Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome special guests to the show. I appreciate you being
on hold all this time as Reverend Jacob Dell, pastor
of the First Congregational Church of Woodbury, and there's so
much to cover here. First, let me ask you with
regard to this. I just watched one of the Project
(00:20):
Veritas clips. It's disturbing, doesn't seem like a strong enough word,
the level of deceit and trickery, and it's just alarming.
It makes me glad my kids have aged out the
you know, I have a nineteen year old and a
twenty two year old. Yeah. It does say, though, in
(00:46):
one story that I read about what you're doing and
you've been delivering sermons on this subject, that you did
contact Pam BONDI even our Attorney General, William Tong. Have
you heard back from anyone.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have not heard back from anyone. No, no, Unfortunately,
now I give him a couple of a couple of
days here. I only said this last week, but I
haven't heard it heart back from anyone.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
That's interesting, But I'm surprised the age. I don't know
how that will go. So this is interesting. This Tony
Ferriolo is someone who was brought to my attention. I
just I was on vacation last week. It was prior
to my vacation, and it was brought to my attention
how many schools he's appeared in Connecticut paid to appear
(01:35):
to talk about transitioning. And I did a bit of
an expose on that and received a lot of feedback
on it. Now, schools and administrators and do good or
teachers or whatever aside going out and oh did you
hear about this? He wrote a book. There's someone we
(01:56):
can hire to have into this, that's one thing. And
actual reverend the clip I heard of this Reverend Aaron
Miller out of a church in Hartford. I don't know.
I don't know what to do with that. Can you
explain that to me? I watched the clip and I
hear the project Veritas. They have someone posing as a
twelve year old saying I thought you'd be the exact
(02:19):
words were, Pastor, I thought you'd be the perfect person
to talk to about transitioning. This this this reverend in Hartford.
I don't know, why would you?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, I think it goes to my chief complaint to
the to the Attorney General, which is the dishonesty in
these organizations posing as churches, which I think it's the
State Constitution. The State Constitution has a similar clause, the
First Amendment, Right to the exercise of Religion. It's actually
under Article first, Section three. But I'm like, like the
(02:50):
First Amendment of the Federal Constitution, there's actually a proviso
in the State Constitution that says provided that that the
here I the right hereby declared and established, not so
construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness. Now licentiousness we
think of that is usually having to do with sexual
defency deviancy, but it all means a disregard for the
(03:10):
rules of correctness, which I think this honesty falls on
any pastor who is counseling minor children to do something
that is against the law, or or tries to seek
to intervene between them and the children and their parents.
I think that's certainly under the definition of licentiousness, an
act of licentiousness, And so I called upon the Attorney
(03:32):
General to enforce the Constitution here because legitimate churches, people
of faith in this state who are honest are being
hurt by this falsification of religion done in our name.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I find that fascinating. I was trying to think
of at the outset there what you referred to them
as these churches that aren't really church. I've passed so
many in New Haven, these pop pups, if you will,
and they are places of worship. And you know, I'm
born and raised Catholic, and I want to be respectful,
(04:06):
but I'll look an arch and eyebrow at you know,
what is this this place? This wasn't here a few
weeks ago. And while the archdiocese in Hartford, you know,
while I'm seeing great churches and Catholic schools being closed
and the assault on Catholicism, as far as I'm concerned,
(04:26):
I see this, this trend of you know, pop up
houses of worship, and who are the people speaking at them?
How is there not to take? I think you've you've
actually you're talking about something really fascinating that long overdue
needs to be looked at.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, it's the same thing if you were circulating counterfeit. Point,
the state has a vested interest in stopping that because
it devalues the currency that everyone else is trying to
trade in. And and the thing about what I'm trying
to the I'm trying to shine here is not to
ask the state to get in and weed in and
try to solve matters of dogma or doctrine. I'm not
trying to get them to decide between Protestants and Catholics,
(05:09):
or Christians and Muslims, or Jews and Christians. We're not
I'm not asking the general to look at theology here.
I'm asking them to I'm asking the Attorney General to
look straight up, open and shut, black letter case of lisentiousness.
Did this pastor encourage a minor child to the law
that doesn't require the state to ask or intervene in
(05:29):
any matter of doctrine or theology. And that's you know, churches.
We're going to have a lot of variety of religious
experiences and churches in a free country life we have.
