Breakpoint

Recently, the world learned of the death of Mikhail Gorbachev. While living to age 91 is an achievement for anyone, it's a historical exception for a dictator to live 30 years past his downfall. Gorbachev did, having survived from when the first waves of American pop culture entered his homeland decades ago to when those same waves receded in renewed hostility. Gorbachev's legacy is, to say the least, complicated. His former subjects in Eastern Europe will likely shed few tears, his former enemies in the West have praised that he chose peace in the face of imperial collapse, and his fellow Russians mourn his role in their nation's lost status on the world stage. The last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev was once one of two most powerful men in the world. He died without the acclaim and power he once commanded. His death reminds us that no matter how great, death comes to us all. We do not control the timing nor manner of our demise. All of that is in God's hands. We can only strive to live lives worth remembering and emulating.

The Queen has died. When those words were heard and repeated, over and over last Thursday, people around the world knew immediately which queen. In fact, few are alive today who can remember a time when she was not on Britain's throne. She lived to 96, not only the longest reigning monarch in British history but the second longest reigning monarch in all of history, surpassed only by King Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King." Among the many anecdotes that put her life in historical context, Elizabeth II was queen for a full third of the existence of the United States of America as a nation. When Elizabeth ascended to power, Winston Churchill was the prime minister. Just two days before she died, in a final act of royal duty, Elizabeth received a 15th person into that high office. When she began her rule in 1952, there was a British Empire, and not just in name. Though every nation within the empire would gain independence, she remained head of state of a dozen of them, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other smaller countries around the world. Elizabeth's historic tenure as queen might have never happened, except for a domestic turmoil that has never quite seemed to leave the House of Windsor alone. Her father, George VI, assumed the throne only because her uncle abdicated it for an illicit romance. Her sister's temperament did not, shall we say, "fit" her royal duties. Her eldest son, now King Charles III, entered a loveless marriage in the midst of his own extramarital affairs, while her second son ruined his place in the world by falling in with Jeffrey Epstein. Her grandson Prince Harry is full of bitter words and accusations about the royal family. In this way, the royal family was a reflection of changes seen across the Western world during the Queen's reign. Marriage rates in the U.K. have dropped by double digits in the last few decades, and divorces have increased by several orders of magnitude. While the Britain she inherited in her youth famously stood up for liberty and democracy against tyranny, corporate and government powers often enforce conformity and silence. Weekly church attendance in Britain has dropped to less than a million each week in a population of nearly 70 million. Add in technological change, war, globalization, populism, the rise and fall of global powers, and it may be that the Queen's most remarkable achievement was preserving the monarchy as a legitimate institution amidst the flux and chaos of the last few decades. As one who could, as Kipling once put it, "walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch," she played the part of elegant empress, with an impish sense of humor and a delightfully ordinary demeanor. As such, Queen Elizabeth was, in many ways, an always-relevant anachronism. She was an incarnation of G.K. Chesterton's call for a "democracy of the dead" or C.S. Lewis' warning against "chronological snobbery." In an age that confuses change as progress, her life was a reminder that certain truths and duties do not change with the times—eternals that are not subject to our whims or imaginations—but are revealed, at least in part, through the accumulated wisdom of the ages. In fact, "duty" is the word most commonly used to describe Elizabeth II, as if she inherited her father's sense of it along with the throne. As Bloomberg's Adrian Woolridge noted on Twitter, "The Queen grasped Edmund Burke's great dictum that, for a true conservative, the point of change is to stay the same, at least in the things that really matter. Monarchy is a restraint on modernity or it is nothing." She was barely an adult when she declared, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong." Years later, she reflected back on that promise, "When I was 21, I pledged my life to the service of our people, and I asked for God's help to make good that vow. Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgement, I do not regret, or retract, one word of it." There are few contentions more despised today than the idea that our rights must be balanced by our duties, but Elizabeth thought of the crown as a calling, a part of something greater than herself. How she carried out those duties in an ever-changing world points to a commitment that goes beyond tradition or even the monarchy. As she put it herself, monarchs do not lead troops into battle or rule from on high anymore. So, she committed to lead by serving, which is of course the way of Jesus, who said the greatest among us are servants. In many of her annual Christmas radio messages, she pointed to Christ as the One she sought to follow and emulate. Leading by serving is one of the things that the New Testament calls the "fruit" of faith. Having reached the end of her era, it's difficult to imagine what the monarchy will become. As Jake Meador from Mere Orthodoxy observed, "After she and Benedict XVI pass, I think European Christendom will be conclusively gone from this world. Something else will come and God will continue to work. But the loss is still immense." Indeed, it is, but what makes a person "great" has not changed. Around the world, followers of Christ are living faithful lives, committed to what God has called them to, in truth and service. Their stage may not be as global or their mistakes as public, but their lives point to the Sovereign who sits on the throne of heaven and earth and whose kingdom shall have no end. That faithfulness is, in God's economy, greatness.

