.

Then the race, the NCAA swim meet with Lia Thomas versus Riley Gaines, came to the forefront. Well, we had already been working on it. Outside that actual swim meet, we were having a rally already. Our Young Women for America leader, who was running it and was at the press conference, had to have armed security. The school actually gave it to her because they were threatening her over it. But she's tiny. She's like 4'11", a little spitfire, and she was like, "They couldn't intimidate her." She said, "Bring it. I'm doing what's right. I'm going to do it, you can't stop me."

The interesting thing is we also, just to fast forward on that, on that same day filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education against UPenn. Why did they put a man in that situation? Why did these young women have to share a locker room with a man? Why did they have to lose their trophies to a man? We recently won on that. The Trump administration and Linda McMahon, who's the Education Secretary, ruled in our favor, forced UPenn to pay a fine, and forced them to send notes of apology to everybody involved. They forced them to take down the numbers for Lia Thomas and gave the trophy to the rightful owners, and we've moved forward since then. But I will tell people we have President Trump, who's been great on this, but we don't have it in law now. It's just an executive order, and those change with every administration. So, we've got to get it over the finish line into law.

Dr. Susan Michael: Your young women on these campuses have to feel the battle is increased, and when it comes to the Israel issue, even more so. Give us some of your observations in that and some of the stories of what they're encountering.

Penny Nance: It's not odd for them. I heard one woman talk about—she was actually a Jewish student and she said that she went to this, during October 7. Someone set up an Israel flag. She said she wasn't even wearing it, she just had it kind of balled up in her hand, and she's walking through campus and somebody got in her face and called her a "dirty Jew." We're hearing these stories over and over again.

When our girls have done events, they've had people show up with signs and heckle them and yell at them. But listen, I could talk about that, but I don't very much because I feel like whatever the other side does just makes them stronger. They are just called to this fight. We worked really closely also with the hostage families and brought, in the last training, the Neutra family, the parents of Omer Neutra, who was one of the last three hostages to come home.

We also brought them to the Republican Convention. They were the Jewish couple whose hostage parents spoke. Because of that, the Democrats also had to do that, which we were very happy about because they were already ready to just ignore the whole thing. President Trump knew them and knew to keep his foot on the gas to insist that Omer Neutra's body was brought back to his parents. We've stayed in contact with them. But there is still so much hurt, and the antisemitism is definitely still on college campuses right now. It's not going away. We just have to train people to stand up, understand the truth, be able to speak truth in those situations, speak truth to power, and be involved with their local college president and say, "Absolutely not, and by the way, we're not going to do a BDS movement on our college campus finances either."

Dr. Susan Michael: God bless you and your young people. That's just so incredible to know about them. Tell me, what do you think that we need to do to make a difference against the antisemitism, against these right-wing voices that are really influencing the young people? How can we make a difference there?

Penny Nance: I would say one thing people can do—if they don't feel ready and really feel like they have the information—is your organization has great information. We have an entire lesson plan on Israel, on the history of Israel, on basically the issues around Israel and antisemitism. If people want to come to our website, concernedwomen.org, they can order that.

But you need to educate yourself. Then really pray about God giving you the opportunities and be willing to speak. When you hear it, you need to speak up and you need to let others know. I have been so blessed by the reaction of Jewish people because they're not used to Christians taking their part. I think they're all still wounded by the fact that—and you and I both know this, it's not easy for me to say, I hate saying it—during World War II, there were a great many Christians who cared, but there were way more who were not interested and didn't want to hear it.

It's kind of like things today. They didn't want to hear bad news about the Holocaust. I even read a book by Joel Rosenberg and was heartbroken to realize there was a church really on the campus of Auschwitz, on that actual site, in which Nazi soldiers were going to church every Sunday. So, they remember all this. They know all of this. Wouldn't it be great if Christians could say, "Never again. We're not going to let this happen again, and where we see it, we're going to call it out."

That means not listening to voices that are antisemitic, calling it out and calling it what it is. Do not give money to those people. Then support groups like yours and groups like mine that are actually doing the good work. It's easy to say "never again," but it's not easy to actually open your mouth and speak out against what you see and what you hear. That was the fault, the problem with the church in Germany—they didn't speak up. They might have not agreed with what was happening, but they were afraid and they were not willing to pay a price for speaking out.

I can't believe when I hear people quoting—and it's very few, let's be real, and they get an outsized bit of attention. I think about Nick Fuentes quoting Stalin and Hitler. I just can't believe it. But these are narcissistic people who want attention and they're willing to do it. But we should be willing to call it out. Was this what it was like in the 1930s, before the actual World War II, as Hitler is coming to power? Germany was the most educated country in the world and one of the most affluent. It's not as if they were purely ignorant. They should have known better, but the people that did know were afraid to speak up, and then by the time they realized how bad it was, it was too late.

The people that carried out the Holocaust were actually educated people. They thought what they were doing was right because they had been brainwashed. That's how it starts. People think about—and listen, I believe in the First Amendment, everybody has the right to speak, and the truth is the answer to that is more free speech, right? Not less free speech. However, I will say that when you platform people who have horrific ideas about antisemitism and don't specifically platform them but don't challenge them, that's even worse. So, you're really feeding it. We know that advertising changes minds, feelings, and actions. That's why we spend billions and billions of dollars a year on advertising around the world. So, those thoughts and images have impact. Your job, all of you, your job is to counter that.

Dr. Susan Michael: Amen. Well, as we bring this to a close, what would be like a final thought, something that you really want to encourage our listening audience to know or to do, how to respond to this?

Penny Nance: I'll close with two things. One is, sign up for our weekly updates. It will really just kind of give you an idea of what we're doing if you want to be involved or even if you just want to pray over what we're doing. You go to concernedwomen.org, follow us on all the social media: CWA, YWA. I have my own, and I think it's a good way to have just sort of a thought and an idea of what we're doing.

I love Reagan. I always quote Reagan. I think this is really essential for now. He said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free." It's on us.

Dr. Susan Michael: How profound. Thank you for raising up an army of young women to be they're already today's Christian leaders, but tomorrow's Christian leaders. They're going to run our nation one day. We may have our first woman president among that group, we'll see. There you go. They're going to impact their generation. I want to thank you for your great work. Love and appreciate you. It's great to have had you with us today. Thank you so much for joining. We will put links to the websites that she mentioned for Concerned Women for America in today's show notes. We'll see you back here. Thank you and God bless.

Just give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes and if you go to our website at icejusa.org/shownotes, you'll find links for a number of our free offers. We have downloadables to help root you in scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel and the importance of Christian support for Israel. And don't forget, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you and God bless.