Breakpoint

In the face of record crime, Starbucks has announced the closure of 16 stores in five cities: Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The reason, according to CEO Howard Schultz, is these cities have "abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental health," leading retail partners to repeated concerns over "their own personal safety." "Starbucks is a window into America," he continued. "And we are facing things which the stores were not built for." Given Starbucks' outspoken support for progressive candidates who lead these cities, it's easy to think the coffee giant should sleep in the bed it helped to make. As the National Review reports, Starbucks "pledged over $100 million in social-justice grants" over the last few years, and individual stores are hubs for left-wing causes from trans rights to climate change. Basic law enforcement is about the reality of the human condition. When Proverbs says that "whoever sows injustice will reap calamity," it goes for individuals and entire cities. Social justice is trendy, but at the end of the day, pushing hip causes is only possible where there's actual justice.

This year, the familiar back-to-school windup includes a growing sense of trepidation for many parents. A host of faddish ideologies, and the ham-fisted ways of imposing them, adds to their worries (or at least should). Revised historicism, sex and gender ideologies, even the seemingly harmless Social and Emotional Learning are all expressions of Critical Theory in some form or fashion. Of course, many ideas out of accord with Christian teaching have been taught by schools, but these reject core realities of what it means to be human. Critical Theory in any form, whether established academic theory or mere cultural mood, categorizes people as members of particular groups and either awards or reduces social and moral merit based on those groups. This is something Christians must never do. As philosopher Douglas Groothuis writes in his analysis of the influence of Critical Theory in the U.S., "One's fundamental identity is being made in the Divine Image; it is not found in race or gender or social class." Many parents have begun to see that whenever that primary identity is dismissed, all manner of confusion sets in. Even so, this sort of thinking plays an outsized role in the rules and guidelines of our kids' schools. Recently, a colleague of mine, while enrolling her daughters at a new school, was assured by the principal that the curriculum and policies were "ideologically neutral" with respect to transgenderism. Wisely, my colleague pressed further, and asked a clarifying question. "What would happen if one of my daughter's classmates identified as trans? Would she be compelled to use their preferred pronoun?" The principal replied, "We'd want to make sure we respect the viewpoints of everybody, and so, yes, we'd ask your daughter to use the correct pronouns." "What if she didn't?" my colleague clarified. "In that case," the principal conceded, "it would probably be grounds for a disciplinary conversation." In other words, gender ideology wasn't taught, it was enforced, and in such a way as to assume that the matter was already settled. That's only one of a half dozen or more stories I have heard so far this year. Parents must research schools, both policies and personnel. Unfortunately, some administrators simply don't have a grasp of how they will handle these issues. Even more find their hands tied by laws like Colorado's Gender Identity Expression Anti-Discrimination Act. By asking specific, sometimes uncomfortable questions, parents not only protect their own kids, they provide an opportunity for transparency, maybe even change. That protects everybody's kids from bad ideas that threaten to overtake every element of their lives. A tremendous tool for parents is the Promise to America's Parents, a project of the Alliance Defending Freedom, in partnership with other organizations such as the Family Policy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation. In addition to legal assistance for those facing discrimination based on their religious convictions, this project gives a roadmap and a toolkit for parents when it comes to education and healthcare. For example, did you know that "parents can regularly and proactively request in writing to… review the entirety of their child's education records, including any files involving counseling on gender identity issues"? Also, according to a guide on transgender ideology in schools from the Minnesota Family Council, parents have the right to request the policies for locker and restrooms to know if students identifying as transgender are allowed to use the opposite sex's changing rooms and toilet stalls. In addition, parents can review curriculum before it is delivered by teachers to their students. Explicit rights afforded to parents differ state by state. For example, only 25 states and D.C. require schools to inform parents whenever sexuality is being taught. And, 36 states and D.C. openly allow opt-out options for sexual education. ADF has a sample opt-out letter for parents and other letters to request notification for any issue or ideology with which they are concerned. And, of course, all of these concerns point back to a key premise too often forgotten. Parents are in charge of educating and protecting their children, not the state. More than ever, it is vital that parents take this right seriously. The Promise to America's Parents is one way to do that. In fact, on Friday August 19, I will join ADF, the Heritage Foundation, and others for a Celebration of the Promise to America's Parents. It will be livestreamed and absolutely free. Just visit adflegal.org/celebratethepromise to register. Truth doesn't become falsehood because it's unpopular. The hard thing to do is also the loving thing to do, and both kids and educators need to know the difference.

According to the BBC, the U.K.'s "only dedicated gender identity clinic" for youth has been ordered to shut down. The reason is not a lack of demand. In fact, referrals for "treatment" are 20 times higher than 10 years ago. Rather, the clinic has received wide criticism from an independent report of their practices. Former patient Kiera Bell, now 25, was prescribed puberty blockers at age 16. She underwent a double mastectomy at age 20. She has now changed her mind about the procedures and says that doctors "should have challenged" her thinking, especially at such a young age. A former consultant psychiatrist to the center agrees: "Some children have got the double problem of living with the wrong treatment, and the original problems weren't addressed—with complex problems like trauma, depression, large instances of autism." While countries like the U.K. are questioning these wrongly named "gender affirmation" treatments, clinics, academics, and the executive branch of the government in the U.S. have only doubled down. We should stop now. The rising tide of those who are expressing regret is quickly becoming an ocean.

Throughout Church history, church attendance and overall religiosity have been higher among women than among men. That seems to be changing, especially for younger generations. According to new data, the long-existent church gender gap, which shows up in both religious affiliation and church attendance, has now flipped. However, the headline is not that more men are connecting with the Church. The story is that more women are disconnecting from the Church. A number of factors have contributed to this demographic shift, not least of which are recent scandals of sexual impropriety and abusive leadership among prominent pastors and Christian leaders. Also, education and ethnicity seem to play a significant role in the religious identification of millennial women. "Among white respondents," a recent Christianity Today article summarized, "women are 9 percentage points more likely to say that they have no religious affiliation compared to white men," but "there's no real difference in the share of male and female nones among Black, Asian, and other racial groups." Another factor, Dr. Abigail Favale argues in a new book The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, is the rising influence of feminist thought, what she calls "the gender paradigm" in evangelical circles. Or as a colleague recently put it, describing the deconstruction process of a few of her friends, "It's all about 'resisting the patriarchy." That kind of language points to the paradigm which Dr. Favale once herself subscribed. She now believes it to be incompatible with a Christian understanding of male and female, sex, and gender. Even so, the feminist paradigm has quite successfully framed Christianity and the Church as misogynist, patriarchal, and harmful for women. The same paradigm idealistically reframes pagan religions and cultures as being pro-woman, at least until Christianity gained prominence. This narrative, however, doesn't match the historical realities. First, in contrast to ancient paganism, monotheism provided women with more freedom than polytheistic religions with goddesses did. In cultures dominated by the latter, women were limited to roles performed by the goddesses, and not always all of them. In fact, the "role" designated for many women by pagan religion was temple prostitute, a tool of men's worship. In ancient Rome, women were permitted to engage in business, but their primary role was in the household. Men had public roles, but women engaged in domestic work were subservient to their father or husband. As in other historical periods, elite women had more options. However, the vast majority of women were seen as not much better than slaves. Twelve was the legal age for girls to marry in Rome. If not married by 20, women were generally marginalized. Though divorce was available to both men and women, husbands caused most divorces since women rarely had other financial means. Ex-wives and widows were often left destitute. In contrast, Christianity saw women as the spiritual and moral equal of men. Women and men shared the same created dignity, the same problem (sin), and the same solution, Jesus. As result, women in the Christian community had a higher status and more freedom than women in the broader Roman world. The Christian rejection of divorce and sexual double standards, and its insistence on strict monogamy reflected this. Further, women were given more choice about whom and whether to marry and tended to marry later than their Roman counterparts. While widows were encouraged to remarry, the Church provided aid for those who did not or could not. The Church also rejected abortion and infanticide as murder, meaning that women were not subjected to dangerous surgical procedures, and girls were not "discarded." Thus, there were proportionately more women in the Christian community than in Roman society as a whole. Because of Christian attitudes and behavior toward women, more women converted to Christianity than men, and many men who converted did so under the influence of their wives. Eventually, Christianity transformed the status of women in the Roman world. Unfortunately, as Greek ideas were adopted within the Church, elements of pagan misogyny were as well. For example, some Church fathers placed blame for the Fall entirely on Eve and ignored the Apostle Paul's putting the blame on Adam. Nonetheless, Christianity did more to improve the status of women than any other historical force. Even today, as the Gospel spreads around the Global South, the status and freedoms enjoyed by women are being raised. The treatment of women is just one example of how the Church has been an essential force for good in the world. There are others, even in an age that often labels the Church "non-essential." Don't buy it. This month, for a gift of any amount, the Colson Center's theologian-in-residence, Dr. Timothy Padgett is hosting a course entitled "The Essential Church." Be equipped theologically, biblically, socially, and culturall

Recently, two separate crisis pregnancy centers in Worcester, Massachusetts, were vandalized on the same night. Next to broken glass and spilled paint were the words "Jane's Revenge," the name of a group behind a number of similar attacks in recent months. Earlier that same week, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey warned the public of a group using "deceptive and coercive tactics," but she wasn't referring to the pro-abortion extremists threatening violence. She was warning of the crisis pregnancy centers themselves. Though her office has since condemned the violence, the bulk of its attention is still in all the wrong places: not the vandals, but the clinics offering help to women in crisis. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that "violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence." In this case, the attorney general's lie about pregnancy resource centers covers up the violence of abortion… and those using violence are allowing the attorney general to maintain the lie. Let's pray that, by some miracle, Attorney General Healey focuses her office's attention where it needs to be.

Back in May, 20 Nigerian Christians were brutally martyred by the Islamic militant group ISIS. In June, 40 more Christians died in Owo, Nigeria, in a terrorist attack against a church. Though it is not clear who is responsible for that attack, what is clear is that Christians continue to be severely persecuted in this West African nation. The persecution, which has been ongoing for years, is part of a long history of conflict with Islam. In 1953, Christians made up only 21.4% of the population in Nigeria. Today, about half of the country's population, about 96 million people, are Christians. To put that number in perspective, Germany, the largest country in Europe, has a total population of less than 84 million. Much of the Christian growth in Nigeria has resulted from education efforts by Western missionaries, though the country has long had a Christian presence. Nigeria's Christians live primarily in the southern, farming part of the country. They are mostly under attack by Islamists and the Muslim Fulani, who live mostly in the northern herding areas. They also face the threat of Boko Haram, a ruthless Islamist terrorist organization whose name literally means Western learning (boko) is prohibited (haram). Boko Haram was founded in 2002 to overthrow Nigeria's government and impose strict sharia on the country. The group was relatively quiet until 2009, after which conflicts with police escalated. By December 2010, Boko Haram began a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks on churches and government buildings. In 2014, they began to attack schools. In one attack, 59 school boys were burned alive or shot. In another, 276 school girls were kidnapped. In both cases, the victims were Christians. Boko Haram has also conducted massacres in mosques that do not support their radical ideology. Also in 2014, Boko Haram pledged loyalty to ISIL. That loyalty ended in 2016, when ISIL ordered Boko Haram to stop attacking Muslims. Currently, there are three Islamist terrorist groups that originated with Boko Haram: Boko Haram proper, the Islamic State West African Province, and Ansaru, an al-Qaeda affiliate. All are engaged in terrorism, not only in Nigeria but also in surrounding countries, with much of it aimed at Christians. As dangerous as these explicitly Islamist groups are, the Fulani herdsmen are worse. Because the Fulani territory in north Nigeria is suffering from a long-term drought, the Fulani are moving south to access water. In the process, the herdsmen have been raiding and burning villages, slaughtering villagers, destroying crops, and engaging in a host of other atrocities in order to take the land for themselves and drive out Christians. President Muhammadu Buhari is a Fulani. Though he has attempted to address some of the economic issues that drive Fulani militancy, he has denied that religion plays any role in the conflict. He points out, for example, that Muslim villages have also been raided. Still, the vast majority of attacks have come against Christians, and the Fulani's history of Islamic militancy dates back to the late 17th century. Though contemporary Fulani militancy reveals a struggle between nomadic herders and farmers going on for millennia, denying the religious dimensions of these attacks is pure propaganda. Christian villages are deliberately targeted, Christian houses and churches are burned, and Christians driven off or slaughtered. Although up-to-date numbers are hard to come by, between the Fulani and Boko Haram and its offshoots an average of 13 Christians per day were killed in Nigeria last year. That's 372 per month or over 4,450 alone. In the last 12 years, 43,000 Christians have been killed by Islamic radicals in Nigeria. And these numbers do not include those injured, beaten, or driven from their homes. What has happened to Nigerian Christians meets the established international standards for genocide. Christians must not forget the spiritual aspects at the root of this conflict. God is moving and the Church is expanding across Africa. In 1900, there were just 9.64 million Christians on the continent; today there are over 692 million. It is not surprising to see Satan counterattacking by inspiring persecution. For our Nigerian brothers and sisters, we can fight on two fronts. First, we must continue to lobby our government on behalf of suffering Christians, asking our officials to put pressure on Nigeria to take more decisive action against Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen. Second, we must lobby Heaven, for both our persecuted brothers and sisters and their persecutors, praying that God's kingdom would advance and win even the jihadis to Jesus.