Last Saturday was World Suicide Prevention Day, a time to remember that suicide is a growing problem. In the U.S., it increased by 30% from 2000-2018, and that was before COVID. In 2019, it was the second leading cause of death for ages 10-34. Christians aren't excluded. LifeWay research has shown that 32% of Protestant church-going respondents had a family member or "close acquaintance" die by suicide. Because of this great need, Colson Educators has teamed with Dr. Matthew Sleeth, a former emergency room physician and chief of hospital medical staff, to offer a free online course called Hope Always, based on the title of his book Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide. This course, which you can take for free at any time, will help you know how to talk with loved ones about the difficult topic of suicide. It offers scientifically grounded information with biblically based theology to start a conversation about mental health and how the Church can offer light and hope. Go to courses.colsoneducation.org/hopealways to register for this course today.

Recently, an impressive development in embryology was reported by the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science. Using only stem cells, without the presence of sperm, eggs, or even a womb, researchers successfully created functioning mouse embryos, complete with beating hearts, blood circulation, brain tissue and rudimentary digestive systems. Carolyn Johnson in The Washington Post described the discovery as "a fascinating, potentially fraught realm of science that could one day be used to create replacement organs for humans." For the more than 100,000 people currently waiting for a life-saving organ donation, that kind of breakthrough would indeed seem like a miracle. However, since scientists are still years away from creating human organs in a lab for the purpose of transplant, the technology raises serious ethical questions, none of which should be taken lightly. One of these questions is, in fact, an old one. Do the promises of embryonic stem cell research justify it? While some stem cells can be harvested from a variety of non-embryonic sources such as bone marrow, others are harvested from so-called "unused" embryos that have been donated to science. The lives of these tiny, undeveloped human beings are taken in the process. For context, the research conducted by the Weizmann Institute uses embryonic stem cells. Though, for the time being, this implies only embryonic stem cells harvested from mice, the move to human research would involve the harvesting of stem cells from human embryos and involve tissue derived from already living human beings. The Christian stance on when life begins is the same as the science. Human life begins at conception, and every single human life is worthy of protection. If we would not take the life of a born child in our research for a cure for some medical condition, neither the anonymity of an embryo nor the confines of a laboratory justify doing the same thing in the process of embryonic stem cell research. Science is a process of trial and error, but we should never employ "trial and error" with the lives of thousands of human beings, in particular human beings who cannot consent to our actions. A rule of thumb is this. If you wouldn't try an experiment on an adult or small child, don't do it to human embryos at any stage. The breakthrough at the Weizmann Institute, however, takes this old debate a step further. On one hand, lead researcher Dr. Jacob Hanna was quick to clarify that the goal is not to make complete, living organisms of mice or any other species. "We are really facing difficulties making organs," he said, "and in order to make stem cells become organs, we need to learn how the embryo does that." Given the history of science, including the last chapter involving breathless promises of what embryonic stem cell research would bring, the grandiose predictions of scientists should be taken with at least a grain of salt. The process of growing organs for mice, for example, involved the creation of entire embryos. Should the technology be perfected in mice, what ethical or legal limits are there to prevent the creation of synthetic human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their organs? Our first concern should be what these embryos would be created for. The answer is, inevitably, "science," devoid of any consideration for human purpose, relationships, worth, or dignity as equal members of the human species. All societies that treat people as a means of scientific advancement, instead of infinitely valuable ends in-and-of themselves, have a track record of perpetrating atrocities. A second concern is what these embryos would be deprived of. Though not all do, every human should enter the world with the love and commitment of their biological mom and dad. The very design of human development suggests this, and societies have long recognized that those born without these relationships have had something priceless taken from them. Creating children from cloning or stem cells intentionally makes them orphans, ripping them from the vital context of parental relationship. It is a grave injustice. Bringing children into the world as a product of pure science without the possibility of relationship with their biological parents or relatives is enough an ethical consideration to oppose such research, but we should also consider the implications of recklessly creating humans for future experimentation and of dismantling them to see how their components work. Science is, in many ways, blind to what should be ethical bright lines. Creating organs for transplant in order to save lives is a worthy goal. But such work should only proceed in an ethical manner, one which does not require the death of other distinct, valuable, human beings. Unfortunately, such ideas have not shaped the society we live in today.

