Breakpoint

“For many years, the internet in China was seen as a channel for new thinking, or at least greater openness,” writes Human Rights Watch researcher Yaqiu Wang. “Online discussions were relatively free and open, and users, especially younger ones, had an eager appetite for learning and debating big ideas about political systems and how China should be governed.”    That changed when Xi Jinping took power. Explaining what’s known as China’s “Great Firewall,” Wang notes, “the government got savvier, and more aggressive about using its own technology.” For example, dissidents, journalists, and public figures disappear frequently, sometimes often for minor infractions like logging onto Twitter.  The state’s actions have created “a generational split,” says Wang. “[T]hose who experienced a relatively free internet as young people—many strongly resent the Great Firewall. Among people who started college after Xi took power, however, there is a strong impulse to defend it.”  It’s an extreme example of how tools intended and used for good can also be harnessed for evil. The same resource that can promote flourishing can also promote tyranny. That’s true everywhere, not just China. 

In all the talk about racial injustices, the racial disparities for abortion are ignored. And that’s because we would need to talk about marriage. I’m John Stonestreet, and this is Breakpoint.  Recently in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley asked a provocative question, “Why Won’t the Left Talk About Racial Disparities in Abortion?” In it, he describes how the “black abortion rate is nearly four times higher than the white rate,” how more black babies in New York City are aborted than born, and how “[n]ationally, the number of babies aborted by black women each year far exceeds the combined number of blacks who drop out of school, are sent to prison and are murdered.”  Even books on racism by Christian publishers, for example, Jemar Tisby’s How to Fight Racism, never mention the significant racial disparities that exist when it comes to abortion, even while spending significant time on other disparities, such as student achievement, incarceration, wealth, and healthcare in general. The new book Faithful Anti-Racism by Christian Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan shares similar disparity stats to Tisby’s, but the only mentions of abortion are embedded in quotations regarding conservative interests.  According to Riley, one issue is that talking about the racial disparity when it comes to abortion would necessitate discussing how to “increase black marriage rates,” since so many women having abortions are single. Riley states:   One problem is that such a conversation requires frank talk about counterproductive attitudes toward marriage and solo parenting in low-income black communities. It requires discussing antisocial behavior and personal responsibility.  Now, to be clear, disparities do not always point to injustice or racism. As Thaddeus Williams writes In Confronting Justice Without Compromising Truth, those who call themselves antiracists assume that disparities reveal widespread discrimination or institutional injustice. And disparities do sometimes point to systemic wrongs. Clearly, in Exodus 1, if the midwives Shiphrah and Puah had obeyed Pharoah when ordered to slaughter baby boys, a clear injustice would have created a disparity between the number of Hebrew boys born versus the number of Egyptian boys. Other times, disparities do not reveal an injustice. In his book, Williams describes how what appeared to be a racial disparity issue of injustice on the New Jersey Turnpike turned to be an issue cause by age instead.   Disparities can have multiple factors. In the case of the high number of abortions of black babies, as we’ve shared on Breakpoint before, almost 80% of Planned Parenthood’s clinics, according to a 2012 study, were near majority black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Pro-abortion advocates argue that the racial disparity for abortion is more about poverty. Perhaps, for example, the mother couldn’t afford to care for another baby. According to Riley in the Wall Street Journal, however, this argument fails to explain why the abortion numbers among Hispanics who are impoverished are not comparable.  Riley proposes that the high number of abortions of black babies is related to a reduced number of marriages. Quoting a book by Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks, Riley writes,  A single woman with an unplanned pregnancy is about twice as likely as a married woman to abort. . . . Black women thus may have so many more abortions than other groups in part because they are so much less likely to be married.  Since blacks who are married are much less likely to be in poverty, then why, he asks, aren’t activists promoting black marriage? It’s a good question.   According to the Family Research Council, “Married-couple families generate the most income, on average” compared to single-parent families, cohabiting families, or divorced families. Other studies have shown that marriage provides health benefits and the ability to deal with stress.   One individual courageous enough to talk about such issues is Anthony Bradley, a professor at The King’s College and an Acton Research Fellow, whom Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family, and I hosted at an event, Lighthouse Voices, last February. Prof. Bradley points out again and again “that marriage is the vital/essential/the actual oxygen children *need* to thrive.” He writes, “If you love the poor, providing resources to support marriage has to be a top priority, otherwise you’re likely just helping people remain comfortably poor.”  Once again one of God’s ideas—marriage—is the best idea. 