John and Shane, standing in for Maria, examine the Biden's administration executive order that Medicaid patients can travel across state lines for abortion. They also explain how the killing of an Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan reminds us of not just the danger of extremist Islam in other nations such as Nigeria but also the threat of secularist states toward religious freedom. Musing on two recent commentaries, they discuss the cracks in Neo-Darwinism and the Gnostic basis of the topic of cannibalism in popular media.

Recently, police in Hampshire, England, arrested a man for an unusual crime. Not vandalism, theft, or murder but, according to the arresting officer because "someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post." Setting aside the dubious and dangerous logic of involving the state in social media spats, appealing to emotion as a matter of justice is astonishing. So, I no longer have to prove wrong has been done, only that I feel a wrong has been done? All that's left once a culture has rejected the idea of right and wrong is to grope for some moral foundation in nebulous ideas like "anxiety" and "offense." Everyone's inner voice becomes an unassailable authority, and the loudest outer voice must win. Common sense tells us that this is a disaster in the making, but without the common sense that there is common truth, there won't be common justice.

As America adjusts to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, including by enacting more laws in some states to protect unborn children, a higher number of women will likely bring their babies safely to birth. This is good news, including for those in unexpected and crisis pregnancies. Not only will more at-risk babies be saved, more women will be spared the violence and false promises of abortion. This will also mean that the efforts of pregnancy centers, adoption services, foster agencies, and other providers who generally care for struggling families must continue. In fact, by the grace of God, their work must increase. I have nothing but confidence that the Church is up to this task. And yet, as a pro-life leader recently put it, these could be the hardest days for the pro-life movement to date. The oft-repeated charge that Christians must "redouble our efforts" to care for women in crisis pregnancies in the wake of the Dobbs decision presumes that women who feel unprepared, ill-equipped, scared, and abandoned to deal with crisis pregnancies on their own is a given part of life in America in 2022. That should not be a given. It should be unacceptable to us. In other words, the emergency before us isn't only that women are facing crisis pregnancies, and often facing them alone, but our culture's warped views of sex, marriage, children, and commitment. These bad ideas have set the stage for a world brimming with crisis pregnancies in the first place. This is another subtle way legalized abortion has poisoned our cultural imagination. As Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis demonstrate in their profound new book, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, legalizing abortion—which then normalized and destigmatized abortion culturally—rewired American thought so deeply that we don't even realize anymore when we're accepting demands that we could—and should—refuse. Our work is not just to make abortion unthinkable. It is to make abandoning pregnant women unthinkable, to make derelict dads unthinkable, to make the fable of "sex without commitment" unthinkable. It is to re-catechize the world, and ourselves, about the true, un-severable relationship between sex, marriage, and babies. Legalized abortion has blinded us to that core truth. In her book Rethinking Sex, Washington Post columnist Christine Emba describes how legalized abortion and even normalized contraception were sold to women as indispensable tools of their liberation. In fact, they made possible the widespread cultural acceptance of a lie: that sex and babies have nothing to do with one another. "As contraception has become more mainstream and the risks of sex more diffuse," Emba writes, "saying no can feel like less of an option for women: after all, what's your excuse?" In other words, once abortion was legally on the table, it gave us leave to deconstruct sex to nothing more than a play for individual pleasure. That fundamental lie changed our worldview and thus our behavior. However, rather than "liberate" women, it put more pressure on women to have sex without commitment and less pressure on men to commit. It allowed us to view and treat any children who result from our sexual activity as unexpected and unwanted consequences, rather than human beings with rightful claims on our protection and commitments. To be clear, none of this was ever true. We never actually separated sex from babies. We never changed the fact that kids and mothers need committed dads and husbands in order to thrive. Lies never have the power to change God's design. They only teach us to pretend we can change reality. Crisis pregnancies and chronic absentee fatherhood are the fruit of these fictions, and women and children pay the price for these cultural fantasies. This is the house abortion built. It led us to see children as things—even burdens—instead of as image bearers. It put pressure on us that we were never meant to bear by pretending family building is fully in our own hands, not God's. Legalized abortion normalized promiscuity, promoted fatherlessness, and secured a view of children so bereft of humanity that we won't even call them children anymore. We employ euphemisms like "fetus" or "tissue," but euphemisms don't change reality, or the hard consequences of ignoring it. Yes, Christians must continue and even re-double our "pro-life" efforts inside crisis pregnancy centers. And we must continue and re-triple our pro-life efforts outside as well, advocating for healthy sexuality, biblical marriage, and a Christian vision of moms, dads, and children. This is how we finally suck the venom of legalized abortion out of our cultural imagination.

Last week, more than 80 organizations—including the Colson Center, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Focus on the Family—sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The purpose was "to denounce . . . the so-called 'Respect for Marriage Act, 'in the strongest possible terms." The letter outlined three problems with this legislation. First, the act would require recognition of any state definition of marriage, making possible options such as polygamous or open marriages. This would sacrifice the well-being of children for adult happiness. Second, the act sets up religious organizations and businesses to be sued for upholding that marriage is between a man and a woman. So, religious foster agencies, social service organizations, and other organizations and businesses contracted with the government could expect to be targeted. Third, this legislation could threaten the tax-exempt status of non-profits that believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. The so-called "Respect for Marriage Act" would establish and expand the wrongly decided Obergefell ruling. If you care about religious liberty and children, please contact your senator today. Resources: Call Your Senators About the Respect for Marriage Act>> Possible Script to Say to Senator's Office About Marriage Act>> Letter From Coalition to Senate Minority Leader>>

One of the iron laws of popcorn cinema, especially to score the coveted (but ever-more elusive) summer blockbuster status is that there must be sufficient shock value. And one of the iron laws of shock value is that it must always increase. Each new film must outdo the last one. Take the Jurassic Park series. In the first movie back in 1993, a mere five people were eaten by dinosaurs, all of whom were confined to a tiny island. Fast-forward a few inferior sequels, and a score or more people are gobbled by a host of mutant CGI dinos prowling the entire planet along with giant killer grasshoppers. The lesson is clear: Audiences had already been shocked by dinosaurs coming back to life, and they wanted more. The old thrill would no longer do. The more this iron law holds across pop culture, the more desensitized we become. Enter another rising entertainment genre more gruesome than dinosaurs eating people. People eating people. Writing recently in The New York Times, Alex Beggs documented a growing fascination with cannibalism. In the article, Beggs offered a long list of movies, TV shows, and novels in which characters eating one another is a central plot device. The novel A Certain Hunger is "about a restaurant critic with a taste for (male) human flesh." The Showtime series Yellowjackets is "about a high school women's soccer team stranded in the woods for a few months too many." A new show on Hulu called Fresh is about "an underground human meat trade." Raw is a film about "a vegetarian veterinary student whose taste for meat escalates," and Bones and All is a movie about "a young love that becomes a lust for human consumption." "Turns out," wrote Beggs, "cannibalism has a time and a place," and "that time is now." What on earth is fueling a sudden fixation with perhaps the oldest and most unsettling of taboos? The writer of one show told the Times: "I feel like the unthinkable has become the thinkable, and cannibalism is very much squarely in the category of the unthinkable." Another seemed to find the concept potentially appetizing, asking, "what portion of our revulsion to these things is a fear of the ecstasy of them?" When I first saw the headline for this New York Times story appear in my newsfeed, I thought it was a prank. Apparently, all of these books, movies, and TV shows about cannibalism point to a very real partially popular trend. Why? Perhaps, in a culture that has made virtues of deconstructing all moral boundaries and celebrating all desires, it is increasingly difficult to shock anyone. Shock value, after all, depends on some sense of what is right and wrong, and even more, what is normal. With sexual and gender identities multiplying daily and more and more people treating the human body as moldable clay without any underlying design or purpose, is it any wonder some are reimagining it as food? And why shouldn't they, if human beings are only, as Christian author Glen Scrivener puts it, "mischievous apes?" Chimpanzees routinely kill and eat one another. If we are only advanced animals, it's difficult to imagine why we humans should have a strong aversion to dining on each other, too. If our bodies are in no way sacred or made for a higher purpose, then not just every sexual appetite, but every appetite must be permissible. To be clear, I am not suggesting that we are on the cusp of a cannibal rights movement. I certainly hope we are not. The social aversion is extremely strong, as it should be, and has only been broken in a few times and places throughout history. Still, the current flirtations with people-eating in entertainment is a tell-tale sign of a culture that is losing all good aversions. Like those sub-par Jurassic Park sequels resorting to ever hungrier and bigger dinosaurs, our movies and stories reveal a lost creativity, leaving a culture that must constantly push boundaries. In particular, our gnostic age tends to push the boundaries of how characters think of and use their bodies, and the bodies of others. When it comes to sex, titles like Fifty Shades of Grey and Cuties have already put sadomasochism and the sexual exploitation of children on the menu. In such a culture, a side dish of cannibalism isn't surprising. Those who find a worldview in which bodies have no purpose or boundaries a bit nauseating should wonder why. Christians can tell them, and offer the alternative: a worldview in which bodies are sacred, not only because they are part of what it means to be created in God's image, but because God, Himself assumed a body and gave it for us. Interestingly, Christianity's early critics alleged that the Lord's Supper was a form of cannibalism. In fact, it was and is the ultimate reason that the human body is worthy of respect and honor, in the bedroom, at the movies, and even at the table.

Philosopher Blaise Pascal was best known for his so-called "wager" that believing in God is the smartest decision, even if you're not sure God exists. What many don't know is that Pascal was a pioneer in the psychology of persuasion. Heated disagreements are common in social media, writes Olivia Goldhill at Quartz. But Pascal suggested centuries ago that if you want to convince someone of your position, you don't begin by telling them they're wrong. You understand where they're coming from, admit ways they're right, but suggest they maybe haven't seen the whole picture. "No one is offended at not seeing everything,' wrote Pascal. "But [they don't] like to be mistaken." Another tip? Lead people to the answer, but let them discover it on their own. "People are generally better persuaded by reasons they have themselves discovered than by those from the minds of others." These are great tips, especially for Christians, who are entrusted with the most important truths there are, and who are to speak those truths in love.

