Education and Pro-Life Advocacy: A Conversation with Michael Lancaster

SPEAKER 01 : 0:03

Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author, leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:18

Well, hello, everybody. Come on in. We have a great show today on Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join the conversation today because I have an amazing guest. He’s my friend, Mr. Michael Lancaster. Welcome, Michael. How are you today?

SPEAKER 02 : 0:38

Great, Priscilla. How are you?

SPEAKER 03 : 0:41

I’m doing great now that we have an opportunity to have a deeper conversation about your wonderful journey in education and all of the work that you’re doing with DLI. But before we get into the interview, for the listeners who don’t know who you are, I’m going to share a little bit of your bio. Michael Lancaster is a Georgia grassroots leader who advocates for a stronger biblical framework in our civic policy and serves to educate citizens on many topics, particularly those affecting the Black community. Michael earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, as well as a master’s degree in education from the University of Georgia. After teaching for several years in Atlanta, he worked for 15 years in South Africa to educate and mentor disadvantaged South African youth. Michael Lancaster currently serves as the Southeast Regional Director for the Douglas Leadership Institute and is the Georgia State Director for the Frederick Douglass Foundation. He is also a board member of Choose Life Georgia, an organization that works to sell pro-life license plates to support pregnancy resource centers. And that’s just to name a few of the hats that you wear. But you’ve been doing tremendous work And because we have such a short amount of time, I’m going to dig into as much as we can. The experiences, Michael, that you’ve had in either Virginia or Georgia or South Africa, what shaped your worldview to bring you into civic engagement?

SPEAKER 02 : 2:19

Well, that’s a loaded question. It would take a long time to answer. But I’ve always been sort of a servant at heart. just raised that way by my grandparents. And when I finally, when I decided to go to South Africa, my sister and I decided to start a school there. That’s when I really just dove into just service, to engage with people, to try to make a difference. And then leaving South Africa, I started getting involved with the Douglas Leadership Institute through my late mentor, Dean Nelson. and that just continued the effort to just see people educated uh properly uh to support faith leaders and their role in terms of leading our communities and um and just generally serving serving the community serving people so that’s just always been my heart so

SPEAKER 03 : 3:12

Yeah. For those people who had the opportunity to know Dean Nelson, they were really blessed. He did so much amazing work. In fact, he’s the one when he came to Colorado, not Colorado Springs, but I think it was to Karis Bible College for an event. We had a meeting and it was the way he described the pro-life work that he was doing that really changed how I was able to articulate what I believed and where does life begin, right? And we’re talking about real estate of a child in the womb versus out of the womb, but every life is precious. And so I think that’s beautiful. You’re doing some work With the license plates, I find that really fascinating that the fees, from what I understand from the license plates, goes to help the pro-life movement. Can you talk a little bit more about that and some of the benefits that you’ve seen from that work?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:10

Well, specifically for that work, carrying the message of life everywhere you go on your license plate is critical. It’s important. And it doesn’t just apply to life in the womb. It can apply to someone who might be contemplating taking their own life or just promoting life in general. So when you put it on a license plate, it really carries a message. You’re a traveling billboard of life and how precious it is. And the Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 30, 32, 31 to Choose Life. So that’s a profound command from the Lord actually. So, and with that work, you know, we proceeds from the sell the license plates in the States and their Choose Life networks all around the country. Many States have this program, but we use that money to support pregnancy resource centers around the state of Georgia. We, you know, support special projects that they may be doing, things that they might need in a moment. they can use us as a resource to fund that. When it comes to life in general, you’re right. Dean Nelson was profound in his support of life in the womb, and he often compared it to slavery. And so we kind of see ourselves as modern day abolitionists. You know, if people could devalue back then, devalue life. and say that it was worthy to be enslaved. You know, it’s sort of the same mindset today. It’s this devaluing of a human life. And so we find ourselves becoming champions of life in general. Because again, the Lord tells us to choose life. And so whatever we can do to promote life in any way, in any effort, we do. And we try to stand strong on that.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:48

When you were a public school teacher for 15 years, what subject did you teach?

