About Jordan Sekulow

Jordan Sekulow is an attorney and cohost of Jay Sekulow Live!, a program providing cutting analysis of today’s political and legal landscape with elected officials and conservative leaders.

Jordan Sekulow has extensive background as a conservative grassroots political organizer. He served as the National Youth Director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign. He was also a consultant to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Jordan Sekulow regularly appears as a guest commentator on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc. where he is chosen for his expert analysis of complex legal issues and his conservative political savvy. He was a contributor to the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section with his own blog entitled “Religious Right Now” from 2010-2013. He covered social conservatives’ involvement in shaping America’s legal, political, and cultural landscape. Jordan also publishes articles for various nationally renowned conservative and mainstream publications. These include: the Washington Times, The Daily Caller, Human Events, and the National Review Online.

How Jordan Sekulow Keeps His Faith First

It’s interesting, here in Washington and we’re very blessed in the United States because we have these basic rights. Most of the battles we’re talking about are being fought here in the United States. The majority of our team, our staff, are from all over the world and are based here. We’re different. After you spend time with staff in places where you don’t have the inalienable rights that are not government created, or they’re are just not words on paper;they’re words that mean something.

So that’s what I think helps to keep the faith through all the battles. We have this special opportunity, we’re born here for a purpose, and are blessed with the unique gifts, and abilities. Those of us who practice in this area of law, or communicate the message, or work on Capitol Hill, or government affairs, we know we’re supposed to be here for a reason. I think it keeps you grounded and it’s just bigger than politics and bigger than one case.

Moral Flatness Among Christians

That’s how we got into a lot of the problems we’re in now. For a long time, the church was pretty meek and mild when it came to protecting rights. It was was kind of assumed that these rights would always be here. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about just the basic; what’s in the First Amendment, the free exercise of religion. The fact now that we’re having to defend World War 1 Memorials when there’s really no one around and if they have any kind of religious symbols whatsoever.

It was coming from the Supreme Court cases; things that were maybe more controversial and you say, “Ok, maybe this won’t impact me.” It’s started off with the prayer issue in the sixties, but that went from prayer in public schools and young people who are taking that same philosophy, and that same legal interpretation and saying, “Well, if that’s not ok, neither is the cross, neither are the Bible verses that are used all over Washington D.C. and on our National Monuments.”

We’re winning these in court, but if we weren’t there in court, you’d be leaving it up to local governments. Often they would rather just appease those who are threatening lawsuits, which is why groups like us exist. We’re talking about school boards and local communities, and we’ve had those cases even in the last eight, nine years, make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ten Commandments Monument that was in Utah was one of them. They decided to stand their ground on that issue and they won 9-0 at the Supreme Court. You can still win these cases, but you have to be willing to fight.

Why Jordan Sekulow Believes Christianity is Treated Differently By Unbelievers

If they’re tough enough to put out the Bible, a grim fairy tale, and Bible warning labels stickers, to sell on their website to raise money, then why don’t they have a Koran warning label?  The only answer I’ve ever heard them say is that they’re going after the majority. If you’re too much of a silent majority, and you’re not assertive, you’re too conservative if you fight for this. Ultimately we lose to the radical minority that wants to take out any references to our Judeo Christian founding.

As believers, the idea that a War Memorial may have a cross is not so shocking to most Americans. That’s not who’s bringing these challenges. It is and always has been a very radical, secular community, but they’re seizing on one. Like the War Memorial, they become legal battles and they cost a lot and they make people think twice. We’re fighting over memorials that are from the twenties, fifties, sixties.

Jordan Sekluow’s Advice on Staying Informed Without Being Consumed

You’ve got to keep the perspective. Some of us battle that more than others, especially in the line of work that we’re in. You can get pretty downtrodden. Of course it’s all consuming to a point because there is so much going on. We live in a unique place where taking your government to court is a constitutional right. You’re not going to win every case when you stand up for what you believe is right.

You can’t win everything, but you’re going to win more often if you do actually get involved. It could start at that very local level and you could have a huge impact. I think part of our faith is that we take advantage of where we are. Those of us who are blessed to be born in the USA, look at the bad that’s happening,. But if we just sit there then we’re not really doing what we can.