In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Almost 50 years later, an increasing number of scientists are asking whether evolution makes any sense in light of what we now know from biology. A recent long-form essay in The Guardian signals just how urgent the problem has become for the most dominant theory in the history of the sciences. In it, author Stephen Buranyi, gives voice to a growing number of scientists who think it's time for a "new theory of evolution." For a long time, descent with slight modifications and natural selection have been "the basic" (and I'd add, unchallengeable) "story of evolution." Organisms change, and those that survive pass on traits. Though massaged a bit to incorporate the discovery of DNA, the theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated for 150 years, especially in biology. The "drive to survive" is credited as the creative force behind all the artistry and engineering we see in nature. "The problem," writes Buranyi, is that "according to a growing number of scientists," this basic story is "absurdly crude and misleading." For one thing, Darwinian evolution assumes much of what it needs to explain. For instance, consider the origin of light-sensitive cells that rearranged to become the first eye, or the blood vessels that became the first placenta. How did these things originate? According to one University of Indiana biologist, "we still do not have a good answer. The classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time," he says, "has so far fallen flat." This scientific doubt about Darwin has been simmering for a while. In 2014, an article in the journal Nature, jointly authored by eight scientists from diverse fields, argued that evolutionary theory was in need of a serious rethink. They called their proposed rethink the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis," and a year later, the Royal Society in London held a conference to discuss it. Along with Darwinian blind spots like the origin of the eye, the Extended Synthesis seeks to deal with the discovery of epigenetics, an emerging field that studies the inherited traits not mediated by DNA. Then there are the rapid mutations that evade natural selection, a fossil record that appears to move in "short concentrated bursts" (or "explosions"), and something called "plasticity," which is the ability we now know living things have to adapt physically to their environments in a single generation without genetically evolving. All of these discoveries—some recent, others long ignored by mainstream biology—challenge natural selection as the "grand theory" of life. All of them hint that living things are greater marvels and mysteries than we ever imagined. And, unsurprisingly, all of these discoveries have been controversial. The Guardian article described how Royal Society scientists and Nobel laureates alike boycotted the conference, attacking the extended synthesis as "irritating" and "disgraceful," and its proponents as "revolutionaries." As Gerd Müller, head of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna helpfully explained, "Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships. It's a whole industry." Such resistance isn't too surprising for anyone who's been paying attention. Any challenges to the established theory of life's origins, whether from Bible-believing scientists or intelligent design theorists, have long been dismissed as religion in a lab coat. The habit of fixing upon a dogma and calling it "settled science" is just bad science that stunts our understanding of the world. It is a kind of idolatry that places "science" in the seat of God, appoints certain scientists as priests capable of giving answers no fallible human can offer, and feigns certainty where real questions remain. The great irony is that this image of scientist-as-infallible-priest makes them seem like the caricature of medieval monks charging their hero Galileo with heresy for his dissent from the consensus. As challenges to Darwin mount, we should be able to articulate why "settled science" makes such a poor god. And we should encourage the science and the scientists challenging this old theory-turned-dogma, and holding it to its own standards. After all, if Darwinian evolution is as unfit as it now seems, it shouldn't survive.

In a recent article at The Gospel Coalition, writer Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra tells the story of a Christian family with a teen who once identified as transgender. "I started to associate womanhood with being sexualized," says Grace, now age 16. Peers, teachers, counselors, and—above all—social media circles guided Grace towards a strong case of rapid onset gender dysphoria. She stopped wearing feminine clothing and asked her parents to refer to her as "they/them." This is the moment that many parents fear. These parents prayed hard, stayed true, and remembered the long game. "They built their relationships with her," writes Zylstra. "They drew boundaries around how she could express herself. They took her to counseling and to church." Eventually, Grace began to feel comfortable as a girl again. In a culture where nearly 1 in 5 of Gen Z calls themselves "LGBT," the story of Grace and her family is worth reading. At a time when so many are tempted to despair, it does not offer a quick fix. But it does offer truth, love, and hope.

In early March 2021, the U.S. Senate's Caucus on International Narcotics Control released a report on the increasing potency of marijuana products available on the market. At the time, America was just a year into the pandemic and related lockdowns, so marijuana policy was not front and center on everyone's mind. It should have been. In fact, the findings contained in the report can be described as shocking. A more creative, but just as accurate, title for this 58-page report would be "This Isn't Your Grandpa's Weed." Included in the findings, the THC levels in marijuana products are soaring. THC is the psychoactive chemical that gives pot users a high, and reportedly provides relief from pain and nausea. In recent years, high-potency products have become more common. In 1990, the average concentration of THC in a marijuana plant was 4%. By 2012, it had tripled to 12%. Today, some products on the market have THC levels as high as 90%. These increasing levels come even though a 2020 NIH study found that pain relief benefits of marijuana require THC levels no higher than 5% and that marijuana with higher THC levels might even be less effective in fighting pain. Setting aside the consistent political reality that legalizing medical marijuana is always intended to lead to the legalizing of recreational marijuana—even if legitimate pain patients need medical marijuana, they do not need THC levels of 90%. And yet, marijuana policies are clearly headed in a direction that does not align with what we now know. Most U.S. states allow marijuana use in some capacity. The only two states in the country with a cap on THC levels and high-potency products are Vermont and California, where the cap is 60%. Right now, Ohio's legislature is considering a bill to cap THC levels at 90%. At that level, what is the point? While the political posturing continues, a dystopian reality born of the marijuana revolution is unfolding outside statehouses. Doctors and emergency rooms across the country have sounded the alarm on the spike in psychosis, suicidal ideation, actual suicide, schizophrenia, and addiction-like behavior they have seen among young people using high-potency marijuana. In June, The New York Times reported the story of a teenage girl who could not stop fainting and throwing up after becoming functionally addicted to vaping high-potency pot. A doctor at the Adolescent Substance Use and Addiction Program at Boston Children's hospital has reported an explosion in the number of young cannabis users experiencing "hallucinations and trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality." And increased marijuana use also poses secondary dangers such as more deadly traffic accidents, more poisonings of young people who mistake edibles for candy, and a worsening opioid crisis, which many doctors believe is directly correlated with marijuana legalization. Lawmakers in Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational marijuana 10 years ago, are now trying to apply brakes to this runaway train. Last year, the state legislature passed a bill mandating that coroners test THC levels when someone under 25 suffers a "non-natural death." According to one state senator, "Since legalization in Colorado, the regulatory framework has failed to keep up with the evolution of the new products…. The industry has changed, and we need to catch up with those changes." Unfortunately, "catching up with changes" is not generally a "strength" of government. The Church, however, can play a redemptive role. American Christians have a responsibility to advocate for policies that benefit our neighbors' welfare and against policies that hurt them. Marijuana should be no different. The 30-billion dollar marijuana industry has been incredibly deft in crafting messaging that makes anyone opposed to legalizing weed seem "uncool" or "behind the times." So, it is essential to understand that today's weed is far ahead of the times. We are far removed from the Cheech and Chong days. This stuff is dangerous, particularly for young people. Christians should be highly motivated to not let this cat out of the bag wherever it has not yet been loosed and to minister to people where it has, including in addiction recovery centers and other healthcare settings. Christians have a legacy of running into the plague when everyone else is running away. Marijuana legalization has reached plague status. It is time to head in.

Earlier in July, an Ohio Democratic state senator thought she was taking a courageous stand against the Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v. Wade. She introduced a bill that would allow pregnant women to file civil lawsuits against the men who got them pregnant. Those men could then be on the hook for up to $5,000 in damages. The senator, an outspoken abortion supporter, said she wrote the bill to counteract Ohio's "draconian" abortion restrictions. However, instead of making a statement for abortion, the bill is more of a solution for abortion and an endorsement of marriage. After all, the idea that men should take responsibility for the babies they make isn't revolutionary... or at least it shouldn't be. In a Christian vision, sex and babies go together and shouldn't be separated. So, God established a way to hold them together: Cultures around the world call this arrangement "marriage." In fact, $5,000 is a pretty sad settlement. It won't pay for a baby, much less a wedding budget. But hey, if lawmakers want to dis-incentivize men abandoning their children, I'm all for it.

It is not normal or healthy for a culture to talk about sex this much. From Pride month to education to companies telegraphing their commitments to inclusion and diversity, to just about every commercial, movie, or TV show produced today, sexual identity is treated as if it is central to human identity, human purpose, and human happiness. And this vision of life and the world is especially force-fed to children, who are essentially subjects of our social experimentations. If the energy spent talking about sex is disproportionate, it's important to know there were some who saw this coming. The best example is Oxford sociologist J.D. Unwin. In 1939, Unwin published a landmark book summarizing his research. Sex and Culture was a look at 80 tribes and six historical civilizations over the course of five millennia, through the lens of a single question: Does a culture's ideas of sexual liberation predict its success or collapse? Unwin's findings were overwhelming: Just as societies have advanced [and] then faded away into a state of general decrepitude, so in each of them has marriage first previously changed from a temporary affair based on mutual consent to a lifelong association of one man with one woman, and then turned back to a loose union or to polygamy. What's more, Unwin concluded, The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs. Unwin saw a pattern behind societies that unraveled. If three consecutive generations abandoned sexual restraint built around the protections of marriage and fidelity, they collapsed. Simply put, sexuality is essential for survival. However, sexuality is such a powerful force, it must be controlled or else it can destroy a future rather than secure it. Wrongly ordered sexuality is devastating for both individuals and entire societies. Unwin's conclusions can be boiled down to a single issue. Are people living for the future, with the ability to delay gratification, or are they focusing only on the here and now? When a culture fails to restrain its sexual instincts, people think less about securing the future and instead compromise the stability, productivity, and the well-being of the next generation in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. Unwin claims that he had no moral or ideological axe to grind in this research. "I make no opinion about rightness or wrongness," he wrote. But his work is nevertheless profound, as are his conclusions, which we seem to be living out in real time. According to Pew Research, almost 90% of children lived with two married parents in 1960. By 2008 that number had dropped to just 64%. Over the same period, the percentage of kids born to unmarried women rose from 5% to 41%. There is really no question of how this impacts children. Studies show that teens from single-parent or blended families are 300% more likely to need psychological assistance, twice as likely to drop out of high school, and more likely to commit suicide. They end up with less college education and lower-paying jobs than their parents and are more likely to get divorced themselves. This is not because children from non-traditional homes have less potential or less value. Nor do stable two-parent families guarantee outcomes for children. Statistics do not determine the future of an individual, but they can identify the future of a society. On a civilizational level, the future is a matter of math. The early days of the sexual revolution reframed the morality of sexual behavior, but today it's gone further, undermining the already fragile identity in the rising generation, fraying it in the various directions of the ever-growing acronym of sexual identities. Anywhere from 1 in 5 to nearly 40% of young people identify as LGBTQ today. Or, in the case of one junior high class in the Northeast I heard of recently, "all of them do." Christian faithfulness in this cultural moment must involve the protection of children and a commitment to the future of society. At the very least, that means speaking up, especially when it is unpopular to do so. Along the way, we will have to reject the "inevitability thesis," the notion that all is lost and that things will only get worse so nothing we do matters. With courage and unconditional love for our neighbor, we continue to speak the truth. And we will need to remind ourselves and each other of something that should be obvious but is not: The ideas and behavior of the late sexual revolution are not normal. Nor is our fascination and focus on sexuality as the central defining factor in human existence and value. Human sexuality is not some arbitrary construct like a speed limit. It is as much a part of the fabric of life as gravity. We may deny that, but we will not avoid the pain of hitting the ground if we do.

John and Maria share about a coalition of organizations that sent a letter to the Senate Minority Leader with concerns about the so-called "Respect for Marriage Act." Afterward, they discuss whether government and businesses should provide subsidies for birth and childcare. They finish with the harm in our society's quest for infinite options.

Some abortion proponents claim that by overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court elevated evangelical and Catholic morality, and violated what's known as the establishment clause found in the First Amendment. The establishment clause, however, was never meant to exclude citizens from voting their consciences or seeking their vision of the common good. It was never intended to keep morality out of our lawmaking. In fact, every law reflects some moral vision, whether or not the vision is labeled secular or religious. Are our laws against murder and theft somehow unconstitutional because they echo the morality of the Bible? Think of all the other laws that violate the establishment clause if these critics are right: the abolition of slavery, criminal justice reform, workers' rights, etc. Even the bankruptcy code is rooted in a uniquely biblical understanding about the rights of debtors, economic justice, and redemption. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the rights to life and liberty are "endowed by [our] Creator." Should we set aside the entire American project because the Declaration of Independence violates the establishment clause? No, because without it, there wouldn't be an establishment clause.