John and Maria discuss the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II and her longstanding sense of service to her nation. Afterwards, they stress the correlation—not the causation—between deaths of despair and decline in blue laws, laws against commerce on Sunday. They end by touching on commentaries from this week, in particular one highlighting the rebuttal of a false narrative that the religious right was founded in racism.

Yesterday, after the world had learned that her family had been called to her side, Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in British history, died at age 96. It's simply impossible to articulate just how much the world, Britain, the British Empire, Western civilization, and the monarchy changed during her reign. Many Americans were fascinated by her and the royal family, as demonstrated in the popularity of shows like The Crown. She seemed to navigate a changing world by not changing, something that at times stabilized and at other times infuriated the British people. Perhaps the most consistent features of her tenure, which seemed out of step with the modern world, were her sense of duty and her consistent expression of faith and religious observance. Her annual Christmas messages reflected theology that was mostly orthodox and a faith in Jesus Christ that seemed personal. Convinced that Divine Providence had brought her to the throne, she seemed to see the crown as a calling and not an entitlement. In both of these things, her death marks the end of an era.

A few weeks back, Twitter banned a user for violent language. The offending tweet was, "I will out sword drill any Christian man." For anyone not familiar with evangelical subculture, a "sword drill" has nothing to do with blades. It's a game to see who can find a particular Bible passage first. Had the protectors of Twitter taken the time to investigate or, even better, had some Christians on their staff to ask, they may have spared themselves the ridicule which rightfully followed. Unfortunately, it's a habit of academic and media circles to either not understand or not take evangelicalism's claims for itself at face value. Sexual ethics, we are told, are novelties, due more to patriarchy than anything Jesus taught. The priority that evangelicals place on the home, family, and gender norms is more the product of 20th-century cowboy movies than any enduring truths about men and women. And, most commonly, political involvement by conservative Christians is nothing more than a naked grasp for power and maintaining the status quo. Recently, a handful of political commentators have claimed that the rise of the so-called Religious Right was rooted more in racism than in concern for the unborn or the spiritual fate of our nation. Though conservative Christians claim that the 1970's-era increase in political action was birthed in opposition to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and removal of prayer and Christian symbols in public schools, it was really about segregation. White Christians did not care about saving the lives of unborn children as much as they wanted to make sure their kids did not have to attend school with African Americans. This contention is now part of most formal analyses of evangelical culture, including from mainline and progressive Christianity. As one recent book put it, "In the end…what changed their mind wasn't abortion or school prayer, but tax-exempt status for segregated schools." Jonathan Whitehead, writing at The Gospel Coalition, dates this story to a book published in 2006 which claimed that conservative Christians got into politics in response to the 1975 action by the IRS against the (overtly) segregationist policies of Bob Jones University, a view the school later recanted. Whitehead goes on to argue that this supposed smoking gun turns out, in reality, to be an urban legend. Rather than being agitated that the IRS had attacked segregationism, conservative Christians found that the Feds were using the situation with Bob Jones University as a pretext to move against other religious schools that weren't segregationist. This was at a time when school choice and homeschooling were far from established options, and anyone who did not comply with state schools was suspect. The segregation narrative fails in other ways, as well, most notably in timing. One of the first political action groups expressly formed by evangelicals in 1972 supported Democratic Senator McGovern's ultimately failed presidential campaign. Christians, especially Roman Catholics, were already organizing for political action in the wake of Roe in 1973, and evangelical standard bearers like Christianity Today were talking about abortion before Roe and speaking out against segregation even earlier than that. In the end, the racist history rumor is an example of "nut-picking," when the worst-case example of a vast movement is held up as normative while any example to the contrary is ignored. It only contributes to our culture's increasingly uncivil discourse but is convenient for rhetorical purposes. Throughout his career, the late, great Michael Cromartie declared that there needed to be a dramatic improvement in the relationship and understanding between secularly minded Americans and their religious neighbors. "We're like an anthropological project for them," he once said, summarizing the approach of secular elites to religious believers as "We'll go study these people, because I've never met one." Without any first-hand knowledge about the intricacies of Christian culture, or at times, having an axe to grind for being raised evangelical, too many are quick to assign the worst of motives to Christian actions and words. Billions of people rely on the professionalism of journalists and academics to discover and share the truth. The truth is never served by a convenient story that happens to neatly coincide with the popular narratives of the day. If pundits and professors are going to continue to regain any authority to speak into our lives, they've got to do better.

