“Duck Commander” Phil Robertson spoke with SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily on Wednesday, talking about Torchbearer, a forthcoming documentary on how America’s Founding Fathers understood that turning to God in obedient faith is essential to the United States—or any country—flourishing as a just, prosperous, and peaceful nation.
Lamenting America’s turning its back on God and biblical truth, Robertson pronounced, “If you look around, the frustration you see coming out of America … is fundamentally being fueled because depravity has become mainstream. Murder is mainstream. We slaughter our own children. We prance around and parade our own perversion.”
But Robertson cited those only as examples, and believes that America’s current issues with abortion and rejecting Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality are just two symptoms of a much deeper and broader spiritual problem.
In what he calls “an indictment of the human race,” as heard in the movie’s trailer previewed by Breitbart News, Robertson quotes Romans 1:28, “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVDOK4PynZc
Directed by Bannon, produced by Citizens United President David Bossie, and written by Bannon, Breitbart Senior West Coast Editor Rebecca Mansour, and Robertson’s nephew Zach Dasher, Torchbearer unapologetically shines a spotlight on morality and history, examining both American culture today, and also the triumphs and tragedies of the past, through the biblical lens of a devout Christian.
The Robertson family’s patriarch described as “eerily breathtaking” his travels with Bannon to ancient sites throughout Europe in making the documentary, from Mars Hill in Athens, where the Apostle Paul first proclaimed the Christian faith to the Greeks as recorded in Acts 17:16–34 (“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”), to the Colosseum in Rome, which still stands today as a symbol for Roman persecution of Christians. (Historically, other locations in Rome were more commonly used for executing Christians, also seen in the film.)
Robertson told Bannon that this journey “made the Bible come alive.”
They also journeyed to more modern historical memorials showcasing the heights man can achieve when guided by divine principles, shooting footage at Normandy, as well as those revealing the depths man can fall to when left to his own devices, such as Paris as the epicenter of the bloody French Revolution, and even the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.
There were lighter moments, such as Bannon joking that he didn’t think Robertson knew his name, since the duck-hunting celebrity called him only “the Director” during their historical odyssey of faith spanning two continents.
But the interview focused on the somber lessons and stern warnings of Torchbearer, which are anything but light.
“I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime,” the Duck Dynasty star said of the expulsion and fervent rejection of biblical truth and Christian morality sweeping America, from the White House to public schools.
“We’re swimming in a sea of depravity, and I think this movie will at least shed a little light on what our Founding Fathers warned us about,” he observed.
Delivered in Robertson’s distinctive voice, simultaneously grizzled yet sonorous, the narrative surveys a global plague of “betrayal, hatred, murder, and war,” summing them up as, “the legacy of fallen mankind.”
“If there’s not a firm conviction of the God of Creation in the minds of human beings,” Torchbearer concludes, then there are no reliable safeguards on the human conscience to constrain people from evil behavior. “In the absence of God, the man with the biggest stick determines your worth.”
All this is contrasted with the bravery, decency, and sacrifice of those who answer God’s call, as Bannon and Robertson toured endless rows of crosses where Americans died to defeat the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy, to the cell in Birmingham Jail that held Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Bannon asked Robertson if there is still hope for America, the Duck Commander responded, “I think there is hope because the great thing that God has allowed is that we do—and can—repent of our wickedness and turn to him.”
However, Robertson warned of his fellow Americans in a tone reminiscent of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets of old, “They need to repent, and turn back to God, and heed the warnings of our Founding Fathers… I think there is a chance.”
Next week Bannon and Robertson will screen Torchbearer at the Cannes Film Festival in France, followed by the American premier, which will take place at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July.
Torchbearer could become a major film for the evangelical community in America, highlighting the stakes of the 2016 elections.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Listen to the entire interview below:
Ken Klukowski is legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.
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