So many of the cultural debates that rage around us and captivate our attentions result from dueling definitions of truth. All ideas have consequences, especially our ideas about truth. It matters greatly whether truth even exists, whether truth can be known, and how we should think about those who reject truth. Fifty years ago, in his landmark discussion of the flow of Western history, Francis Schaeffer offered what he called "a simple but profound rule" about truth: "If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute." Even a brief look at the half century since he wrote reveals how right he was. Because of the loss of belief in the existence of truth, our cultural conversations become more fractured and disconnected, our willingness to hear one another out seems to diminish by the day, and corporate, political, and other cultural activists readily work to impose their views on everyone else. And, who's to say that they're wrong if nothing is truly right? Like Schaeffer, Chuck Colson would often appeal to the idea of "true truth," the idea that truth exists independently of people and our clashing opinions. At least in theory, this provided a means to check who is right and who is wrong. Having abandoned the idea of the reality of truth and our ability to know it, we didn't find the sort of freedom and tolerance promised. Instead, we gained chaos, conflict, and coercion. "Truth" belongs to those with the social power to decide. In recent years, many Christians have either abandoned or deprioritized the notion of truth, elevating personal experience over what God has revealed about Himself and His world. Years ago, Chuck Colson warned in his book The Faith that Christians must not give up on the idea of truth nor downplay its importance, even in an attempt to gain a wider hearing. Christianity matters precisely because it is true. If it isn't true, it doesn't matter. Here's Chuck: Why does truth matter so much? Because the Church simply can't be the Church without being on the side of truth. Jesus came as the champion of the truth and of those on the side of the truth. Without understanding this, the Church cannot even present the Gospel. Without truth, it resorts to therapy and has patients, not disciples. Much of Christianity's retreat from the truth or tempering of our witness in the West has been motivated by good intentions—not to offend or be judgmental, the desire to feel more personally connected to God and to make Christianity more relevant and culturally acceptable. The history of Christianity, including the faith's surge in the Third World today, shows the reverse to be the case. While we always want to be sensitive to other cultures, we cannot be co-opted by them. The early Christians who treated plague victims certainly weren't embracing the pagan culture. Nor were they trying to make Christianity more relevant and win over the hearts of an empire; they were simply carrying out the truth of their faith—that every person is made in the image of God and therefore possesses dignity. The task of this generation—as it will be in every generation—is to understand Christianity as a complete view of the world and humankind's place in it, that is, as the truth. If Christianity is not the truth, it is nothing, and our faith mere sentimentality. Next Thursday, the Colson Center is hosting a conversation on truth with Lee Strobel, author of the classic The Case for Christ and Brett Kunkle, founder of president of MAVEN, an organization committed to communicating truth to the next generation. This conversation is the focus of the third annual Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview to be held on August 4, at the beautiful Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Bay Harbor, Michigan. During the event, I will be pressing that truth matters, Brett will discuss how we can regain confidence in the idea of truth in this skeptical age, and Lee Strobel will be presenting the case for truth. Attendance in-person or online is completely free. In-person seating is almost full, but there is still availability for the livestreamed event. You must sign up to receive access, but thanks to the generosity of local donors, this symposium is being offered entirely free of charge. In a world where many people deny the existence of truth, learning how to clearly and confidently live out our Christian faith requires that we equip ourselves with a firm grasp of the trustworthiness of the Gospel. Again, please join us online as we work together for a more truthful world.

Today marks the death of Johann Sebastian Bach (1665-1750), an ardent student of music and diligent student of theology. Raised in a family of north German musicians, he lost both his parents by age 10. He sang in a boys' choir and played the violin early on, and later moved to the organ where he quickly was recognized for his unique talents. And of course, today he's known for his compositions, where his deep knowledge of theology is so evident. Although music historians may point out the variety of musical influence—northern and southern German, French, and Italian music, Christians have long marveled at the theological richness found in the cantatas Bach wrote for churches in Leipzig. As director of church music, he designed each one to echo the Gospel reading in both language and emotional effect. Over time, it earned him the title of the "Fifth Evangelist." Like Bach, let's be sure that in all the works of our hands and especially in our creative acts to draw from a deep and growing knowledge of God.

The most common response from pro-abortion advocates since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court is misinformation. One of the most common pieces of misinformation that's been floated by media outlets, politicians, and cultural commentators alike is that certain pro-life laws triggered by the Dobbs decision place the lives of pregnant women at risk, especially those facing an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage. These pro-life laws are not clear, the argument goes, so doctors could face legal reprisals for offering the life-saving treatments that women with at-risk pregnancies need. In some versions of this scenario, hospitals and doctors are frozen with fear and confusion, unsure of what they can and cannot do. However, as Alexandra DeSanctis wrote recently at National Review, "This is simply not the case." What her article offers is exactly what pro-lifers need to answer this pro-abortion talking point, and exactly what the title promises: "How Every State Pro-Life Law Handles Ectopic Pregnancy and Miscarriage." Here's the summary of what DeSanctis' deep dive into state law revealed: Abortion supporters have argued that state abortion limits aren't clear about whether these types of health care are permitted—and they have argued that, as a result of this supposed lack of clarity, doctors have declined to perform necessary and potentially life-saving procedures out of fear of reprisal from officials enforcing state pro-life laws. This is simply not the case. If doctors are doing so—and abortion supporters have offered little evidence of a systemic problem in this regard—it is the fault of the doctors themselves, not the fault of the pro-life laws, which are eminently clear. The pro-life worldview has always held that both lives matter, that of the mother and that of her unborn child. It is always permissible to act to care for a pregnant mother whose life is at risk. Neither miscarriage care nor treatment for ectopic pregnancy has anything to do with an induced-abortion procedure, which intentionally kills an unborn child. Every successful elective abortion has a single aim: to end the life of the child growing in his or her mother's womb. What's more, medical professionals acknowledge that induced abortion is never medically necessary to treat a pregnant mother; modern medicine can treat the mother without intentionally killing the child. For instance, miscarriage care treats a woman whose unborn child has already died, and ectopic-pregnancy treatment removes an unborn child who cannot develop or survive, in order to save the life of the mother. Neither of these types of health care bears any resemblance to directly and intentionally killing the child. The only people confused about this—or pretending to be confused—are supporters of abortion on demand. And their aim is clear: to cause confusion for the sake of undermining pro-life laws. To put a fine point on the issue: Until just last week, even the website of Planned Parenthood explicitly stated that ectopic-pregnancy treatment is not an abortion. But then the abortion business erased that clarifying information in an effort to perpetuate the tide of misinformation, intentionally blurring the lines between actual health care aimed at saving a mother's life and abortion procedures, which intend to cause the death of an unborn child. DeSanctis then provides a summary and a quote of the relevant portion of the law from every state in question: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing, especially if you encounter this particular talking point that has been repeated so often that many have begun to actually believe it. And I recommend Alexandra DeSanctis' book, co-authored with Dr. Ryan Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. In it, Anderson and DeSanctis describe what's really behind this particular talking point. Legalized abortion has taught us to see the God-given and good ability to procreate as a barrier to full humanness as women. Along the way, fertility is treated as a problem to be overcome, not a good thing to be embraced. If Christians are going to build a culture of life, we must understand all the ways in which this legal travesty poisoned our understanding of life, sex, marriage, and children. That's what Tearing Us Apart offers: the understanding we need to continue to uphold the dignity of life. I think this book is so very important right now. For a gift of any amount this month, I will send you a copy of Tearing Us Apart by Alexandra DeSanctis and Ryan Anderson. Just go to breakpoint.org/give before the end of July.

France is pretty mad at the United States. In fact, the entire European Union is mad, so mad in fact, they wrote a strongly worded letter. Earlier this month the EU passed a resolution condemning the United States Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs abortion case, which overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the matter of abortion restrictions back to individual state legislatures. Parliamentarians said the Dobbs ruling showed that "women's and girls' rights" are under attack. The strange part is that the Mississippi law which sparked the Dobbs case restricts abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That's one week later than France's law, which restricts elective abortions after 14 weeks. It gets weirder: The EU's condemnation also warns the Dobbs ruling could embolden "anti-gender" groups around the world. But if abortion is about the rights of "women and girls," that implies we know how to define "woman" and "girl." It's all a silly bit of posturing, but if the EU is worried Dobbs will change the world, I hope they're right.

"Christians should stop seeking political control and power and just focus on winning the lost." "Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world' so Christians should stay out of government." "Neither Jesus nor the early Christians tried to take over Rome. He built His kingdom in people's hearts and minds." Many variations of this argument can be found in Christian Twitterverse, usually, in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The idea seems to be that real Christian spirituality neither seeks nor celebrates political or judicial victories. Christians should only be concerned with the things of God, not the things of this world. In other words, God isn't concerned with government, and Christians shouldn't be either. Though this line of thinking sounds quite Christian, it isn't. Rather, it is an inaccurate portrayal of the relationship between God's justice and earthly justice. Just as importantly, it misunderstands what our salvation is for and why God calls us to live in this world, instead of just whisking Christians to heaven the moment we're saved. Recently, my colleague Shane Morris tackled this bad theology on Twitter, and the thread was republished by the Babylon Bee news offshoot, Not the Bee. I'll paraphrase his points: First, for most of the Church's history, Christians have agreed that civil laws should in some way reflect biblical morality. Neither Catholics, Orthodox, nor most Protestants believed that being apolitical was a good or godly thing. While there were occasions over the centuries when Christians shunned political involvement for a variety of reasons, often because they were prohibited from any involvement, it wasn't until the Radical Reformation and movements like the Anabaptists in the 1500s that swearing off politics gained traction as a principle for following Christ. Even then, it was a minority opinion. On the contrary, for most Christians, being a civil magistrate has always been seen as a high and noble calling. This, of course, makes a lot of sense since there is really no such thing as not legislating morality. No matter who writes the laws of a land, those laws always reflect someone's moral beliefs. Protecting innocent lives from deadly violence, something that occurs in abortion and other forms of murder, is the central function of good government. God created government to serve that purpose. Second, Shane pointed out something many theologians have noted over the years: that when Jesus said, "my kingdom is not of this world" in John 18:36, He did not mean "my kingdom has nothing to do with this world." Rather, He meant that His kingdom is not from this world, does not use this world's methods (such as violent revolution), and does not aim at the world's ends. Still, as Abraham Kuyper pointed out, Jesus' kingdom absolutely does affect this world, over which He has declared total sovereignty, and in which He holds individuals and governments accountable for administering justice and punishing violence against the innocent (see Genesis 9:6). As for the part that neither Christ nor the first Christians tried to take over Rome, anyone who says this should read further in their history books. In A.D. 325, the Emperor Constantine ended the official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Just decades later, in the year 380, Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. As a matter of simple historical fact, Christians did take over Rome! Setting aside questions about the legitimacy of established religion and how good such an arrangement is for the Church, it's simply not true that early Christianity did not seek to impact earthly governments. Early Christians showed intense interest in impacting governments in everything from the outlawing of infant exposure to ending persecution to the ending of the gladiatorial games. The assault of the Church against the gates of Hell progresses, of course, through the preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of souls—what the Apostle Paul called "spiritual weapons." But by advocating for good and just governments—especially when it comes to protecting innocent lives—Christians are loving their neighbors and fulfilling the other half of our calling in this world: to pray and obediently work so that God's kingdom will come and His will be done "on earth as it is in Heaven." We are saved for a purpose. Along with evangelism and worship, we are to be good citizens and to love our neighbors. This will involve supporting righteous laws and opposing wicked ones. No law in this nation's history has been more wicked than Roe v. Wade. Therefore, Christians are right to celebrate its downfall and to work to undo its bloody legacy. And Christians are right to oppose other wicked legislative efforts, such as the misleadingly named "Respect for Marriage Act." The idea that Christians have a calling so high that it keeps us from politics may sound spiritual, but it's something almost no Chri

There's a virtual army of faith-based adoption, foster care, and family support organizations in existence today, all of whom strive to care for vulnerable families.