Last month, NBA legend LeBron James tweeted, “It’s a weird feeling to feel so alone sometimes!” He received over 4,000 replies from people expressing sympathy, disbelief, and from some, criticism.   It can be difficult to understand how rich, famous celebrities, like LeBron, could be lonely. Doesn’t he have it all? Four NBA championships, two Olympic gold medals, a $23 million LA mansion, marriage to his high school sweetheart, three kids, deep investment in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, ... and still, he feels lonely, even when 138,000 people liked his tweet saying so.   The problem with having it all is defining “it all.” Define it wrong, and you could get everything you want before realizing the hole in your heart is actually God-shaped. Fame, talent, wealth, stuff, activism, charity ... these things only mean something if life itself has meaning.   Of course, loneliness has always been part of the human condition after Eden, and I certainly don’t know what LeBron is dealing with. I just know more people than ever report being lonely, despite having more things than ever to distract them. 

This term of the U.S. Supreme Court has been consequential, to say the least. In addition to the landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the court has now issued a second ruling that protects religious freedom. The first, issued about a week ago, protects religious institutions from being singled out and discriminated against by state-run entities and programs. The 6-3 decision was consistent with previous rulings in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue that state programs available to non-religious entities cannot be withheld from religious entities simply because they are religious. Instead, the state bears the burden of proof to demonstrate a compelling state interest in discriminating against religious institutions. It remains to be seen whether state officials have finally gotten the message.  This week, the court handed down their decision on Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, or what’s become known as the “Coach Kennedy Case.” High school football coach Joe Kennedy was fired for praying on the football field after games by school officials who kept (pun intended) “moving the goal posts” about what religious expressions were allowed.  Contrary to various news reports, Kennedy never forced student athletes, coaches, or anyone else to join him. After school officials raised concerns, he even agreed to pray silently by himself. However, he was told that if he insisted on closing his eyes in silent prayer, he must do it somewhere out of sight. Coach Kennedy rightly recognized their demands as a violation of his right to free religious expression and took his case to the Supreme Court with the aid of First Liberty Institute.   On Monday, the court ruled overwhelmingly for Coach Kennedy, on both free speech and free exercise grounds. As Justice Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion:  By its own admission, the District sought to restrict Mr. Kennedy’s actions at least in part because of their religious character. Prohibiting a religious practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object.” The District explained that it could not allow an on duty employee to engage in religious conduct even though it allowed other on-duty employees to engage in personal secular conduct.  This behavior, Gorsuch concluded, was unacceptable.    Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.  Often, religious liberty violations are more symptoms of bureaucratic inertia or ignorance, than of animus. The first few letters sent by school officials to Coach Kennedy asking him to stop praying are not rantings of radical atheists. Officials acknowledged Coach Kennedy was “well-intentioned” and never forced students to participate in his religious observances. Still, they asked him to stop out of fear they would be sued for a First Amendment violation. In the end, they failed to understand the First Amendment and violated it themselves.  This is what happens when ignorance of the law mixes with stubbornness, or, even worse, animus toward religious conviction. When religion is seen as non-essential, religious freedom is limited to “religious” activities like private prayer, church attendance, and personal piety. At the same time, “secular” is wrongfully thought of as “neutral” or “unbiased.” Faith is reduced to a hobby, and a highly idiosyncratic one at that. Spiritually inspired convictions must be kept safely within church, synagogue, and mosque walls, and out of the government and schools.   This, however, is not religious liberty. It is merely “freedom of worship,” what some of the worst tyrannies and their successors falsely claim to be freedom. Thankfully, the court has seen through this muddled thinking and brought clarity to the freedom all Americans have to speak and exercise their religious convictions.  Christians, and those of other faiths, absolutely can stand on a football field and close our eyes in prayer, even if others can see us. Christian educators can cite the Bible as a historical record or a masterclass in philosophy. Christian school kids can host Bible studies after school. Christian workers do have the freedom to not take part in the latest ideological fad that business leaders have latched onto.   I am grateful for our friends at First Liberty, ADF, and elsewhere that defend conscience rights, and for organizations like Gateways to Better Education who help Christian educators know what those rights, in fact, are. I am grateful that the court has stated, again, that being religious is not a crime, and that the state is required to respect the religious freedom of individuals and institutions.   A final lesson for Christians is that we must not become like those who seek to silence us. If the truth is on our side, we’ve no reason to fear.   

