EXCLUSIVE: Kirk Cameron says corporate pride led to boycotts of Target, Bud Light, launches new children’s book on humility

Kirk Cameron, whose recent forray into children's books with As You Grow was wildly successful, has a new book that will be read in public for the first time in Seattle on Saturday. The book, Pride Comes Before the Fall, is about the value of humility and the need to put away one's self-aggrandizing pride.

"We have a nation full of moms and dads and parents who are hungry for books about traditional American values," Kirk told The Post Millennial, "and really those are biblical values: love joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control."

Cameron has been touring the country with As You Grow, and during that tour he's seen trans activists protest his events, including "drag nuns" in Tennessee. At the start of the tour, dozens of libraries refused to allow him to even hold readings of the book, including ones that were fine with hosting Drag Story Hour, but would then say that Cameron's book about Christian values does not align with the values of their public libraries.

Cameron persevered, set up readings of his book, and the attention was incredible. Families came out to hear a story that reflected the way they want to raise their children, with crowds lined up and down city blocks just for a chance to enter the library reading rooms.

Now, he's taking his new book for a spin at the Seattle public library, and Pride Comes Before the Fall is just the first in this new series. "The Seattle Public Library has opened their doors and welcomed us there," Cameron said, noting that he expects a good turnout.

"I couldn't be more excited to start a whole new series of books with Brave," he said, "and this first one is called Pride Comes Before the Fall. It teaches children the importance of humility."

He read the book for the first time at the Billy Graham Library in North Charlotte, North Carolina, and the kids loved the action, adventure and danger. "Pride Comes Before the Fall is the first of in a series of books about the seven deadly sins, and the deadliest of them all is pride," he said.

"So that's why I'm starting with that one. And you know, with a culture that is so saturated and focused on being on your own self, where the message to kids is to focus on their selves and their own self-worth, self expression and self love, pride is a danger, because that ultimately is not benefiting other people," Cameron said as to why this book is key for our current cultural climate.

"Humility and the act considering others before yourself is what benefits others. Kids are being taught to celebrate themselves over others and to think that pride is a good thing. The Bible tells us that God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble," Cameron said. "The title comes from the book of Proverbs, which is an entire book in the Bible devoted to warning about pride and encouraging us to the blessing of humility. It is in Proverbs that we learn that pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall, and it's better to be lonely in spirit with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.

"Nobody likes a proud person," he said. "Everyone loves a humble person, because humble people think of others more than themselves. And that's where the blessing is. And kids deserve to be told the truth about that. All right, you want your husband to be proud and think of himself or do you want to be humble and say, my wife is is precious to me and I put her before myself? What about parents and their children?"

It's hard to escape the obvious connotations of pride as the nation enters the storied Pride month, during which alternative sexual lifestyles and gender identities, and individuals taking pride in themselves for practicing and engaging in these behaviors and viewpoints, are celebrated by governments, corporations, and institutions across the country. The Post Millennial asked Cameron what he makes of the Pride movement that puts pride in self and self-interest above everyone and everything else.

"Pride is deceitful pride is dangerous," Cameron said. "Listen to what Barack Obama said about humility: he said let us retain humility. And let me suggest that those of us with the most power and influence need to be the most humble, not prideful, humble."

"Why would we devote an entire month to deceiving children into thinking it's good to be prideful when the Bible says if we humble ourselves, God will lift us up in his timing?"

"That's what we want to teach our kids: don't put yourself in front of your brothers and sisters. Consider others and their needs and when you do that, you'll draw friends to yourself. You'll have a strong and healthy marriage and family. Everyone loves a humble person."

Cameron has seen lots of grandparents attend the readings as well and thinks that perhaps they see the value of his message more than most "because they've seen the country go from so much liberty so much blessing so much prosperity, and then decline toward moral chaos, economic struggle, and spiritual apathy. And so their alarms are going off their conscience, and their concern for their grandchildren is the loudest and they are realizing that this happened on their watch. The culture has done this during their time," he said. 

In Cameron's view, there are issues with progressive values such as teaching pride over humility, or faithlessness over faith. "It's actually regressive," he said. "It's regressing back to the way that much of the world has been prior to America. America brought the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, all built on biblical values. These are the kinds of values in my books, in Brave Books, that produce liberty." 

He believes that Americans want those values back at the center of civil life. "Often we don't realize how precious and valuable something is, until we've lost it and people realize we've been losing it and they want to get it back. And that's why I'm devoting myself to crisscrossing the country and reading in public libraries of all places. And people are responding."

The Post Millennial asked Cameron about the growing numbers of gays and lesbians who are horrified at what's being perpetrated allegedly on their behalf.

The woke movement, he said, "actually hijacks groups of people and then uses them for their own agenda and then eats them last. They want to pit different groups within the nation against one another, like, over racial issues, over economic issues; black against the white, rich against the poor, gay against straight, LGBTQ against everybody."

"And then what happens is they hijack those groups and what they stand for, and misrepresent them. Christians are not strangers to that. They'll say, 'Christianity is synonymous with white supremacy,' and that couldn't be further from the truth. And as you said, there's many people who are in the LGBTQ community who are horrified to see drag queens, grooming and sexualizing children–and this isn't being over-sensationalized. You can watch videos on this all day long to see the shocking depths to which sick people will go to even harm children in the name of celebrating pride."

When asked about #BoycottTarget is trending and the Bud Light debacle after the beer brand partnered with trans-TikToker Dylan Mulvaney, Cameron said that "these boycotts and these economic consequences for companies are happening as the nation becomes more and more prideful. It's pride that leads you to think that you can do anything that you want, without consequence."

"And that's what happened with Bud Light," he said. "What's happening here is when we think we can do anything we want we can fail to understand our own audience. We can betray their values and we don't care: that's pride," and it's not something Cameron or Brave Books wants to engage in. The exposed values of Bud Light and Target are "something entirely different."

"I think this is a needed wake up call and I'm thrilled at my book's coming out. It's not just that it's pride month but as kids are getting out of school ... it's just in time for summer reading programs. And parents want their kids off their phones and their social media. They want them reading good books over the summer. I remember doing that as a kid and we want to draw them into libraries and have them learn about the importance of humility."

Brave Books founder Trent Talbott told The Post Millennial he's excited about the new book series, and that these are topics that "Kirk and Brave Books are really passionate about. And one of those is the topic of pride. "We all struggle with pride," he said, adding that it is essential to bring this message to parents and kids. "We think we think it's a very, it's a very important topic that kids need to be aware of."