In the 2015 majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, a decision that overruled laws in dozens of states and imposed same sex "marriage" on the United States, Justice Anthony Kennedy rightly described marriage as an institution that is fundamental to society, that protects and ensures the well-being of children, and that is essential for a flourishing society. To withhold this institution from same-sex couples, Kennedy then wrongly concluded, would be to violate their dignity and disrespect their autonomy, especially the autonomy reflected in their intimate unions. What went missing in this opinion was a definition of what marriage is, and therefore why it is such an irreplaceable institution. In the end, Kennedy's decision failed in the same way that Matt Walsh's new documentary What Is a Woman? reveals that transgender ideology fails. Repeatedly, advocates Walsh interviewed echoed the same refrain, that a woman is "anyone who identifies as a woman." However, when pressed further and asked, "but what are they identifying as?" they had no answer. In the same way, under Kennedy's reasoning, any relational arrangement we identify as marriage is marriage and warrants being included in the institution, even if it lacks the necessary ingredients that make marriage what it is. It is like saying, "The Rockefellers are rich, so I'm going to change my name to Rockefeller so I can be rich." Of course, this is not how reality works. Instead, Kennedy resorts to identifying marriage as an ever-evolving institution. In other words, marriage is not baked into reality like gravity. Instead, it is more like a speed limit, a social construct that changes as society changes. If marriage is indeed just a product of abstract progress, untethered from any created intent or design, it suffers the same moral quandary as naturalistic evolution. There is no way to control what creature comes next, or to know, as Justice Kennedy assured us, that what followed would be better than what came before (or even if it will be good). There is no guarantee that marriage will remain an institution fundamental to society, that protects and ensures the well-being of children and contributes to human flourishing. In fact, since Obergefell was decided, the rights of children to know their mom and dad, and to have their minds, bodies, futures, and most important relationships protected, have been replaced by the rights of adults to pursue their own desires and happiness. Justice Kennedy, it seems, has gotten his wish. Marriage has indeed evolved, or at least our conception of it has, but not for the better. Throughout human history, marriage was understood, including in law, to be a sexually complementary union, ordered toward procreation. No-fault divorce and now more fully same-sex "marriage" redefined it as an institution ordered only toward the vagaries of adult happiness. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives proposed the wrongly named "Respect for Marriage Act." If it passes the Senate, this bill will result in a further stage of the legal evolution of marriage. When Obergefell was decided, the "T" had not yet taken over the ever-growing acronym of sexual identity preferences. The Respect for Marriage Act would not only encode Obergefell, but it would also further the reinvention of marriage in law. In effect, marriage would evolve into a genderless institution, not only unbound from its essential connection to children and sexual difference but to any embodied realities whatsoever. In other words, there would be no legal obstacle to extending marriage beyond couples to relationships consisting of multiple partners. Even worse, redefining marriage not only redefines the definition of "spouse" but also "parent." Parenting should be a sacrificial investment in future generations, but redefining marriage in this way has made it a self-determined right of getting "what we want." Children have always borne the brunt of the worst ideas of the sexual revolution, especially when combined with new reproductive technologies. Rather than the fruit of a loving union, children are now increasingly treated as products of casually partnered consumers. Further, if the Respect for Marriage Act becomes law, the worst parts of the Obergefell decision would be established in law in a way that abortion was not under Roe v. Wade. Like Roe, Obergefell was an act of judicial overreach. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in dissent, "[T]his Court is not a legislature…. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be…. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as constitutional law…. The majority's decision is an act of will, not legal judgment." In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy claimed that the decision would not affect people of conscience, especially "religious institutions and people." That has proven to be flatly wrong. The Respect for Marriage Act contains no conscience pr

A recent NPR article lamented that "the end of Roe v. Wade has huge economic implications for male partners, too." According to a study quoted in the piece, "men involved with a pregnancy and whose partners had an abortion were nearly four times more likely to graduate college" than those whose partners gave birth. And males under the age of 20 were more likely to earn more money if their partner had an abortion instead of carrying the child to term. I guess we should thank the reporter for proving that legal abortion has always incentivized the financial well-being of men over the lives of the children they create. Still, presenting this as some kind of hardship for men is reminiscent of British slaveholders arguing against abolition by warning that sugar would cost too much without free labor. The whole moral picture is upside down. Rather than arguing for legalized abortion on the basis of "disadvantaging men," I'll happily vote for a new idea other abortion advocates have come up with: requiring men to be financially committed to the lives they create... you know, like they are supposed to be.

If this bill could find the support of 10 Republicans in the Senate who share this fuzzy view of marriage, it will pass, securing the federal government's claim on marriage and creating even less room in public life for people who object to redefined marriage.

John and Maria discuss the Respect for Marriage bill before the Senate, which undermines traditional marriage, a bedrock of society. They link the importance of family to new data on the need for fathers and also recent news about the possibility of virtual babies in augmented reality.

If we never speak up, we'll never find out what could happen... After nearly 10 years of hosting its annual "Wilberforce week," an Oxford college abruptly disinvited British group Christian Concern this March. Apparently, a handful of students accused the group of "hateful and invalidating" language. In response, Christian Concern approached Worcester College and asked them to substantiate those accusations. The college was unable to do so and was instead reminded of a prior statement issued by its provost, that "the free expression and exchange of different views … goes straight to the heart of our democracy and is a vital part of higher education." In the end, the college walked back the cancellation of Christian Concern and issued an apology. Thank God for small victories like this, and for Christians willing to live out Peter's command to respond with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak against us "may be put to shame." But this also requires Christians who, like the Apostle Peter, are willing to speak truth in the first place ... which takes courage, but who knows what God will do?

One of the more helpful analogies to explain the personal and cultural damage wrought by the sexual revolution is that sex is like fire. When a fire is in the fireplace, it brings light, warmth, and ambience. It can even preserve life. When, however, a fire jumps out of the fireplace onto the curtains, it brings destruction, even death. A similar analogy compares sex to water. Our bodies need water to live, but we need water in the right place. When water gets in the lungs, it can be deadly. One point of these analogies is that, like fire and water, sex is good. It has a design and purpose. The sexual revolution wanted sex to be "good," but forfeited the "design and purpose" part. In fact, proponents of the sexual revolution argued that sex is only good if it is set "free" from all restraint, responsibility, and consequences. This kind of fundamental error, like all bad ideas, is bound to have victims. With each day that passes, we meet more of them. Consider a piece published several months ago at Vice that announced a hip new way to find sexual satisfaction: "radical monogamy." Don't call it marriage (that's for dinosaurs), but man, there's something really fulfilling and safe (apparently) about sexual fidelity between two committed people. Or consider the recent book by Washington Post columnist Christine Emba. In Rethinking Sex, Emba argues that using the often vague ideal of consent as our only moral guidepost governing sexual activity has left a lot of people hurt, lonely, and frustrated. All of this is pointing to an opportunity for the Church to offer something better. However, to do that, we must be careful and clear. If sex is designed, it is under the authority of the One who designed it. If it is, indeed, under God's authority, and God is good, then rightly ordered sex is a good gift. In other words, the full antidote to the toxic sexuality of the sexual revolution isn't just to return it to the safety of the fireplace. The sexual morality we rightly talk about from Scripture isn't the whole story of this beautiful gift. Keeping sex within the confines of a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is a moral good, but just as loving our neighbors is much more than not actively hating them, respecting God's design for sex is much more than not transgressing certain boundaries. In His kindness, God has called us to the lifelong cultivation of being properly sexual. This is the virtue of chastity, something often mistaken by Christians and non-Christians alike for prudishness. Instead, the call to be properly sexual with one another is a calling for all of us, married and single, to pursue all our lives, before, during, and after marriage. The Scriptures describe this well. Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Christ laid down his life for His Church. And so, we give our bodies generously to our spouses, but not with degradation or violence. Sex within marriage can still demean, degrade, and victimize. When sex is seen as nothing more than an act of mere pleasure seeking, or when sex is demanded or withheld out of anger or contempt, or when sex is pursued in body or in mind with someone who is not given to us in marriage, chastity is abdicated, and we are sinning against God, our spouse, and ourselves. Wedding rings are not some "license to practice" in any and every way that comes into our minds. That's reductionistic. Sex is allowed in marriage, but it is also still designed. Often we think of biblical exhortations like the call to "love our neighbor" or to "seek the good of the other" as applying only to our actual neighbors, friends, or coworkers. But these verses also apply to our sexual relationships with our spouses. Practicing the virtue of chastity means to approach sex as an act of generosity. It's not something to treat lightly or selfishly, even in marriage. The sexual revolution sent the fire screaming out of the fireplace and then poured gasoline on the whole disaster. As more and more people are burned in its wake, the Church has a wonderful gift to offer, a gift that goes beyond the rules of the fireplace. When ordered rightly, the whole world will be blessed by its warmth, its light, and its life.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed what is known as the Respect for Marriage Act. Despite its traditional-sounding name, this bill is anything but. It's an attempt to make legislatively secure what was decreed by the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that redefined marriage for the entire nation. It's not surprising the bill passed the progressive-controlled House, but 47 Republicans joined all the Democrats in the vote. And it seems at least possible that Dems could find 10 Republicans in the Senate, which would make the deceptively named act a law. There's nothing conservative about the state redefining marriage and forcing it on a nation as Obergefell did. If so-called conservative lawmakers don't get that, it seems there is little left for conservatism to conserve. Too many political conservatives are philosophically rootless. Their ideas are built on sentiment or nebulous "values" instead of the solid rocks of Scripture and common sense. If society is ever to re-embrace creational norms about marriage and family, our so-called conservatives must reject "the Hallmark-ization" of ethics. They must stop prioritizing sentiment over conviction.

In 2016, psychologist Dr. Peter Langman compiled biographical data on 56 American school shooters. He found that 82% had grown up in dysfunctional family situations, usually without two biological parents at home. The trend has sadly continued. The shooter in Uvalde, Texas, hadn't lived with his father in years. The Sandy Hook shooter hadn't seen his father in the two years leading up to that massacre. Last month, new research from the Institute for Family Studies demonstrated, once again, how important fathers are, especially for boys. For example, boys growing up without their dads are only half as likely to graduate from college as their peers who live with dad at home. Strikingly, those numbers remain steady even after controlling for other factors such as race, income, and general IQ. Boys without a dad at home are also almost twice as likely to be "idle" in their late twenties, defined as neither working nor in school, and are significantly more likely to have been arrested or incarcerated by the time they turn 35. These are only a few of the data points which demonstrate that fatherlessness is one of the most pressing crises our culture is facing. Why doesn't our culture talk more about this? One reason is that this crisis intersects other "third rails." Our culture got to this point via the sexual revolution, which encouraged promiscuity by redefining freedom and prioritizing autonomy over responsibility. When sex outside of marriage becomes normal, it is mostly women who are left on their own to raise the resulting children. There are other contributing factors as well, many of which were made possible by legislation. Divorce has been largely destigmatized, not in small part by making it legally easier. The legal demand for same-sex "marriage" brought with it the demand for same-sex parenting, which by definition asserts that kids do not need both a mother and a father. Certain forms of assisted reproduction likewise assert that children are less the fruit of a committed marriage than they are a commercial process. And now here we are, with 32% of American boys growing up in homes without their biological dads. If there's anything that we should learn from the grim outcomes of this social experiment, it is that dads aren't replaceable. This was true from creation, but even more so in a fallen world with each of us born with a fallen human nature. We only learn to grow from socially, emotionally, and spiritually immature children into adults so that we can live together in a healthy way by seeing healthy behavior modeled and by having unhealthy behavior corrected. Scripture passages affirm that mentoring in righteousness requires demonstration, as much or more than just explanation. Christ repeatedly told his followers to "do as He did." When He washed His disciples' feet, He offered it as an object lesson: "I give you an example, that you also should do as I did to you." Paul told believers in Corinth and Ephesus to be "imitators" of him, just as he was an "imitator of Christ." In other places, Scripture even points to modelling and mimicry in sex-specific ways. In his letter to Titus, Paul instructed men to be "dignified" and "self-controlled" and to "urge the younger men to be self-controlled." He also told the older women to "teach what is good" and to "train the younger women" to be "self-controlled," "pure" and "kind." That, of course, is another cultural third rail. We are so desperate to pretend sexual difference isn't built into our biological reality, we simply cannot abide the suggestion that our genders are critically important in parenting. But the numbers don't lie. As Dr. Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, puts it, "[T]here is no such thing as 'parenting.' There is mothering, and there is fathering—children do best with both." Christians can challenge the growing public safety crisis that is fatherlessness, and we must start in the Church. We must affirm, in word and in action, that there are men and there are women and that both matter in parenting. We have to de-normalize absent dads, challenge men to take responsibility for their sexual choices and for their children, and fill in the gaps whenever and however necessary. No matter if our technologies and cultural dogmas pretend otherwise, every child has a father. These new statistics show, again, that every child needs their father. We have no right to deprive them of