Disney’s newest Pixar film, Lightyear, isn’t doing great at the box office. While critics puzzle over why, an obvious reason is parents are tiring of the constant indoctrination in sexual matters. They feel betrayed by the once trusted Toy Story franchise.  All that may come as a surprise to Chris Evans, the new voice of Buzz, who recently said concerned parents are “idiots” who will soon “die off like the dinosaurs.” Not only, as Hans Fiene noted, is it strange for 41-year-old man with no children to predict the extinction of the fertile, it’s strange to leave children asking whether girls can marry girls, and how the couple had the baby who just magically appears in the film.  It’s one thing to promote the idea that dads and moms are interchangeable despite, you know, science, but it’s another to accuse anyone tired of being force-fed this whole thing of bigotry. As one reviewer put it, “Perhaps calling critics of a movie ‘idiots who are going to die off like the dinosaurs’ wasn’t the best strategy to get families to watch the latest entry in the Toy Story franchise.” 

There are certain moments in history, such as the end of the Roman Empire or the dawn of the Enlightenment, when it becomes obvious just how much the cultural ground has shifted. In such moments, cultural norms that once fostered social cohesion and defined the good life can change dramatically. Shared ways of thinking, such as the definitions of words, can no longer be taken for granted.   It’s precisely at these historical hinge points that Christians must “re-catechize” themselves. This means recommitting to what is true and good, and regrounding who we are and how we live in the unchanging, overarching story of redemption outlined in Scripture.   We are living in one of these historical hinge points. And, if we take seriously what Paul told the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens, it is not by accident. God intentionally put us in this time and this place. Or, to quote something Tim Tebow said at the “Preparing for a Post-Roe World” event at the recent Wilberforce Weekend, “Anyone who has been rescued is now on the rescue team.”  God has called the Colson Center to help Christians navigate this consequential cultural moment, to become more deeply grounded in the True Story of reality, and to embrace their calling to this time and this place.   In fact, every resource the Colson Center offers is designed to provide (a) a Christian worldview analysis on culture (that’s Breakpoint, The Point, and the What Would You Say? video series), (b) a deeper dive into Christian worldview, one that counters the dominant cultural narratives (that’s the Upstream and Strong Women podcasts, short courses, and Wilberforce Weekend), or (c) in-depth formation in Christian wisdom and leadership (that’s the Colson Fellows program and the Colson Educators collective).   Our founder, Chuck Colson, realized that American culture was changing dramatically—he could see it coming—and that the Church needed to prepare for what lay ahead. We’ve embraced that call fully, and as our podcasts, conferences, training, and events continue to grow, we sense that more and more Christians are also sensing that they need to go deeper in their understanding of truth. This year’s Wilberforce Weekend event was the largest yet and featured the commissioning of the largest class of Colson Fellows yet. We anticipate over 1,000 Colson Fellows in next year’s class, studying in nearly 60 regional cohorts and over 40 church affiliates. That’s amazing. The Colson Educators collective is an investment into the training and formation of thousands of Christian educators, at a time—right now—where it is crucial for Christian education. And this year, by God’s grace, the Colson Center will launch a new, online education in public theology that every Christian can access. We believe that every Christian can live like one in this time and this place. And that’s exactly what every Christian is called to do.  We didn’t choose to be in this cultural moment, or to face the challenges it presents. Our time and our place in history are chosen by God. Our moment in history is not an accidental context in which we try to follow Jesus: It’s an essential aspect of the calling to follow Jesus. He invites us into His life and to join in the advance of His kingdom and His story right now.   So, if Breakpoint or any of the Colson Center ministries have been helpful to you, as a parent, grandparent, citizen, employee, leader, or neighbor, please prayerfully consider partnering with us with a fiscal-year-end gift. Any gift given by Thursday, June 30, 2022, will help us plan to more effectively obey the call God has for the Colson Center in the year ahead. Imagine if more Christians could live with the clarity, confidence, and courage that only a Christian worldview offers. That’s what this is all about.  To give a gift, please go to ColsonCenter.org/June. 

The U.S. Department of Education is changing the rules again, and, again, forcing teachers into situations they may not be prepared for. On June 23, the feds announced that, going forward, gender identity would be included in protected classes under Title IX.  Between the efforts of federal officials implementing the latest executive orders and the activism of LGBTQ advocacy groups, school administrators struggle to keep up. Too often they end up caving to these outsiders by crafting new rules of dubious legality. Even though some of these bureaucratic diktats have been successfully challenged in court, those most affected, like teachers and students, don’t always know their rights when faced with this top-down pressure.  If you find yourself in that position, here are two groups you might want to contact. First, there’s our longtime partner organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom, who will protect teachers of conscience. Second, there’s the Colson Center’s education initiative that trains teachers to know where and how to stand on these very important issues. 