And that's that's our god given right. That's our first
amendal of privilege under under the law. That's what we
fought for one hundred and forty nine years ago. That's
what pastors in pulpits mind stood up to the British
to obtain for us. I'm not trying to take that away.
(05:51):
I'm just trying to ask the state to ven and
shut down churches that are just breaking the law because
they give the rest of us a bad name.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I'm ron with the good Reverend Jacob Dell right now,
pastor of the First Congregational Church of Woodbury. Let me ask,
so a sermon of yours, I believe, from just two
days ago, from this past Sunday, was mentioned to me
as being about this subject. I was under the impression
(06:18):
it was about transitioning the sermon, but was am I incorrect?
It wasn't about the issue of transitioning. It was the
issue of law breaking churches.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Or that's what I focused on. You know. The springboard
is what happened in what's recorded into alleged to have
happened in the Project Veritas. And then from that I
pivoted off that and said, if this is true, if
this is what's happening, then we've passed the point where
the state not only should act, but it must act.
(06:49):
The Constitution, the highest law of the land. The Attorney
General simply he just he does not have the right
to ignore it. He must enforce that this is not
a statute, This is not a law that the legislator,
just the legislature just passed this constitutional provision has been
on the book since eighteen eighteen. Right, this is a
This is simply the highest law of the land of
(07:11):
the state, and the Attorney General must look into this
if this is true.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, oh absolutely, And what a precious thing. Sitting in
a confessional if you chose to, that's where you chose
to strike up the conversation. You know again, I'm a
Catholic school for fifteen years, a former altar boy.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
You know, Father John Georgia recently retired and there was
a level of comfort there. I had to ask him questions,
and you know, you sit in confession and you share.
Sometimes he made things up because he had nothing to confess.
I mean, we've all had that kind of like joking thing.
(07:51):
But I can't have met the weight of a child
saying I don't think. Yeah, I know I'm a boy,
but I can't imagine father. You only have my frame
of reference. The priest at my church when I was
a child would be like, Okay, this is something I
need to bring your parents in on. And yet I'm
(08:14):
hearing this reverence, say, how do we keep this from
your parents?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That's right, and you know that's obviously this is something
that requires a very delicate and careful pastor attention and
care and you know, I think DCF involved and trying
to sever the most sacred relationship there is between a
parent and child is not a correct pastoral approach, if
that's in fact what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
No, And I can't imagine, you know, I can't imagine
the weight of sitting there. I mean, if there's decency
and concern, it takes a village. It would be like, Okay,
this is a powerful conversation and not one we should
be having covertly, and maybe not one for the church.
So let me ask you, Reverend. I asked you if
you heard back from Pam BONDI who quite a day yesterday.
(09:02):
I don't know how other things, yeah right, I don't know,
but William Tong, I thought maybe you would. Have you
ever had any exchanges with this Reverend Aaron Miller about
this covert conversation that project very well?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I haven't and I've gone out of my way not
even to name him directly, you know, did not even
prove and yah.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't want to provoke any
of that. I hope you don't mind my asking. I
was just curious. Uh so and your sermons are more
than and well, maybe I shouldn't pluralize. Are you this
coming weekend? Will will you deliver another sermon along these lines.
I always found this sermon writing.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
The original sermon you're you're talking about was two weeks ago,
and then two days ago on Sunday I did. I
did follow up on it a bit because there's a
general theme in the in the readings for each Sunday
right now, in the season that we're in. It's talking
about discipleship and the and the cost that it is
required of us to fall wing Jesus, and sometimes that
hurts our requires us to take stands that will be
(10:05):
unpopular and may hurt our standing in the community and
make people angry at us. It may cost us jobs
and friendships and social connections. And Jesus is very clear
in the Gospel that if you're not willing to turn
your back on all of that and follow me, you're
not worthy of the Kingdom of God. And so I've
been pushing that message hard that the cost of discipleship
is going to require the churches of Connecticut to stand
(10:26):
up to this nonsense and put it into it and
really demand change from our politicians and get politicians to
listen to us. And I think the pulpits have to
take the lead on that the church has been so
silent in the last generation. And I don't know whether
it's just been frightened, or whether it's just gotten too comfortable,
or what I fear and what I think is you're
seeing in this case in Hartford is that the left,
the left has taken over large portions of the church,
(10:49):
and so the church is just doing its bidding.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And I do It's not lost on me. I read
in the article that the membership I don't know what
really to make of that word. Maybe you could help
me out with that, but the membership of your church,
the first Congregational Church of Woodbury, doubled in six months time.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
How do you measure such a thing?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Well, we have a you know something with just the
Sunday attendance, right. You know, this is a three hundred
and fifty five year old church, and like a lot
of of our historic churches, it dwindled down to the
point where it almost closed, especially during the pandemic. And
they brought me on late last year to try to
jump start things. And I said, look, I'm going to
throw everything I've got at it, and I'm not going
(11:32):
to keep silent on the provocative, controversial issues. And they said, fine,
go for it. And that's what I've been doing. It's
been drawing people in. And so you know, we doubled
our We had a whole membership class coming earlier this spring,
which doubled the book membership, the numbers on the books,
and then we're looking at doing another new membership class
(11:52):
this fall. So I think Odd blesses his word. If
you preach the truth, he will bless you, even if
to face, you know, consequences from the world.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Born and raised Connecticut or no, you well I lived.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So I came back to Connecticut last ball after about
fifteen years in New York. But I was eighteen years
in Connecticut before that. My children all grew up here.