According to a recent article in The Guardian, the theory of evolution may be in trouble. For the first time in a long time, scientists are bucking the so-called "Neo-Darwinian synthesis," which has dominated the sciences since the early 20th century. This doesn't mean "evolution" is finished as a theory, but it could mean the end of thinking of it as the only theory. There's a lesson here for Christians. Every new fad, whether in science, the arts, government, or social issues, comes with the temptation to capitulate or avoid being on "the wrong side of history." In the past, proponents of the death of religion, the looming "population bomb," utopian Marxism, and all kinds of other theories have made this claim, only to be proven completely false as time went on. As a theory of everything, neo-Darwinism has failed. As a theory of the origins of biological diversity, it is clearly failing. Christians have no cause to abandon what Scripture reveals just because an idea, lifestyle, or theory becomes popular.

Nineties kids (and their parents) may remember the Tamagotchi craze, a tiny egg-shaped video game that dominated toy markets for a time. Kids would raise a virtual pet that could hang from their backpack like a keychain. I've been told it was a great toy—the trauma of forgetting it somewhere and then finding it had passed on to greener digital pastures notwithstanding. Now, in the age of the Metaverse, something else is here … and it is even creepier. "Augmented reality babies" offer users the virtual experience of "parenting" an algorithm designed to behave like a real baby. Using virtual-reality goggles, or even potentially wearable gloves which can simulate physical touch, users can interact with a digital baby as it grows … or, optionally (and even more creepily), as it stays exactly the same. Some gurus are heralding AR babies as a new age of parenting. "Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which… could help us solve some of today's most pressing issues, including overpopulation," says Catriona Campbell, a former technology advisor to the British government, and author of the book AI by Design: A Plan for Living with Artificial Intelligence. Some argue this new development could also ease loneliness for those who want children but are unable to have them, or for those who feel they can't afford to have children. While the average kid costs about $230,000 by the time they reach age 17, reports the New York Post, "a digital kid … could have all its needs met for less than $25 per month." And as a bonus, no changing diapers! In light of these possibilities, Campbell offered a somewhat unsettling prediction: "I think it would be reasonable to expect as many as 20% of people choosing to have an AR baby over a real one." On one hand, it's hard not to be cynical of Campbell's bright-eyed tech optimism, especially given the current dubious state of Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse. No matter how good it gets, augmented reality simply cannot replace many of life's best experiences. Playing a video game in the Metaverse, for example, is fun. Eating a slice of cake... not so much. By misunderstanding why people become parents in the first place, many proponents of augmented reality misunderstand the essentials of what it means to be human. Logging off from an AR "baby" might be easier, but all the labor spent on an actual child is something that simply cannot be simulated or replaced by a simulation. And of course, the entire idea of global overpopulation continues to fall apart as its predictions continue to prove false. Should it actually work, this technology will almost certainly be adopted in countries where the most acute problem is underpopulation, not to mention increasingly devastating rates of loneliness. It's a common trend in the modern world—much like prescribing marijuana to combat anxiety—that our "cures" only further aggravate the problem. Spending over seven hours every day staring at screens for work, leisure, and connection has led many people to think technology can replace real relationships. But the opposite is true. Technology can do wonders, but putting a virtual baby in the hands of a lonely person is akin to giving a glass of salt water to someone dying of dehydration. Likewise, it is simply not true that a life free of responsibility is the one which will produce the most happiness. As any parent knows, real kids are noisy, expensive, and inconvenient. There are days when they seem to constantly take our reserves of energy, and sometimes the last strands of patience. But, they're worth it. Jesus' words that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," aren't just a pious aphorism. They're describing a core piece of what it means to be human. The surprising source of real life, joy, and vitality is from serving others, not just ourselves. No matter how sophisticated they may someday be, virtual babies will always be just a piece of code, a vain attempt to meet the felt needs of lonely adults while never providing for their true needs. If that's what people want, it would be best to avoid any pretense of "parenting" and buy them a Tamagotchi instead.

Post-Roe rhetoric continues to reach new levels of rumor, scare tactics, and red herrings. Take a recent headline from Scientific American, "Abortion Restrictions Could Cause an Ob-Gyn Brain Drain." The implication is most doctors want to offer abortion so badly, they'll leave medicine if they can't. The truth, however, seems to be the opposite. The LA Times reported, from a 2019 survey of American OB-GYNs, that "while nearly 3 out of 4 had a patient who wanted to end a pregnancy in the past year, fewer than 1 in 4 were willing and able to perform one themselves." For some, the reasons were pragmatic. Many others cited pro-life convictions. As Dr. Donna Harrison of the Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists put it, "We have two patients: both the unborn child and the mother. As physicians, we've taken the Hippocratic oath… we don't kill our patients." That's the actual heart of the issue. Doctors are there to heal, not kill. It's not hard to tell the difference.

Today, July 19, marks a dark day in Christian history. On this date in A.D. 64, the Great Fire of Rome left two-thirds of the Eternal City in ashes. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the fire was sparked in a part of town concentrated with flammable goods, quickly spread by high winds, and burned over the course of the next week and a half. This was the stuff of nightmares. According to Tacitus: "The blaze in its fury ran first through the level portions of the city, then rising to the hills, while it again devastated every place below them; it outstripped all preventive measures, so rapid was the mischief and so completely at its mercy the city, with those narrow winding passages and irregular streets which characterized old Rome." He went on to describe screaming women, helpless children, and panicked crowds, trampling everything before them. The end of the blaze was not the end of the terror. On the throne at the time was Emperor Nero, a man notorious for his immorality and hatred of Christians. Suspicious by the way Nero refashioned the charred city into his own image, as well as by rumors that he "fiddled while Rome burned," many Romans began to wonder if he had started the fire himself. To forestall the whispers, Nero blamed the Christians. And why not? Christians were weird. They talked about eating flesh and drinking blood. They called their husbands "brother" and their wives "sister." They denied the gods, like atheists. They thought a dead man had come back to life and was going to return one day in glory and, most pertinently, in vengeance. Up to this point, believers had mostly been left alone by Roman authorities, but Nero found they were easy to pick on. In the days that followed, the Apostles Peter and Paul met their fates, along with an unknown but great number of other Christians. If this was the first time Christians took heat for a public disaster, it certainly would not be the last. Christians have found themselves an unpopular minority in many cultural settings and have been consistently blamed for various disasters in various societies. A century and a half after Nero's attacks, Tertullian, a North African Christian writer, morbidly quipped, "If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions." In 410, pagan writers suggested that the sacking of Rome by German tribes would not have happened had Rome not abandoned her gods for a supposedly immoral Christianity. That accusation led Augustine of Hippo to respond with his magnum opus, The City of God. One of the most important works in the history of Western civilization, The City of God is still read, centuries later, by pastors, philosophers, and historians alike. In it, Augustine provided a thoroughgoing defense to a shallow trope leveled against Christians. He offered a litany of natural and military disasters and gross moral failings from Rome's supposedly purer and pagan past. With these examples, he undid the critique that Christians had somehow made life worse. If anything, in fact, the influence of biblical ideals had made things better. Christians today face analogous accusations. We aren't being cast to the lions (at least not here in the West, anyway), but there's a clear and growing undercurrent of hostility toward Christians that often resembles the tropes used in ancient days. Christians have been blamed for the prevalence of poverty, natural disasters due to climate change, the degradation of science and technology, and all kinds of social and political oppression. Our reply can be much the same as Augustine's. Oppression, poverty, military, and natural disasters are the common lot of humanity. They are common in times and places where the Gospel has never gone. However, in those places where Christianity has gone there are hospitals, universities, technological innovation, freedom, and an unusual insistence on human dignity. Recently, the good that Christianity brought to the world has been described in books like Dominion by the (as yet!) non-Christian historian, Tom Holland, and the newer The Air We Breathe, by Anglican evangelist Glen Scrivener. These works remind us how bad the world was before Christ came, and how much of what we think of as good and valuable has come, not despite Christianity, but because of it. Any Christian who faces an unfair accusation today should read these books and be encouraged. Christianity is just as true and good today, as it was then.

The day that Roe v. Wade died, reactions were mixed. Those who long supported Roe's legal death work mourned the victory for life. For many, it provoked fear, sadness, outrage, and hyperbole. "I thought I was writing fiction in The Handmaid's Tale," Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote. "The Supreme Court is making it real." On the other hand, many pro-lifers celebrated. "For nearly fifty years, America has enforced an unjust law that has permitted some to decide whether others can live or die. We thank God today that the Court has now overturned this decision," said Archbishop José Gómez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The only truly surprising reaction came from a third group. While technically pro-life, this group viewed the overturning of Roe as a sort of problem, a cause for caution and even sorrow. Some even condemned the celebrations they saw from the rest of us. Apologist Mike Winger referred to this group as "the sideways people," ... because it's like they are taking a sudden turn from the issue at hand and going sideways onto other things they care about more. Or perhaps it's because they are "looking sideways" at this whole thing in the sense of being bothered by it, even if not repudiating it. He's right. After achieving a goal that united Christians for nearly 50 years, it was strange to see a tone of fear and concern from some corners of the Church. If the caution came from a fear that the Dobbs decision was wrongly understood to have ended abortion or to have settled the issue, that's valid. Overturning Roe did neither. As many have said, this is not the end of this battle on behalf of pre-born life. It's not even the beginning of the end. At best, it's the "end of the beginning." The pro-life movement must continue, and its future has to be not only pro-child but also pro-mother, treating people, especially women caught in unexpected pregnancies with compassion and support while unraveling the lies our culture tells them about their child's life. All of this is true. But that's not really where these critiques were coming from. These were coming from Christians who declared that real compassion precluded celebration and that we must "lament" with women who no longer have a presumed right to end the life of their child. It was as if the real problem was that this particularly heinous choice was being taken away from them. Abortion is an act of violence to both mothers and children. Only a society that's been deeply poisoned by a culture of death pretends otherwise. Should celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation have been muted as well? The real issue is that too many Christians crumple under the weight of mere public opinion. Whenever empathy becomes the chief virtue of a Christian, their moral waters are muddied. "Winsomeness" somehow looks like "silence." Cultural elites, from business to entertainment, have made it perfectly clear: To speak out against abortion carries with it the crushing stigma of somehow hating women, of being merely "pro-birth," of needlessly offending our neighbors with divisive rhetoric. The tragic irony is anyone who favors the killing of unborn children can publicly say so without a hint of moral disapproval from some of these Christians. This imbalance is, of course, not new for pro-life advocates. We've come to expect it from those who are deceived by the worst ideas of our age. But we don't expect it from those who claim to be pro-life. Princeton Professor Robert P. George often tells of a question he asks his students. If you had been born before the Civil War, would you have accepted slavery, or opposed it? Nearly every student quickly answers that they would have opposed slavery and would have worked tirelessly to dismantle it. "Of course, this is nonsense." George writes: "Only the tiniest fraction of them, or any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves." If he's going to believe those students who claim the moral high ground, George demands that they show evidence of how they have stood, today in some context, for an unpopular victim of injustice, knowing that, as a result of their moral witness, they would lose standing with their peers, be loathed and ridiculed by powerful people and institutions, abandoned by some of their friends, called nasty names, and denied valuable professional opportunities. Because that is the cost of moral clarity. If we will not even risk being liked, the end of Roe v. Wade feels more like a problem than the win it really is. Of course, from here, if we're going to show true love, it's far more difficult than simply speaking pro-life opinions. It will cost us to support crisis pregnancy centers at the level they need to be supported, to protect at-risk mothers, to show compassion to all children, and to live lives that are in line with God's plan for human flourishing. In short, there's plenty of work to do. But we can do that work and still celebrate the