After nearly 50 years of waiting, working, praying, and weeping, a moment longed for by millions around the nation and around the world has arrived. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned, not only the heinous 1973 Supreme Court decision known as Roe v. Wade, but also the equally flawed decision from 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.    Ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court found that these earlier cases, the foundation of so-called abortion rights for a half-century, were without legal merit. Therefore, the final ruling was as follows: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”  To be clear, this ruling doesn’t end abortion in America, nor does it legally ban abortion. It means that state-level restrictions on abortion are not immediately invalidated by Supreme Court decisions that even honest pro-abortion legal theorists have recognized as poorly decided. It means that the work to see abortion swept into the same dustbin as other historic evils can now proceed legally unencumbered as it has long been. The next milestones are that abortion is made illegal in as many places as possible and, eventually, as unthinkable as slavery is.  Already, state officials have begun working to outlaw or dramatically restrict abortion in their states. Ohio’s attorney general has moved to revive its “heartbeat bill,” abortion will be illegal in Tennessee within a month, and Missouri has effectively ended the vile practice already. Much has begun, with many areas already prepared to enact similar pro-life laws, and much more remains to be done.  The Dobbs ruling is not a surprise. The final draft of the majority opinion was virtually unchanged from an earlier draft leaked back in May. Not only did Justice Alito, who authored the opinion, conclude that a Mississippi abortion restriction could stand, but also that Roe and Casey were promulgated without any constitutional or historical precedent, that the so-called viability argument was inadequate, and that decisions about regulating abortion should return to voters and their elected officials.   Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan co-authored a dissent, which (I suspect) will be quoted far more often than the majority opinion by most media outlets, especially this line: “With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” wrote the justices. The main difference between the leaked draft of the opinion and the final version is must-read material for everyone. In four pages, beginning on page 35 of his opinion, Justice Alito absolutely dismantles the dissent. “The dissent,” writes Alito, “does not identify any pre-Roe authority that supports such a right—no state constitutional provision or statute, no federal or state judicial precedent, not even a scholarly treatise.”  Or again,   Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors, calling both sides of the national controversy to resolve their debate, but in doing so, Casey necessarily declared a winning side. Those on the losing side—those who sought to advance the State’s interest in fetal life—could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views.  Of course, many are outraged by this decision. Women’s March President Rachel Carmona already declared a “summer of rage.” In recent weeks, there have been acts of arson and vandalism, threats of violence against pro-life leaders and conservative justices, all with promise of more to come. In mid-June, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore released a statement asking “our elected officials to take a strong stand against this violence, and our law enforcement authorities to increase their vigilance in protecting those who are in increased danger.” According to Lila Rose of Live Action, the Department of Homeland Security has warned churches and other pro-life organizations to be prepared for “extreme violence” coming from pro-abortion agitators.  Today, it is right to celebrate a long-awaited and hard-earned victory in the fight to protect pre-born lives, with thanks to God.  We thank God for this cultural grace. We thank Him for the Roman Catholics who called out this evil when many Protestants took refuge in moral ambiguity, and for courageous Protestants like Francis Schaeffer who called evangelicals out of their moral slumber on abortion. We thank God for all who spoke for life, signed petitions, attended rallies, crafted legislation, were spat upon and yelled at by those for whom Roe was a sacrament, not of life but of death. We thank God for the many people, mostly women, who have showed up every day for women and their children at churches, pregnancy resource centers, living rooms, and elsewhere to show compassion and speak life.   There’ve been times in the last 50 years when many assumed we’d never see the end of Roe. I confess to being among those skeptics. Today, a colleague reminded us of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, and now Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”:  Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:  “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;  The Wrong shall fail,  The Right prevail,  With peace on earth, good-will to men.”  The Colson Center has compiled many resources to help prepare the Church for a post-Roe world. You can find them here and here. Also, in July, we’ll be making available Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis’ book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.  Because although today we celebrate with thanksgiving to God, tomorrow we get back to work... until abortion is not only illegal but also unthinkable.     

While Maria’s out for the day, John and Shane swivel to discuss the breaking news of the reversal of Roe v. Wade after the Supreme Court announced the Dobbs decision. Reading through the ruling in real time, John points out that Roe was never constitutional. Because Shane just had an opportunity to interview Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis on their new book Tearing Us Apart, he talks about how abortion harms not only preborn children but entire cultural systems.  As John and Shane close, they reflect on the disembodiment of not only abortion but also of the message conveyed about a married lesbian couple in Disney’s new Pixar film: Lightyear. And yet, recent research has once again shown that fathers are irreplaceable. 