I went to Yale College as an undergraduate in the
early nineties. So don't hold that against me.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But it was impressive. You're an impressive guy, you know,
and for somebody like me who you know, like I said,
I was in Catholic school four years old and they're
through sixteen years old. I read the line, you're urging
an investigation on law breaking churches. You know, there's the
(12:45):
Catholic and I'd like to think that there are some
politicians who are hesitant to do that because they fair
judgment day. Oh you know, this is a terrifying prospect.
But I think I'm giving them too much credit. I
don't ok at.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What happened to the Catholic Church in the early two
thousands when this issue was ignored, right, it just blew
up in their faith. And then instead of being able
to really deal with it the way it should have
been dealt with, they had the state. Have the state
had to step in and take care of it for them.
And I think we're on precipice the brink of something
just like that once again. And it's said, we don't,
you know, history repeating itself. We need politicians who are
(13:22):
willing to who know that the first person they're accountable
to is God. And I've talked to a few of them,
people who are running that I think might you know,
might be able to change the politics of this state.
And that's what I'm hopeful for.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Continue the great work. I appreciate you taking time to
come on today. Let's stay in touch.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Very good, very good,
Welcome special guests to the show. I appreciate you being
on hold all this time as Reverend Jacob Dell, pastor
of the First Congregational Church of Woodbury, and there's so
much to cover here. First, let me ask you with
regard to this. I just watched one of the Project
(00:20):
Veritas clips. It's disturbing, doesn't seem like a strong enough word,
the level of deceit and trickery, and it's just alarming.
It makes me glad my kids have aged out the
you know, I have a nineteen year old and a
twenty two year old. Yeah. It does say, though, in
(00:46):
one story that I read about what you're doing and
you've been delivering sermons on this subject, that you did
contact Pam BONDI even our Attorney General, William Tong. Have
you heard back from anyone.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I have not heard back from anyone. No, no, Unfortunately,
now I give him a couple of a couple of
days here. I only said this last week, but I
haven't heard it heart back from anyone.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
That's interesting, But I'm surprised the age. I don't know
how that will go. So this is interesting. This Tony
Ferriolo is someone who was brought to my attention. I
just I was on vacation last week. It was prior
to my vacation, and it was brought to my attention
how many schools he's appeared in Connecticut paid to appear
(01:35):
to talk about transitioning. And I did a bit of
an expose on that and received a lot of feedback
on it. Now, schools and administrators and do good or
teachers or whatever aside going out and oh did you
hear about this? He wrote a book. There's someone we
(01:56):
can hire to have into this, that's one thing. And
actual reverend the clip I heard of this Reverend Aaron
Miller out of a church in Hartford. I don't know.
I don't know what to do with that. Can you
explain that to me? I watched the clip and I
hear the project Veritas. They have someone posing as a
twelve year old saying I thought you'd be the exact
(02:19):
words were, Pastor, I thought you'd be the perfect person
to talk to about transitioning. This this this reverend in Hartford.
I don't know, why would you?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, I think it goes to my chief complaint to
the to the Attorney General, which is the dishonesty in
these organizations posing as churches, which I think it's the
State Constitution. The State Constitution has a similar clause, the
First Amendment, Right to the exercise of Religion. It's actually
under Article first, Section three. But I'm like, like the
(02:50):
First Amendment of the Federal Constitution, there's actually a proviso
in the State Constitution that says provided that that the
here I the right hereby declared and established, not so
construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness. Now licentiousness we
think of that is usually having to do with sexual
defency deviancy, but it all means a disregard for the
(03:10):
rules of correctness, which I think this honesty falls on
any pastor who is counseling minor children to do something
that is against the law, or or tries to seek
to intervene between them and the children and their parents.