A gay couple is suing a fertility business in California because they had a daughter instead of a son. The lawsuit is full of loaded terms we shouldn't miss. Gay couples "must" pay surrogate mothers if they want to have kids, the suit says. The men paid the clinic to create "their" embryos and to implant only male embryos into "their" gestational carrier. Must two men, who've chosen a biologically sterile union, demand children at will? Who exactly owns a young embryo or a gestational carrier—which is another word for mother? At the end of the day, this distasteful story isn't a bug of assisted reproduction: It's a feature. Treating women and children as objects is the enterprise. If we are uncomfortable when someone is more upfront about that—like a couple who files a lawsuit because they didn't receive what they had ordered and paid for—maybe we should reconsider turning procreation into a manufacturing business.

John and Maria comment on how reactions to the images from the James Webb Telescope tell us about God and humans. Moving to the fallout after the Dobbs decision, they discuss Gov. Whitmer's stance in Michigan to restrict extradition due to abortion. They also respond to the accusation of transphobia aimed at Senator Hawley when asking for clarification for women's rights. Finishing, they touch on two popular stories from this week's Breakpoint.

The Declaration of Independence's statement that "all men are created equal," which Chuck Colson called "the American creed," often elicits a response: since slaves were anything but equal, was this creed a lie? Many signers of the Declaration were abolitionists who compromised on this issue so that the hope of independence would not end before it started. And without excusing the injustice of slavery, it's notable that Thomas Jefferson originally included a condemnation of slavery in the Declaration, but was forced to remove it due to opposition from the Southern colonies. And, it takes time for an idea to take root, to spread, to move from abstract principle to practical implementation. Jefferson was himself a slaveholder, and though in principle he opposed slavery, he failed to make Monticello work without them. The existence of slavery was assumed at the time, and many could not imagine a world without it. They should have but didn't. The American creed is an aspiration which neither our founders nor we have perfectly achieved. Rather than dismiss it as hypocrisy, we should commit ourselves again to work toward it.

The moment Roe v. Wade was overturned last month, desperate activists began to dust off the oldest and oddest arguments for abortion. These "gotcha" scenarios are supposed to prove that pro-lifers don't really value human life or consider preborn babies from the earliest stages of development to be human. Instead, these pretend scenarios demonstrate that pro-lifers are simply hypocrites. On closer inspection, however, these scenarios fail to convince. For example, there's the so-called "burning fertility clinic" scenario. A friend emailed me recently and asked for a response to this one, which as best I can tell, was invented by author Patrick Tomlinson. It goes like this. You're in a burning fertility clinic and hear a 5-year-old child crying for help. Across the room is a container marked "1,000 Viable Human Embryos." The flames are rising, smoke is filling the air, and you can only save one: the child or the container of embryos. According to Tomlinson, if you would choose to save the crying child, you're betraying the fact that, whatever you may say, you really believe embryos aren't equivalent to human beings. How, otherwise, could you justify saving one over 1,000? "Gotcha," right? Not really. First, this argument has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. In no instance does a woman or her doctor ever choose between saving the life of one child at an advanced stage of development, or 1,000 at an earlier stage. Abortion involves the intentional killing of one or multiple children who, in most cases, would have lived if left alone. There's no analogy, here, which means as an argument for abortion, the burning fertility clinic is toast. But even setting that important point aside, the decision to save the imaginary 5-year-old over the embryos—which for the record, I would make—doesn't necessarily reflect my view of the embryos' humanity. It only reflects what I would do with limited time in a no-win situation. Perhaps, I would be acting on an impulse to stop conscious suffering, or to prevent parents from losing a child whose face and voice they know, or from a spur-of-the-moment instinct to answer a cry for help. None of these actions has any equivalence to an intentional killing, and none of them means I consider embryos less than human. Of course, abortion activists continue to repackage this flawed scenario, again and again, with help from media sources. Last week in The Washington Post, another and even more bizarre form of this argument surfaced. Harvard ethics professor Daniel Wikler and Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman argued that if state lawmakers who are now outlawing abortion really believe embryos are human beings, they should be panicking over the sudden statistical spike in their states' infant mortality rates. As these professors write: "30 percent of human embryos spontaneously self-abort"—or are miscarried. These deaths aren't normally counted in infant mortality statistics, which only account for deaths after birth. But if embryos are human persons, these profs argue, infant mortality stats should include miscarriages. If we did that, though, we would be looking at mortality rates more than twice those of the most dangerous countries on earth—a true public health crisis! They conclude: "the fact of spontaneous abortion shows that opponents of abortion do not themselves believe what they are saying." This "gotcha" scenario has nothing to do with abortion, which is, once again, the intentional killing of unborn babies. Their use of the term "spontaneous abortion" instead of "miscarriage" may be medically acceptable but muddies this crucial distinction. And consider their logic: Lots of miscarriages, tragically, do happen. If pro-life lawmakers aren't adequately panicking about this, they must not really think intentionally killing unborn babies is wrong? That is like saying if you aren't panicked about children dying during a pandemic, you can't be against a shooter gunning them down in a school. It's an absurd line of thinking yet, in the frenzy of a post-Roe abortion movement, passes for Ivy-League-level ethical reasoning. None of these "gotcha" arguments should intimidate pro-lifers, especially Christians. We have the truth on our side, and now, thank God, the law in an increasing number of states. Bizarre hypothetical scenarios cannot change the moral reality that elective abortion is evil. On close inspection, the "gotcha" scenarios, like the imaginary fertility clinic in which they so often take place, just go up in smoke.

A line typically attributed to George Orwell states that "in times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." Well, we live in times in which "deceit" has been joined by "confusion." So, even claiming to know truth can mean being called a "liar," even when it comes to the observable realities of shared history or biology. In other words, telling the truth today requires nothing short of revolutionary courage. That's why I hope you can join me, Lee Strobel, and Brett Kunkle for Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview this August 4 at the stunning Great Lakes Center for the Arts, located in Bay Harbor, Michigan. Thanks to generous sponsors, the event is completely free for those who can attend locally and will be livestreamed for everyone else. To attend in person or livestream, register at GreatLakesSymposium.org. Christians must re-embrace the idea of truth. Please join us August 4 at Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview, where we can spur each other on to do exactly that.

In response to the recent Dobbs decision and the Supreme Court's clear, consistent support for religious liberty throughout this term, many progressives are warning of an imminent "Christian theocracy." Among the loudest voices predicting our collective doom are mainstream media outlets. For example, a recent story in Reuters claimed, "U.S. Supreme Court Takes Aim at Separation of Church and State." What's missing in virtually all of these pieces is a proper understanding of the "establishment clause." The establishment clause is derived from the opening lines of the First Amendment which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …" There are two ways this statement is commonly misunderstood. First, it is often described as establishing a "wall of separation between church and state." In fact, those words are found nowhere in the Constitution. The phrase actually was coined later in a letter by Thomas Jefferson. Second, and more importantly, it is assumed that if organized religion cannot be supported by the state, then secularism is somehow "neutral." Thus, by default, anything goes as long as it's "secular." Understanding the historical context is essential. In the 18th century, an "established" religion referred to an official state church. In the U.S., individual states had already established churches, such as the Anglican Church in Virginia. The First Amendment specifically applied to Congress and prohibited a national church. To prefer the Anglican Church over the Congregationalists or Presbyterians would, at the time, mean alienating certain citizens and entire states. States continued to have established churches well into the 19th century. In addition, the First Amendment was not intended to prohibit religious activities in governmental institutions. From the very beginning, Congress started each session with prayer. That continues today and is led by an official chaplain. Our founding fathers, particularly James Madison, believed that religious liberty was an innate right, and inseparable from the freedom of conscience. He also believed that religion would better flourish in a free marketplace of ideas. That thinking was the basis for the free exercise clause. This understanding of the freedom of conscience is the foundation for the other freedoms protected in the First Amendment. Without conscience rights, we cannot truly speak, write, assemble, or advocate freely from our deepest beliefs. That's why the freedom of religion is often called "the first freedom." Its position in the Bill of Rights highlights its importance. Although the rights of conscience should not be controversial, somehow, that's what they have become. How this happened is worth considering. By claiming secularism to be neutral, proponents of secularism ,as far back as the 19th century, attempted to broadly apply laws originally intended by Protestants to prevent Catholic schools from accessing state funds. In the 20th-century, secularists embraced the concept of "a living Constitution" in order to transform the meaning of the First Amendment, attempting to keep religious institutions from accessing state funds and allowing only "secular" views in the public arena. Though many court cases illustrate this, among the more important was Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), which declared unconstitutional Maryland's requirement that officeholders state belief in God. Rather than ruling on the basis of Article VI, which prohibits religious tests for public office, the Supreme Court ruled on the basis of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from violating the rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens. The same line of reasoning has since been used to challenge prayers at public meetings, Bible studies in schools, and nativity scenes on public property. In the process, the First Amendment was turned on its head, taking a clause intended to keep the state from backing any one denomination and construing it to position the state in opposition to all organized religions. In footnote 11 of the Torcaso v. Watkins decision, Justice Hugo Black listed secular humanism as one of a number of religions "which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God." Calling humanism a religion was not outlandish. For a century, humanists such as John Dewey and Julian Huxley had defined their beliefs as a religion. After all, secularism involves certain claims about the cosmos, existence, and human nature. And yet in 1994, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District that while "religion" should be broadly interpreted for free exercise clause purposes, "anything 'arguably non-religious' should not be considered religious in applying the establishment clause." In other words, secular organizations were able to play both sides, qualifying as a religion for the free e

Since SCOTUS overturned Roe, sales of the morning-after pill have exploded. Amazon had to restrict purchase numbers as did the pharmacies CVS and Rite Aid. One company saw a 600% increase in purchases within 24 hours of the Dobbs decision, with 72% of those for multiple units. Morning-after pills, colloquially called by the brand name Plan B, don't need a prescription. They range from $10 to $50 a pop. Women take it within three days of unprotected sex to deter ovulation and, if not that, to prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which as many Christians have pointed out is abortion. It's not the same as what's called "medication abortion"—two different pills used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. In a recent commercial for a new show, a woman hands a friend a bag with the morning-after pill, so the friend can sleep with a guy spontaneously. In other words, the phrase "emergency contraceptive" is most often a misnomer. Most of the talk of reproductive justice is really about sex without restraint.

