For Immediate Release (Nashville, TN) — NRBTV will hold its sixth apologetics conference on September 8 and 9 in Lebanon, Tennessee. This year’s theme is “Defending Truth in a Culture of Lies” and will feature several best-selling authors and apologists including Frank Turek; renowned cold-case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace; and podcast host and Dove Award-winning recording artist, Alisa Childers. Turek, who has debated famous atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Michael Shermer, will speak on a topic that is argued on a regular basis: can morality be legislated?
“All laws legislate morality,” says Turek. “Morality is about right and wrong, and all laws declare one behavior right and the opposite behavior wrong. The question is not whether we can legislate morality, but whose morality will we legislate? The answer our Founding Fathers gave was the ‘self-evident’ morality given to us by our Creator. Our country justifies moral rights with theism but does not require its citizens to acknowledge or practice theism.”
J. Warner Wallace’s investigative cases have been featured more than any other detective on NBC’s Dateline television series, and his work has also appeared on Fox News, Oxygen True Crime, the Reelz Channel, Investigation Discovery, TruTV, and CourtTV. He was awarded the Police and Fire Medal of Valor “Sustained Superiority” Award for his continuing work on cold-case homicides, and the CopsWest Award after solving a 1979 murder. Wallace says his career as a detective actually led to his conversion to Christianity.
“I became interested in Jesus when I heard a pastor say Jesus was the smartest, most important man who ever lived,” says Wallace. “I wondered if that was true, so I bought a Bible. As I read the gospels, I recognized the attributes of eyewitness accounts, so I decided to test their reliability the same way I test the reliability of eyewitnesses in murder trials. When I finished my investigation I was convinced the gospels were describing something true. I’m not a Christian today because it ‘works’ for me, or because I was raised that way, or because I was trying to fix something broken in my life. I’m a Christian because it’s true, and my high regard for the truth leaves me no alternative.”
As a lifelong church-goer and former CCM recording artist with the group ZOEgirl, Alisa Childers experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in my mid-30s. She began an intellectual pursuit of the faith, even taking seminary classes.
“I went through a period of time where I felt I had been tossed in a stormy ocean of uncertainty with no life jacket or lifeboat in sight,” says Childers. “I didn’t know where to find answers to my questions, or if answers existed at all. Did I have to accept it all on some kind of blind faith? This began my journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational, and informed faith. Our culture is becoming more anxious and self-obsessed largely because it has rejected truth.”
Troy Miller, President and CEO of NRBTV, says the conference is necessary in a culture that is redefining so many long-held beliefs.
“Our society is confused and misled by a world that is searching for truth,” says Miller. “We need to help our youth, church leaders, and parents to be more confident in their faith to be able to defend it.”
The Defending Truth Conference will be held Friday, September 8 from 7pm to 9 pm, and Saturday, September 9 from 9 am to 4 pm at The Journey Church, 1240 Leeville Pike in Lebanon, TN. Food trucks will be on site for lunch on Saturday. For tickets to the September conference visit: www.nrbtv.org/dtc.