I think that's certainly under the definition of licentiousness, an
act of licentiousness, And so I called upon the Attorney
(03:32):
General to enforce the Constitution here because legitimate churches, people
of faith in this state who are honest are being
hurt by this falsification of religion done in our name.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I find that fascinating. I was trying to think
of at the outset there what you referred to them
as these churches that aren't really church. I've passed so
many in New Haven, these pop pups, if you will,
and they are places of worship. And you know, I'm
born and raised Catholic, and I want to be respectful,
(04:06):
but I'll look an arch and eyebrow at you know,
what is this this place? This wasn't here a few
weeks ago. And while the archdiocese in Hartford, you know,
while I'm seeing great churches and Catholic schools being closed
and the assault on Catholicism, as far as I'm concerned,
(04:26):
I see this, this trend of you know, pop up
houses of worship, and who are the people speaking at them?
How is there not to take? I think you've you've
actually you're talking about something really fascinating that long overdue
needs to be looked at.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Well, it's the same thing if you were circulating counterfeit. Point,
the state has a vested interest in stopping that because
it devalues the currency that everyone else is trying to
trade in. And and the thing about what I'm trying
to the I'm trying to shine here is not to
ask the state to get in and weed in and
try to solve matters of dogma or doctrine. I'm not
trying to get them to decide between Protestants and Catholics,
(05:09):
or Christians and Muslims, or Jews and Christians. We're not
I'm not asking the general to look at theology here.
I'm asking them to I'm asking the Attorney General to
look straight up, open and shut, black letter case of lisentiousness.
Did this pastor encourage a minor child to the law
that doesn't require the state to ask or intervene in
(05:29):
any matter of doctrine or theology. And that's you know, churches.
We're going to have a lot of variety of religious
experiences and churches in a free country life we have.
And that's that's our god given right. That's our first
amendal of privilege under under the law. That's what we
fought for one hundred and forty nine years ago. That's
what pastors in pulpits mind stood up to the British
to obtain for us. I'm not trying to take that away.
(05:51):
I'm just trying to ask the state to ven and
shut down churches that are just breaking the law because
they give the rest of us a bad name.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I'm ron with the good Reverend Jacob Dell right now,
pastor of the First Congregational Church of Woodbury. Let me ask,
so a sermon of yours, I believe, from just two
days ago, from this past Sunday, was mentioned to me
as being about this subject. I was under the impression
(06:18):
it was about transitioning the sermon, but was am I incorrect?
It wasn't about the issue of transitioning. It was the
issue of law breaking churches.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Or that's what I focused on. You know. The springboard
is what happened in what's recorded into alleged to have
happened in the Project Veritas. And then from that I
pivoted off that and said, if this is true, if
this is what's happening, then we've passed the point where
the state not only should act, but it must act.
(06:49):
The Constitution, the highest law of the land. The Attorney
General simply he just he does not have the right
to ignore it. He must enforce that this is not
a statute, This is not a law that the legislator,
just the legislature just passed this constitutional provision has been
on the book since eighteen eighteen. Right, this is a
This is simply the highest law of the land of
(07:11):
the state, and the Attorney General must look into this
if this is true.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, oh absolutely, And what a precious thing. Sitting in
a confessional if you chose to, that's where you chose
to strike up the conversation. You know again, I'm a
Catholic school for fifteen years, a former altar boy.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
You know, Father John Georgia recently retired and there was
a level of comfort there. I had to ask him questions,
and you know, you sit in confession and you share.
Sometimes he made things up because he had nothing to confess.
I mean, we've all had that kind of like joking thing.
(07:51):
But I can't have met the weight of a child
saying I don't think. Yeah, I know I'm a boy,
but I can't imagine father. You only have my frame
of reference. The priest at my church when I was
a child would be like, Okay, this is something I
need to bring your parents in on. And yet I'm
(08:14):
hearing this reverence, say, how do we keep this from
your parents?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That's right, and you know that's obviously this is something
that requires a very delicate and careful pastor attention and
care and you know, I think DCF involved and trying
to sever the most sacred relationship there is between a
parent and child is not a correct pastoral approach, if
that's in fact what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
No, And I can't imagine, you know, I can't imagine
the weight of sitting there. I mean, if there's decency
and concern, it takes a village. It would be like, Okay,
this is a powerful conversation and not one we should
be having covertly, and maybe not one for the church.