SPEAKER 02 : 5:54

Well, I taught many subjects. I taught in public schools, I taught in private schools, a variety of different areas. Mostly English, language arts, reading, that kind of thing was my general area. But I’ve been known to teach everything. When I went to South Africa, you kind of become a master of all things. So I’ve taught every grade level pretty much, pretty much many subjects. It’s all about the pursuit of knowledge and learning and education. That’s what’s really important. And as long as you understand the topic that you’re teaching and you’re passionate about it, I’ve learned you can be very successful.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:33

Yeah, I would agree with that because there are so many people who are skilled in their content who may not necessarily be licensed teachers. There’s a big debate in public education policy. Should a teacher be required to have a teaching license? Because we have charter schools and private schools and we have home schools where parents are teaching, but they don’t necessarily have a teaching license. there’s a big debate on what’s the proper role of government. Should the government be telling you, you have to have a, you know, you go to college for all those years, four or five years, go through your practicum, you come out and then you have to take another test and pay, you know, hundreds of dollars for a piece of paper that says, now you can teach. It’s like a lot of this bureaucracy. But to your, to your point, you, if you’re good at what you do and you’re, and you care about children and you’re able to deliver instruction, it’s, you should be able to do that. That’s my opinion.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:26

And, you know, I went through all the hoops to get the degree and, you know, all those documentations. But, you know, I mean, just I found the educational schools today are really, you know, like most of our schools. And I don’t know how deep you want to go into that rabbit hole, but they become camps of indoctrination. And we can see how, you know, just through a lot of the things that are going on teachers have become sort of faucets of an agenda. They spew out just an ideology that may not necessarily line up with what parents want their children to learn. So you have to be very careful about that. And we have to really see how our teachers, although they may be trained, we have to be careful about what they’re presenting to your children.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:20

Absolutely. And if you’re just tuning in, my guest today is Michael Lancaster. He’s an educator and a pro-life advocate, a Christian, a man of God, and he’s a world changer and he’s shaking things up. So when we talk about the Black family and we talk about like Frederick Douglass Leadership Institute and the work that they’re trying to do, I know there’s a big faith component to that organization. But what do you see as the biggest gap between, you know, this information, the faith part, the education part, and the community as a whole? Because especially in the Black community, we still have a large number of Black voters who vote liberal, who vote Democrat. But they do go to church. I mean, we go to church with them every weekend. But there’s clearly a gap in the information or the representation of a more conservative narrative. What do you see as the disconnect?

SPEAKER 02 : 9:23

Well, again, it goes back to education, right? So we’re kind of indoctrinated in schools to think a certain way, to believe a certain way. We’re taught that it’s empathetic to support certain ideals and principles. But we haven’t really looked into the word of God, right? And so because we haven’t taught children to think critically, which I think is a major component missing in a lot of our education today in a lot of public schools, we haven’t taught children how to think critically. They don’t… They don’t know how to analyze the material, process the information, and then apply it practically to what they’re talking about. So they can, even like you said, go to church, quote scriptures or listen to scriptures being said, but they’re not really processing them and applying them to everyday life. And that’s kind of what we do at the Douglas Leadership Institute is we try to educate, equip, and empower faith leaders and pastors to actually process the information. to think about different things from a biblical worldview, from a biblical perspective. That’s what we try to do. So we bring together, we put on programs, bring together different faith leaders and community leaders and different networking opportunities. And again, try to give that message of what does God say? How does the Lord want us to apply this? You know, a lot of people say that the Bible is open to interpretation and that kind of thing. you know, the Holy Spirit guides us in all truth. And so what does he really say? Even if you take an issue like life, there’s no biblical foundation for supporting murder of innocent babies in a womb. There’s none whatsoever. And yet we find black pastors in the pulpit supporting that. And it goes back to the Negro Project from Margaret Sanger. I mean, that’s literally what she wanted. She said, let’s get the black pastor to support this mission. And that’s what we found today. And so we have to awaken people, open their eyes, teach them how to think critically about these issues and how to apply it to the culture, to the marketplace, to be advocates in their pulpits for their churches and congregations for the truth.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:27