We all have the ability to effect things for good and I think that’s part of our faith, is that we have a legal system that works. You can file the lawsuit; we have an electoral process where you can effect real change and people can get elected and not just at the federal level, but at the community level. All of that combined is how we really exercise our faith especially in a country like this. We can blame our government, but ultimately our government is a representative of our selves.

The Importance of Voting

You know there’s people that look at voting that way and say, ‘Well, see my vote won’t matter. I’m from this state’. They focus all  of their attention on Presidential Politics and the big election years. Most of the decisions that you’re faced with daily are made from people who are elected at the local level. So many times those elections are not the best advertised.

It’s a little tougher to get information, but from now on most of us out there have very little excuse because you’ve got the unbelievable power of the internet to inform you, to get involved in these elections. To me it’s the first step. For young people out there, once you are able to exercise that right, registering to vote, and for those who maybe haven’t before, it’s the starting point, to get yourself engaged, to know what the issues are, and to care about them and to do something about it.

Jordan Sekulow and Saeed Abedini

It was the summer of 2012 when Saeed, who was an American citizen was first arrested in Iran in July and we got involved. We were about twenty four hours within his arrest, and we were involved with the family and we didn’t go public with anything. People may be a little surprised at that. This is how we have tried to handle these cases of persecution before in the past, until December of 2012. So right during Christmas just before 2013, we went public because it was apparent that Saeed would be tried and if you’re going to be tried in Iran, you’re going to be found guilty of something.  That’s when we went public and when people started finding out about it.

You know this is one of the toughest situations to take on and thankfully the American people  realized this is something they could be engaged in and they had to get their government’s attention. It was unfortunate to an extent; the first real petition drive, and I say this a lot of times speaking at places, because it does tell you the troubles we face, that we had to spend six months and almost seven hundred thousand people who signed a petition to get our executive branch, the Obama Administration, to publicly engage with this. Now ultimately, the President of the United States, President Obama, has spoken out. He did so publicly, calling for Saeed’s release at the National Prayer Breakfast, but that was after more than a  year of people, more than a year of going on every television network we could, and any interview we could.

America’s Interaction With Iran

We are very thankful Pastor Saeed’s wife is American and she’s here. Saeed has a wife who’s able to speak out publicly and she’s been to the United Nations with me a number of times; she’s given remarks at the United Nations Human Rights Council of the European Parliament, and of course with our elected officials here in Washington DC and around the country. Because of that ultimately, we were able to get our government to take it seriously, but it was very difficult. I know now they are very concerned  because though the U.S. Government said these things publicly, and we have this dialogue with Iran, why is Saeed not home?

I do have some positive information in that while this process continues and we have work going on that I can’t even get into on the broadcast,  we’ve got teams all around the world in places that are not the natural places you’d think we’d be going to for help or the most logical places if you didn’t think very deeply about it. Saeed is actually in a private hospital right now. He’s still technically in prison, but he’s been there for a few weeks and everyday there is an improvement.

He’s not gotten actual medical treatment, but he’s been given pain medication, obviously better food, better conditions, sanitary conditions, and has gotten to spend a lot more time with his family that’s still in Iran. At this point, Iran has not budged and we work hard everyday and we hope for a miracle. It will be a miracle type situation, however it turns out. We always have two goals: the first goal is to keep him alive and the second goal is to get him home and that’s first goal is very important.

Engaging in Politics and Truth

They all have to realize that you don’t have to be living this everyday to want to have an impact. Washington is only some of the United States. You could live in a rural congressional district, but your congressman’s vote is the same as a congressman who may represent an area of New York City. Senators, who are casting these votes. They make a difference.

They have no more power than senators from New York, and no less power so it’s important on that front. With issues like Saeed Abedini and the persecuted church, the New Testament and persecution of Paul are not as real time. We kind of see it as this is what was happening in the Roman Empire. But for these folks, like Saeed, who were Americans but born in Iran, the New Testament is very real time.

Until that wrong is righted we’ve got a lot of work to do. For most people that would be a lifetime’s worth of work and probably more to right the wrongs. There’s some strain of that within conservatives as well. But when we retreat, the persecution gets worse. Our brothers and sisters in many of these countries are the minority, something that most of us have never lived within our lifetime.

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