In most of the world today, slavery is unthinkable. Is it possible that we could ever reach that same place with abortion in America? Just as there were once states where it was legal to own slaves and other states where it wasn't, we are now a nation deeply divided on the issue of abortion on a state-by-state level. In certain states, abortion is allowed, encouraged, and even subsidized abortion. In others, abortion is all but illegal. The history of the Church's stance on both issues, abolition and abortion, is instructive as we seek to obey Christ in a post-Roe world. Clearly, the early Church did not like slavery. The New Testament condemns behaviors that were endemic to the slave trade. In his letter to Philemon, Paul gave broad hints that masters should free their Christian slaves. Early Christians often purchased slaves specifically to set them free. Even so, neither the New Testament nor the early Church pushed for full abolition of slavery, for at least two reasons. First, taking a public stand would have brought even more unwanted attention to an already targeted group. Second, the ancient world offered no model to Christians for a society without slaves, so few could envision what that would look like. Though Christians saw slavery as a curse, they could not conceive of being rid of it entirely (any more than they could imagine a world rid of disease or poverty). This failure of moral imagination meant that it would be centuries before the implications of the Gospel would lead Christian rulers to take definitive steps toward abolishing slavery. By the Middle Ages, overt slavery was rare in Europe, and Church leaders spoke out against it. Thomas Aquinas claimed that slavery might be part of the "law of nations" but was against the law of nature and therefore a sin. When, centuries later, the infamous Atlantic slave trade began, Portugal and Spain defied the decrees of four different popes to spread it in their colonies. In the English-speaking world, the rampant practice of slavery found opposition among Quakers and a rising evangelicalism that eventually ended first the slave trade, then slavery altogether. All this means that the American theologians who defended slavery were following the culture's lead, not Church teaching. Though it took far too long for the implications of the Gospel to become clear, the teaching of both Jesus and Paul of the spiritual and moral equality of all persons meant that slavery was incompatible with Christianity, and its abolition in Christian states was only a matter of time. Eventually, because of the commitment to the worth and dignity of every human being as created in the image of God, Christians fought to end the abuse of slavery. In contrast, the Christian position on abortion has been clear from day one. In the Didache, the earliest non-New Testament Christian work to survive, Christians are instructed "you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born." Similarly, the late first or early second century Epistle of Barnabas, a manual of ethics in this early period, says "you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor again kill it when it is born." In "A Plea for Christians," written in 177, Athenagoras of Athens wrote, "[w]e say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder …" Similar teaching can be found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, the pseudonymous Apocalypse of Peter, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, and Lactantius, which takes us up to the de-criminalization of Christianity by Constantine. The teaching of the Church on abortion has been clear from the start and continued to be clear well into the 20th century. Only recently have some claiming the name of Christ accepted abortion as morally licit, or worse, have celebrated it. Christian opposition to abortion is based on precisely the same reasoning as Christian opposition to slavery. Every human being is made in the image of God and is crowned with glory and honor, a dignity we dare not ignore. The same dehumanizing and depersonalizing claim that undergirded the idea that slaves were less worthy as human beings, and further undergirded the horrific treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow South, is also at work in pro-abortion thinking. And yet, the same liberating power of the imago dei that broke the chains of slavery demands that we see the dignity of preborn children and work to protect them. Slavery and the subsequent dehumanizing treatment of African Americans was evil, and that the crusade to end both was (and is) God's work. May we also recognize that dehumanizing and killing the unborn is at least as evil, and rightly abhorred.

Yesterday in 1924, Eric Liddell (1902-1945) won an Olympic gold medal in the 400-meter race. As a devout Christian, Liddell decided to never race on Sundays. Imagine his dismay when he realized that his best race—100 meters—was scheduled for a Sunday. Liddell withdrew, to the derision of many Britons, who thought he was being disloyal to his nation. He quickly pivoted for the 200-meter and 400-meter races, taking third in the 200-meter and claiming the gold in the 400-meter. Liddell was the son of Scottish missionaries to China, and his story was memorialized in the film Chariots of Fire, which won the Oscar in 1981 for Best Picture. Despite athletic success, Liddell returned to China the following year. During World War II, the Japanese took over his mission station and placed him in an internment camp, where he faithfully served Christ and others before dying of a brain tumor in 1945. Liddell's Olympic-time decision was consistent with the life he lived in faithful service to Christ who "made [him] for China," but also "made [him] fast." He ran every race, including the race of life, to "feel God's pleasure." .

One of the most enigmatic, sensational, and misguided thinkers of the last 10 years is Israeli historian and pop philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. His book Sapiens, published in English in 2015, sold over a million copies as it told the story of mankind's evolution. His 2017 book Homo Deus predicts a transhumanist future, a world where technology fundamentally reshapes what kind of entity human beings are. "We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls. We are now hackable animals," he told attendees at the 2020 World Economic Forum annual meeting. "By hacking organisms, elites may gain the power to reengineer the power of life itself," he said two years earlier. "This will be not just the greatest revolution in the history of humanity. This will be the greatest revolution in biology since the very beginning of life 4 billion years ago." Harari's prophecy doesn't end there: "Science is replacing evolution by natural selection by evolution via intelligent design," he continued in 2018. "Not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds, but our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds: the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud … these are the new, driving forces of evolution." Conspiracy theorists might be forgiven for having a field day with such statements. After all, Harari's outspoken fans include some of the most powerful people alive: Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, former President Barack Obama, as well as executive chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab. Despite a somewhat critical response from academics, the success of his books is undeniable. Still, Harari suffers from a fatal inconsistency. While positioning himself as a prophet, interested in solving the worst abuses that could befall our future hackable selves, he cuts the ideological ground out from anything standing in their way. A keen example is his critique of both liberal democracy and the entire concept of the "individual" as outdated political norms. "Liberalism," he wrote in the Guardian "is unprepared for a situation when individual freedom is subverted from within, and when the very concepts of 'individual' and 'freedom' no longer make much sense." Yet in nearly the same breath, Harari rushes us towards that exact conclusion: "In order to survive and prosper in the 21st century," he writes, "we need to leave behind the naive view of humans as free individuals—a view inherited from Christian theology as much as from the modern Enlightenment." Though he is right about the origins of classic liberalism, the result is a self-contradictory mess. In effect, Harari is saying we should stop people from being hacked by hacking ourselves first … and defend universal values by denying that they exist. "I don't know where the answers will come from," Harari admits, "but they are definitely not coming from a collection of stories written thousands of years ago." If those stories are just stories, Harari is correct. But as C.S. Lewis described, some stories ground us in reality. This is, in fact, what Christianity does, and what reductionist materialism makes impossible. Though new insight on technology may have helped Harari sell interesting books, dreaming of a world stripped of all values is as old as modernism itself. Had someone given him a copy of Lewis' The Abolition of Man, he may have seen his exact premise tackled by an Oxford don nearly 80 years ago. All of this matters because ideas have consequences. Harari and those like him may be attempting to shape the trajectory of transhumanism towards a utopian future but, as often the case, public intellectuals with good intentions but bad worldviews are often the blindest to the practical implications of their thinking. "How does liberal democracy function in an era when governments and corporations can hack humans?" Harari asked in the Guardian article. A better question is: How does liberal democracy function in an era when people rush to assume they are merely pre-determined "hackable animals" instead of moral agents who are responsible for their decisions, living in a society of people created equal and "endowed by their creator with inalienable rights?" History tells us the answer to that question. It can't. The entire concept of human rights is intimately connected with a Christian anthropology. Gut a society of that worldview, and there's no limit to how far we can fall. If Harari's predictions somehow do become reality, it will have less to do with technology, and far more to do with ideas: specifically, the nihilistic, reductionist humanity he so ardently promotes. Technology makes imagined futures possible, but ideas shape how and why we use technology. If he's looking for a worldview that's better for empowering techno-tyrants, corporatists, and demagogues, he could do little better than the one he's promoting. On the other hand, if he's looking to evade the oppression he fears, he should look to One of the old stories he derid

I'm going to say it—a book is better than a phone. Stop me if you've heard this: A guy is walking his dog right beside a very busy road and he almost dies because he's staring straight into, wait for it . . . a book! You were expecting it to be his phone, right? If you're going to risk your life, at least do it for the printed word. We might tell ourselves there's no difference between reading on paper and reading on a screen. But as Dr. Martin Tobin writes, "Our eyes lie to us." "Cognitive scientists have discovered that reading is not only a visual activity, but also a bodily activity," Tobin writes. "A book is a physical object . . . you see and feel the texture of its pages. Leafing back and forth provides a mental map of the entire text, aiding comprehension …and recall." And, of course, when we read a book, we're not tempted to check email, voicemail, Facebook, texts, and on and on. So put down the phone. Grab a real book. But avoid traffic when you do so.

A recent photo essay in The Atlantic documented dozens of pro-abortion demonstrations around the country following the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling. Protesters, often dressed like handmaids from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, seem to believe the Court has taken something away from them. Even the article's description blames the justices for "removing a federal right to an abortion." In reality, the majority's decision in the Dobbs case did not change a single abortion law. What they did was end the Supreme Court's 49-year-old intervention that took the abortion question out of the hands of elected lawmakers, and therefore out of the hands of the American people. Now, thanks to this ruling, voters can, for the first time in a generation, decide the issue democratically by going to the ballot box and making their voices heard. Of course, any law that allows for the killing of unborn children is unjust and morally unacceptable, even if it is the will of voters. So, the ultimate goal for Christians should be that abortion is not only illegal in all 50 states, but unthinkable in the modern world, swept into the dustbin of history like other historic evils. Obviously, given the reaction to the Dobbs decision, this will involve changing a lot of hearts and minds. Still, the ruling in Dobbs is an incredible victory and important step in restoring the rule of law in this country and putting the question of abortion before the people. Roe was a legal disaster that was used for decades to swat down any state-level regulations on abortion and silence voters who wanted those regulations in place. As Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis write in their new book, Tearing Us Apart, [Roe] removed nearly every question about abortion policy from the hands of the American people and placed the issue into the hands of unelected judges, even though the Constitution contains nothing that could remotely support a right to abortion. Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, someone who was far from pro-life, described the judiciary's attitude on this issue as "the abortion distortion." According to Justice O'Connor, "no legal rule or doctrine is safe from ad hoc nullification by this Court when an occasion for its application arises in a case involving state regulation of abortion." In other words, she saw that her fellow left-leaning justices were willing to use specious arguments to prop up abortion rights, even when they meant ignoring established norms and precedent. In fact, even the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a strong supporter of the so-called "right to choose," admitted that, in legal terms, Roe was a "heavy-handed judicial intervention." Not only does Dobbs represent a moment when the Supreme Court is giving up power and returning it to the states, but it may place America much more in line with the rest of the developed world on the abortion issue. Believe it or not, American law on abortion, thanks in a big part to Roe, has been more in line with the laws of repressive, totalitarian regimes than other liberal democracies. As Anderson and DeSanctis note, only seven countries, including North Korea permit elective abortion after twenty weeks of pregnancy. U.S. abortion policy is far more permissive even than the policies in most European countries. Thirty-nine of the forty-two European countries that allow elective abortion permit it only in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. To put that in perspective, we are told that the Mississippi law at the heart of the Dobbs case is comparable to Margaret Atwood's fictional sexist dystopia. But the reality is that in prohibiting elective abortion after 15 weeks, the law made Mississippi comparable to such sexist dystopias as…well, France. Considering these facts, it's difficult to understand the extreme reaction many in the pro-abortion camp have had to this ruling. The justices didn't change a single law. What they did was return the issue to the states, and thus, the voters. The process now unfolding in all 50 states is one the Supreme Court short-circuited almost 50 years ago by making the decision for us and inventing a constitutional right to an abortion. As Anderson and DeSanctis note, this "heavy-handed" intervention corrupted our political process, undermined the will of voters, and fostered a mentality among progressives that whatever they couldn't win support for in legislatures, they could demand from the Supreme Court. In Dobbs, six of the justices appear to be signaling that things will no longer work this way. Of course, progressive states will entrench abortion in law, meaning lives will continue to be snuffed out in this country by white-clad professionals practicing what they call "healthcare." Until that changes, our work for justice must continue. But thanks to this ruling, laws designed to save young lives will no longer be snuffed out by black-robed lawyers practicing what they call "Constitutional law."