You know, that’s a really great point because we’re supposed to be in the world and not of it. And, you know, the Bible does talk about there’ll be people preaching things just to tickle our ears. I don’t want a pastor to tell me something that I want to hear or make me feel good so I can make donations. I want to make it… into heaven. I want Jesus Christ to be my Lord and savior and to live in the fullness of what he has for me and for everybody else. And, you know, there’s no greater love than the love of Jesus. That’s my opinion. It’s my lived experience, right? But we need more pastors and we’re starting to see some really rise up. I mean, I’ve been noticing and paying attention. They come through my feed and I’m like, way to go. There’s another pastor who’s standing up for the truth. That is the word. If I were to think of one word, like stand up for the truth of what God’s word says, you don’t need to twist it. You don’t need to put Barbecue sauce on it or whatever you’re going to do to make it palatable. Just preach the word and let it pierce my heart so that we can actually, you know, guide people towards towards God. And, you know, Charlie Kirky talked a lot about this. He’s like, I love you too much. to not tell you the truth, right? I’m gonna tell you the truth of what God’s word says. And I think that’s a great message for all of us to take. And what you’re doing is standing up for truth, reaching out to other faith leaders, to give them resources to go into the highways and the byways to talk about some of these issues. So let’s talk a little bit more about the Douglas Leadership Institute. What are some of the top priorities of the organization going into 2026? What would you like to see happen?

SPEAKER 02 : 13:20

Well, as I said, we educate the quick faith leaders to stand on truth and principle. We might do that through some programming, let’s say, on strengthening the Black family. And what are the things that are surrounding what we need to do to strengthen and support the Black family? We might do some kind of networking activity. We might do a class on biblical worldview and how to really apply it. So there are many different things that we can do. Right now, we’re working with organization organizations. called the American Property Owners Alliance. And we’re going into communities and teaching African American young people, maybe not so young, but how to, you know, what to do to get a home, own a home, to buy a home. As I was just on the news recently, now 40 is the average age for a first-time homebuyer. You know, that’s an issue. And you can think anything that’s in America like that, it’s worse than the African-American community. So, you know, trying to teach those principles or talking not on biblically based criminal justice reform. Like, you know, we want to see a change in that area, but how can we do that in a way that’s biblically based and based on righteousness? You know, Frederick Douglass, he quoted the Bible. He said, righteousness exalts a nation. Sin is a reproach to any people. And ultimately what we’re dealing with, with all the issues that are facing our society, our communities, it all comes back to an issue of sin. You know, I was just talking to somebody recently about South Africa, you know, and, you know, back in the day, you had coloreds and Blacks working together to fight apartheid. Now, if you go to South Africa today, you’ll see conflict between the coloreds and Blacks themselves. Now that Blacks are in authority, they’re in power, you know, They have not remembered, and that’s only long ago when they were under oppression. So now they’re kind of doing the oppression. What is that? All that goes back to is an issue of the heart, right? So, you know, what can we do to talk about these issues and ultimately show that it’s a sin issue and how we need to, you know, bring righteousness back? We have to preach the gospel of Christ, as you were saying before. So it all comes back to that. You know, we have to change minds. And just to bring it back to education, you know, we’re finding right now in our schools is that kids can’t read. I’m here in Georgia. I started teaching children’s church again in my church. And I’m like, these kids can’t read. So, you know, I had an idea to try to start a new reading program, that kind of thing. We’ve got to change the trajectory of our schools and what they’re teaching. We’ve got to get back to the basics because that’s the most fundamental thing you can do is teach a child how to read. And it’s one of the easiest things you can do, actually. So the fact that our kids are not reading to the degree of like 60% to 70% of our kids right now in public education can’t read on grade level, that’s a travesty. It’s a shame. We can fix it. But if we teach them to read, then they can find truth. When I did more reading when I was in college, my time behind the rock in South Africa, my 15 years in South Africa, you know, that’s when I got more into the conservative mindset. That’s when I was reading more of the Bible, reading more about Frederick Douglass, reading more about these conservative authors. And I was getting this information and this truth and this knowledge, and it totally changed my way of thinking because I was raised liberal, right? I was raised with this mindset of, you know, but liberal in the sense of let’s vote Democrat, but not liberal in the sense of You know, let’s support all these crazy, wild, extra biblical ideas that are just not founded. My grandparents were alive today. I think, you know, although they were lifelong Democrats, I think they would be kind of appalled by what they would see today because we’ve always been conservative as a Black community, although we don’t vote that way. And it’s time to come back to those roots, come back to those traditions, come back to that understanding in order to see a real change in our society.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:55

