The arc matex show or so they tell me Part of what I like to do on this show is introduce my audience which would be you technically To people that I've gotten to know to new friends new ideas Recently I was in Birmingham Alabama with my friend Larry Taunton He's with the fixed point foundation He's been on this program many times And we were doing a conference there And he brought a few people to the conference as speakers whose work I was unfamiliar with One of them is CL Bryant And I had such a fun time getting to know CL Bryant that I said hey you know what would be a nice gesture to let my audience know who see how Brian is into bless you as I have been blessed So my guess for the day CL Bryant CL welcome to the ark metaxas show Thank you so much for the invitation and I'm glad to be here with you Eric Well we had fun with Larry Taunton in Birmingham and part of the fun for me was getting to know you And so let me tell my audience you've been a minister for over 35 years you're in Shreveport Louisiana You were the president of the NAA CP I want to ask you about that You made a film and award winning film called runaway slave I want to talk to you about that You've written a book called a race for freedom You're a senior fellow with freedom works and you're the host of the CL Bryant show So if somebody doesn't know anything about you I've just listed a bunch of things but tell us I mean I know a little bit about this but I want my audience to get to know you Where did you grow up How did you come to be serious about your faith about your conservative view of political situation What's your story Growing up in a middle class black home upper middle class black home I was privileged as a child growing up in America And many of us don't realize that the middle class black Americans in this country have indeed benefited from the fruits of liberty Only one side of that is shown and my life story is one that shows a conservative core value rooted in grounded and faith the church I'm a child of the 60s I was born in the late 50s And so I grew up in an era when America was changing And of course my parents were activists They were a part of that change My father was in the restaurant business and all of that Some people will say that well maybe you've never seen the other side of it Well well yes we have Because all of our parents and so forth who came to this country regardless of how we got here have experienced struggles And so have mine but it led me through the NAACP and let me also to the Tea Party this lifestyle of mine and his life that I've led in this great land of America And that's the story that I was telling when you and I were in Birmingham together and I do admire your work as well Eric as so many millions of us do And I'm just so happy to be here to share as much of it as I possibly can with you of my life Well part of what our friend Larry Taunton did and organizing this conference was help us to get to know each other not just you and me but the other folks who were there it's important actually that we know who is out there who's working on the same team What is their story When you mentioned growing up in a middle class or upper middle class home we're living in a time right now that makes it sound like being middle class or upper middle class is white That's how crazy things are There is a group of people on the pretty radical left who are redefining everything and they're defining blackness not about the color of your skin but about an attitude It's kind of a Marxist attitude It's a kind of a you know an attitude that's mired in poverty and it's all kinds of bad stuff but you said that your father was in the restaurant business Tell me about your upbringing Tell me about how you got to be where you are how you came into the ministry My upbringing was one as I said centered around the church I grew up baptist born Catholic but I grew up baptist and Shreveport Louisiana And I'm blessed to live in Florida now but just the same my ministry began when I got married as a child of privilege many times you get into trouble Because there's hardly any trouble you can get into that your father who is a person of influence can get you out of And so my ministry began actually when I got involved with a bad crowd and I realized that this is not the way God had intended things for me to be And went through a period of rebellion as a lot of teenagers do But here in America if you are able to apply the content of your true character then God will bless the rest of it And unfortunately here you set the definitions are being changed And you know Eric when we talk about the definitions being changed you also change destinations when you change definitions And unfortunately white Americans in this country are allowing the definition of what those old white men the franklins the jeffersons the handcuffs Alexander's when they signed on to this declaration of a new country They defined something They made it a definition And even those of us who were in chains at the time could see that freedom was all around them And if they could only get become a part of that that is the type of home I grew up in Helping me to understand that freedom is all around you And they didn't go through what they went through so that I could be black My parents always instilled in me that they went through what they went through for me So that they I could be free And I am a free man And it's because I was raised in a home to help myself look at myself helped.