Recently the University of Washington published research into whether hormones and puberty blockers improve the mental health of kids with gender dysphoria. According to the PR team for the university, pretty much every media outlet that covered the study, and the study's authors themselves, the answer was yes. Except it wasn't. The numbers actually revealed no difference between kids' mental health before taking hormones and after a year of the treatment. At both moments in time, kids were suffering from dramatic mental health problems. If anything, the study suggested that kids who did not start taking the medications got a little worse. The university refused to officially respond when an independent journalist challenged their conclusions—though the study's authors admitted their findings had been misrepresented. Internal emails showed the university's communications team wasn't concerned the story was not accurate. They liked that it was popular. Among the casualties of the politicizing of scientific research is public trust in our institutions. Still, the most vulnerable casualties are the kids.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature," wrote Karl Marx, "…the opium of the people." Decades of often painful historical experience has proven his observation both right and wrong. Believing in God does ease pain and suffering of faithful followers, but he was wrong in thinking that religion, especially Christianity, leaves them with nowhere else to go from there. A recent article in The Economist put it this way: "Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty." Although there is a correlation between poverty and decreased mental health, the article highlighted German sociologist Dr. Jana Berkessel's recent findings that religion significantly mitigates this effect. A variety of similar studies confirm this. Regular attendance at religious services consistently correlates with longer life spans, stronger immune systems, and lower blood pressure, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, and suicide. Kids raised in religious households have a lower incidence of drug addiction, delinquency, and incarceration. They're more likely to graduate high school. In short, the nearly unanimous scientific consensus is that religious belief is good for you. Of course, Marx's point was that these benefits only serve to keep people content in their chains and to keep them distracted so much by the next world that they do nothing to change this one. Many critics today take the critique even further. Religion, especially Christianity, has not only been used to pacify people in their oppression but is the very source of it. Of course, the charge that Christianity has been co-opted, corrupted, and weaponized to justify all kinds of abuse, conquest, and enslavement, is undeniable. At the same time, it's also undeniable that Christianity has been a global force for the kinds of goods now so pervasive, it's hard to even imagine the world without them. Many of the rights and principles we consider to be naturally occurring features of the world only came to be by the influence of Christianity. In the ancient pagan world, violence, rape, infant exposure, and prostitution were rules, not exceptions. Almost immediately, Christianity began to revolutionize pagan ethics, particularly in its view of the poor and the outcast. Roman Emperor Julian famously wrote that when the "impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us." To a world with no reason to believe in the equality of all people, Christianity taught that "there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." This belief was grounded in the Christian view of the human person, which had no parallel in the ancient world and which created an explosion of literacy, social mobility, and human rights that we now take for granted in the modern world. Christianity's unique contributions in humanizing the modern world are yet another reason to not simply lump all "religious beliefs" into the one blanket category. All religions are simply not the same, not in substance nor impact. Economist Robin Grier, for example, conducted a cross-national survey of 63 formerly European colonies. She found that, across the board, Protestant Christianity, in particular, was "positively and significantly correlated with real GDP growth," and that "the level of Protestantism is significantly related to real per capita income levels." A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper found that only certain religious beliefs—notably beliefs about heaven, hell, and an afterlife—are linked with economic growth. In other words, it's not just about having a "religion," but about what your religion teaches. Consider Africa. A recent paper from NBER analyzed educational outcomes among religious children. Though Africa is becoming increasingly religious across the board, the paper found that in many countries, "primary school completion for Christians was more than double that of Muslims or Africans adhering to local religions." Christian communities far outpace others when it comes to intergenerational educational growth. Writing in 1843, Karl Marx couldn't have anticipated how thoroughly science would analyze his claims about religion. He'd likely have been among the modern theorists surprised that the world is becoming more religious, not less. As one writer with The Brookings Institution put it, "While weak state structures collapse and aid agencies switch priorities, one group of actors persist against all odds: religious institutions." Of course, this isn't why anyone should believe the truth claims of Christianity. They should be believed if they are true. At the same time, the fact that Christian belief has been an educational, social, and economic ladder for millions suggests these beliefs ought to be taken seriously.

Hope Resource Center, a Christian crisis pregnancy center in Knoxville, Tennessee, offers free pregnancy tests, well-women exams, STD testing, and ultrasounds. If you search for Hope Resource Center on Yelp, a "consumer notice" pops up with a warning: "Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite." Last week, Yelp announced that these notices will appear at the top of listings for every crisis pregnancy center—even when they don't apply. If Yelp truly were worried about women's access to "real" medical care during pregnancy, they'd put a consumer notice above every Planned Parenthood listing. A few years ago, Live Action found that fewer than 5% of Planned Parenthood facilities in the country actually offer prenatal care, even though Planned Parenthood openly pretends and advertises otherwise. It's these practices by Planned Parenthood that make crisis pregnancy centers so necessary in the first place. Women—especially those in crisis pregnancies—deserve accurate information and actual care, which they can't find from Planned Parenthood or, for that matter, on Yelp.