So let me ask you, Reverend. I asked you if
you heard back from Pam BONDI who quite a day yesterday.
(09:02):
I don't know how other things, yeah right, I don't know,
but William Tong, I thought maybe you would. Have you
ever had any exchanges with this Reverend Aaron Miller about
this covert conversation that project very well?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I haven't and I've gone out of my way not
even to name him directly, you know, did not even
prove and yah.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't want to provoke any
of that. I hope you don't mind my asking. I
was just curious. Uh so and your sermons are more
than and well, maybe I shouldn't pluralize. Are you this
coming weekend? Will will you deliver another sermon along these lines.
I always found this sermon writing.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
The original sermon you're you're talking about was two weeks ago,
and then two days ago on Sunday I did. I
did follow up on it a bit because there's a
general theme in the in the readings for each Sunday
right now, in the season that we're in. It's talking
about discipleship and the and the cost that it is
required of us to fall wing Jesus, and sometimes that
hurts our requires us to take stands that will be
(10:05):
unpopular and may hurt our standing in the community and
make people angry at us. It may cost us jobs
and friendships and social connections. And Jesus is very clear
in the Gospel that if you're not willing to turn
your back on all of that and follow me, you're
not worthy of the Kingdom of God. And so I've
been pushing that message hard that the cost of discipleship
is going to require the churches of Connecticut to stand
(10:26):
up to this nonsense and put it into it and
really demand change from our politicians and get politicians to
listen to us. And I think the pulpits have to
take the lead on that the church has been so
silent in the last generation. And I don't know whether
it's just been frightened, or whether it's just gotten too comfortable,
or what I fear and what I think is you're
seeing in this case in Hartford is that the left,
the left has taken over large portions of the church,
(10:49):
and so the church is just doing its bidding.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And I do It's not lost on me. I read
in the article that the membership I don't know what
really to make of that word. Maybe you could help
me out with that, but the membership of your church,
the first Congregational Church of Woodbury, doubled in six months time.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
How do you measure such a thing?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Well, we have a you know something with just the
Sunday attendance, right. You know, this is a three hundred
and fifty five year old church, and like a lot
of of our historic churches, it dwindled down to the
point where it almost closed, especially during the pandemic. And
they brought me on late last year to try to
jump start things. And I said, look, I'm going to
throw everything I've got at it, and I'm not going
(11:32):
to keep silent on the provocative, controversial issues. And they said, fine,
go for it. And that's what I've been doing. It's
been drawing people in. And so you know, we doubled
our We had a whole membership class coming earlier this spring,
which doubled the book membership, the numbers on the books,
and then we're looking at doing another new membership class
(11:52):
this fall. So I think Odd blesses his word. If
you preach the truth, he will bless you, even if
to face, you know, consequences from the world.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Born and raised Connecticut or no, you well I lived.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So I came back to Connecticut last ball after about
fifteen years in New York. But I was eighteen years
in Connecticut before that. My children all grew up here.
I went to Yale College as an undergraduate in the
early nineties. So don't hold that against me.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But it was impressive. You're an impressive guy, you know,
and for somebody like me who you know, like I said,
I was in Catholic school four years old and they're
through sixteen years old. I read the line, you're urging
an investigation on law breaking churches. You know, there's the
(12:45):
Catholic and I'd like to think that there are some
politicians who are hesitant to do that because they fair
judgment day. Oh you know, this is a terrifying prospect.
But I think I'm giving them too much credit. I
don't ok at.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
What happened to the Catholic Church in the early two
thousands when this issue was ignored, right, it just blew
up in their faith. And then instead of being able
to really deal with it the way it should have
been dealt with, they had the state. Have the state
had to step in and take care of it for them.
And I think we're on precipice the brink of something
just like that once again. And it's said, we don't,
you know, history repeating itself. We need politicians who are
(13:22):
willing to who know that the first person they're accountable
to is God. And I've talked to a few of them,
people who are running that I think might you know,
might be able to change the politics of this state.
And that's what I'm hopeful for.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Continue the great work. I appreciate you taking time to
come on today. Let's stay in touch.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Very good, very good,
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