My guest today is Michael Lancaster. He’s an educator and he works for the Frederick Douglass Leadership Institute. And he’s just an all around awesome guy and very knowledgeable and active in the community making a change. And I think that that’s really what we need to see more of, especially men in our community and talking about fatherhood and the family. It’s so critical. to have intact families in the home because that’s the quote unquote privilege, right? When we talk about, oh, someone’s privileged. Well, I was privileged. My father married my mother. They were married at the time of my birth. They were married when I graduated from high school. They remained married until the time my father died last year. This is what we need to bring back to all of our communities. And when you talk about the reading levels of our kids, Frederick Douglass was born a slave, but he actually taught himself how to read and became an author of four autobiographies and an advisor to five Republican US presidents. Now, people would call him disadvantaged. But he made it work. And I find there’s like no excuse for our kids who get a free education. Now they’re getting free meals. I mean, everything is done for them. Maybe, you know, we need to change our community and some of these social welfare programs. in some of our communities to help encourage our communities to be self-sufficient. I think there’s something missing when you’re always relying on the government. And we can see from the time of the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act, what that did. data-wise to our families, to our education, to our crime rate, we still have an economic gap. We still have an education gap. Um, and it’s because of some of these policies. If you could address some of the policies that maybe you think need to be changed, what would those be?

SPEAKER 02 : 18:58

Sorry for your loss of your dad last year. I know how tough that can be. Um, as you said, Frederick Douglass was a profound source of wisdom and knowledge. Um, know there are things that were wrong in our country that obviously slavery that he didn’t support but he still loved america and he still loved the idea of america um and as you said he didn’t let because he always had that hope and of course the hope starts with jesus christ right and he was an ordained minister And he found the Lord. And that spurned him to do all the great things that he did because he did it through faith, right? And he worked with other faith leaders to make a change in our country when it came to slavery. And so when I see that kind of resilience, when I see that kind of attitude, you know, although you were a slave, And you escaped slavery. You dealt with a master who did not want you to read. Yeah, you came up with inventive ways to learn how to read. I mean, he would play games with other children. And when they lost, they had to teach him what they learned in school that day. I mean, so these different things that he did to make a way is profound. And so when I see us settling into this victim class today, this victim mentality today, it keeps us from excelling. So it’s not to say that the world is perfect. It’s not to say that the U.S. is perfect, but it’s to say that no matter what the situations are, I am more than a conqueror. Christ in me, the hope of glory. These things that we learn through our faith help us to overcome, help us to excel and achieve our God-given purposes and destinies. So You know, I learned that a lot from his life. And, you know, when it comes to the things, I mean, you kind of hit on some of these things, you know, where, you know, the great welfare society, the great society basically, you know, took men out of our homes, right? Took men out of mostly African-American homes and kind of made men sort of, and I was just talking, I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where someone lived through that, where they literally had to hide the father or hide the stepfather in a closet because the social worker was coming. And if the social worker found a man in the house, you could lose your benefits. So it’s kind of this perverse way that we’ve incentivized giving help to people who need it by taking your father out of the home. There are ways that we can help people. And that goes back to who was ordained to help in the first place. It wasn’t the government. It was the church. And so because the church kind of abdicated that role, and helping the society. Because when you’re down and you’re lucky, you lose your job, you need some assistance, it’s the church that can help hold you accountable. That local, what the Catholics call subsidiarity, that local connection, that local accountability, that’s what we need more of. When you deal with the great amorphous government, the national federal government, you get lost in the sauce. Then you just become a check on the box, a number on a list, and you’re not held to that same level of accountability. And you see the effects of it with fathers out of the home. Before, when we were in slavery, you know these men after slavery ended they went to find their families and then we had the highest uh marriage rate above whites in the country now look at us you know we’re like 75 single mother headed or single parent headed households you know that’s that’s crazy why have we reversed that it’s because of things like that policies that have been instituted that they thought were helping and that’s the thing you know a man does things according to his own wisdom you know It may sound good. It may seem good. But you have to follow God’s principles, follow his commandments, do it the way that he tells you to do it if you want the proper results. And that’s what we have to do more of. And, you know, I could talk more about that kind of stuff with education. You know, when we gave education over to the government, look what happened. You know, education used to be a function. I mean, God said, parents, you’re responsible for teaching your children. Right. And then it became a function of the community where parents could partner with a local school mom, with, you know, community leaders to educate their children. But now we’ve given them over to the state. And, you know, there’s always a perverse incentive when the state educates your children. I mean, there’s the government really has no. vested interest in making sure your children are educated it’s actually to their interest to have a ignorant population right because they’re easier to lead they’re easier to manipulate and so when we did that we lost a lot so we need to go back to local schooling and local education we started our own schools in the african-american community we started our own colleges and we excelled and thrived and now look at us now we’re looking for government handouts all the time we’re not supporting ourselves within the community so there are a lot of different things that have happened over time where we’ve lost a sense of responsibility and accountability, and we suffer the results of that. There are things that we can do to address that, but there’s so much that needs to be done, especially through education, that can make a huge difference in how our kids learn, how they see the world, how they function in life, how they take responsibility for their own personal behaviors, for how they treat others, for how they need a family one day. There’s so much that can be done through education that can make a huge difference in our society if we would just do it God’s way.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:16