Given the amount of attention the issue gets, it’s easy to yield to a so-called “inevitability thesis” when it comes to transgender ideology, that it’s just a matter of time before everyone is on board. A recent story aired for pride month highlighted the story of two parents who chose to raise their biologically female daughter as a transgender boy. “Before Ryland could even speak,” the anchor narrates, “he managed to tell his parents that he is a boy.” But, the piece continues, “unlike some trans kids, when Ryland came out at the age of five a few years later, he had the full support of his parents.”   This story was carried by Fox News, the so-called “conservative” news outlet.  Saying, with a straight face, that a child as young as five could somehow “come out” to her parents before she “can even speak,” tells us next to nothing about the child. It does, however, speak volumes about the parents, as well as the sad state of a culture that does not allow a story like that to be scrutinized.   We’re never told, for example, how Ryland somehow “knew” she was a boy as a baby. Now that Ryland’s 14, we are not told the plan for puberty, or beyond. Will chemicals be administered to block puberty? Will destructive and irreversible surgeries enable her family to maintain the charade? Fox’s segment is the same paper-thin propaganda we’ve come to expect from other outlets, promoting a dangerous and unprecedented idea while inferring that anyone not on board simply doesn’t have enough love in their hearts.   The reality, of course, is different. Across the country, thousands of young people are being permanently marked by physical and psychological damage. In fact, some are now expressing deep regret, and their stories are coming to light.   Journalist Laura Dodsworth recently published a piece at the U.K.’s The Critic titled “The False Euphoria of Dysphoria.” It’s worth quoting at length:   I photographed and interviewed women [ who] thought they were transgender, had “top surgery”, then went on to change their mind and detransition.   But although they reverted their names, pronouns and passports, flesh cannot be returned after a double mastectomy. The effects of testosterone cannot be undone, nor the removal of the uterus and ovaries, which some of these detransitioners also had, leaving them sterile, on hormone replacement therapy for life, and traumatized.  Dodsworth describes how one young woman, Lucy, who, struggling with anorexia and body dysmorphia, was quickly prescribed gender reassignment surgery as treatment: “At the age of just 23, she could not comprehend how doctors could remove her breasts, uterus and ovaries. ‘I feel mutilated,’ she said.”  Another young woman, Susanna, described how her dysphoria grew from the scars of unaddressed sexual abuse: “For me, transition was a kind of self-harm. I was trying to destroy the person I was.”  Still another young woman, Sinead, wishes she could have received real help instead of a quick fix:   I’ve tried to talk about background issues with therapists. … Actually, I think my gender issues came out of mental health, not the other way around. … For the rest of my life I will always be bewildered that this was allowed to happen. I was dealing with unaddressed trauma from sexual abuse. I needed therapy and help, not a bilateral mastectomy.  The conclusion, according to Dodsworth, is simple. Listen to the stories of those who have detransitioned.   Women’s sports, prisons, even the basic question of what a woman is, have become a uniquely modern battlefield. Detransitioners bear the literal scars of this battle. ...  The problem is that young people are affirmed and groomed before the first doctor’s appointment by euphoric and unbalanced content on social media. One trans man’s pure joy may be another woman’s pure regret.  The stories Dodsworth tells are just some of the stories now emerging from young people dealing with incredible regret. Figures like Helena Kerschner or Scott Newgent, and hundreds of others on blogs, Twitter threads, and Reddit posts are telling the sobering truth about what trans ideology cost them.  What this means for Christians is that we must not buy into any “inevitability thesis” when it comes to trans ideology. We aren’t on the wrong side of history, or of our religious beliefs, or of love. The number of detransition stories coming out of the U.K. are a good example that, if anything, America is out of step with much of the rest of the world, who are currently applying the brakes to “gender transitioning” therapies for minors.  Also, Christians must give up, once and for all, a foolish and dangerous position of neutrality on this issue. Most damning of all is the claim that to not oppose the destructive gender ideologies of our culture is somehow “the loving thing to do.” Too many stories of regret and permanent damage have already emerged. More are told every day. We can never again say that we didn’t know.  Creating space for these stories to be shared is a powerful way to combine truth with compassion. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. In our cultural moment, the victims are not supposed to exist. But they do, and if we can share their burden or prevent the pain of even one other, we must.