Michael Lancaster, bring in the heat. What would your advice be really quickly to a young person or even a young teacher that we need to change? What’s your message to them going forward?

SPEAKER 02 : 24:32

To young people? victim. You’re not a victim. No one said that this world was perfect, but through hard work, through focus, through faith in God, you can achieve anything. You can achieve, you can become what God has purposed you to become. When I was young, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be all these kind of crazy things. I ended up being a missionary in South Africa. That was not on my list. That wasn’t on my, you know, my goals to do one day. But God directs your path, right? And he, because he directs your path according to his purposes, you know, I was able to do one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done or could ever imagine was to live in another country, to experience a different culture, to help people who couldn’t help themselves. And what we achieved there, helping young people who were literally living in shacks literally getting water from you know the local water source literally burning wood in order to have heat or cook their dinner at night you know these kids we were able to educate help help them out and now some of them they went to university they went to colleges one is a lawyer at the supreme court she just got married one is a pharmacist one is a business person one is became a chef in america you know so many different things came out of that just me being obedient to the lord to go to south africa to to do what he called me to do and so i would say any young person any teacher whatever you’re doing do it as unto the lord um you know do it with conviction do it with faith do it with hard work and effort um we’re not a victim just because of our skin color just because of whatever happened to us in life i could go down all my shoulda coulda what is in life but god can still use us for a purpose no matter how hard it is how bleak it seems god can you still use you and work through you to affect positive change.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:24

Beautifully said. Well, Michael, we’ve got to land our plane here now. Uh, where can people find you?

SPEAKER 02 : 26:32

I’m here. I’m in Atlanta, Georgia. Um, uh, I don’t have a lot of social media stuff, but deal institute.org. That’s the website for our organization, Douglas leadership Institute. Uh, you can go there, go to our website. It’s our webpage. Um, And you can probably find me, connect with me through there. But I’m on Facebook. I’m other places, but I’m around. If you look for me, you can find me.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:57

Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. We could have talked to so much longer, but to my listeners, thanks for tuning in and catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue and speak truth.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:17

Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.