Breakpoint

In a recent article published by the Washington Institute, professor and lawyer Eric Treene offered a robust alternative way of understanding Christian Nationalism and its significance within American culture. Depending on who’s doing the talking, Christian Nationalism is either the greatest danger to America or our only hope in resisting the onslaught of the progressive movement. But there is a better way. As Treene wrote, the current debate over Christian Nationalism is the most recent chapter of something that is an endemic part of the American story:  "[C]an Christians honestly look around and conclude that there is more nationalism melded with their faith than in the past? In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt distributed a pocket New Testament to soldiers throughout the Armed Services, with the inscription: 'As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States.'"  At the same time, according to Treene, there are reasons to be concerned about Christian Nationalism.   "The alarmism about growing Christian Nationalism is vastly overblown among some, and deliberately manipulated for political reasons among others. But there is a “there” there." In the inaugural offering of Breakpoint Forums, the Colson Center hosted two of American Christianity’s keenest voices about faith and the public square. Rusty Reno, chief editor of First Things, and Hunter Baker, newly appointed provost of North Greenville University, addressed the issue of Christian Nationalism.   Not only do Reno and Baker hail from different Church traditions, but they took somewhat differing postures in the forum on what faithful citizenship looks like in our cultural moment. Dr. Reno’s seriousness about where a secular globalist perspective has left us leads him to embrace a “soft” Christian Nationalism, though he objects to the positions of some of its most outspoken advocates. As he put it,   "I would vastly prefer a Christian America to a secular America. … I think it’s as simple as that. You have to ask yourself, what would you prefer, a Christian America or a secular America? I’d prefer a Christian America, and in that sense, Christian nationalism."  Dr. Baker, on the other hand, argued against using the title Christian Nationalism while affirming the largely Christian influence on our nation throughout its history. He insisted that the nation and the Church are better off without any kind of formal link, while the nation is helped by the intentional influence of the church.   "It’s like George Washington and the Bible. These are the bulwarks of the United States in that period. But … for most of our history, it’s not the case that the United States government is sort of the official partner of the Christian faith, nor is it seeking to officially establish the Christian faith or Christian institutions."  Their differences were illuminating, especially given their shared priority of Christian faith, grounded in Christian truth as revealed in Holy Scripture. Each warned against the danger posed by our increasingly intolerant, secular, and progressive gatekeepers who sit atop the cultural, academic, and political power structures of our society. And both Reno and Baker affirmed the basic responsibility believers have to bring their convictions to the ballot box.   The conversation was helpful and enlightening. While combatants on the extreme ends of the debate insist that it’s their way or the highway, Christians must seek an increasing Christian influence without falling for the dangers C.S. Lewis warned us against in God in the Dock when he said, “By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal.” We can do better than that. You can watch the recording of the Breakpoint Forum on Christian Nationalism on YouTube.   Working to see a nation become more Christian doesn’t make one a Christian Nationalist in the breathlessly alarmed sense we hear about so often. Our goal is faithfulness. We can long for and we can work for Christian renewal in our time without, as Chuck Colson often warned against, looking for our salvation to arrive on Air Force One.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

Recently, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley questioned President of the NCAA Charlie Baker about the association’s policy regarding male athletes who claim they are women. As part of his questioning, Hawley repeated testimony he’d heard a few months prior from Riley Gaines, a U.S. swimmer who was forced, with no warning, to shower, change, and compete alongside a man. Neither she nor any of her teammates were notified beforehand, let alone asked for consent.  When Hawley asked Baker, who started his job after Gaines’ experience, about current NCAA policy, Baker first deflected and then said he didn’t believe what happened to Riley Gaines would represent current NCAA policy.  Politician-speak aside, when asked under oath, Baker backed away from the NCAA’s previous approach. Of course, only time will tell if the NCAA actually stands up for women athletes. Hopefully, the days of men intruding on women’s sports and private spaces is coming to an end.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

A rarely stated but widely assumed myth of our “information age” is that access to information is the same thing as knowledge or, even worse, wisdom. Another is that time not spent accessing information is wasted, perhaps even immorally so.   This explains, at least in part, the extent to which people go in order to avoid boredom today. Even brief 30-second intervals at a red light have us grasping for our phones. Most of us are uncomfortable with having “nothing to do,” even for a moment. However, the endless pursuit of feeling “productive,” or at least “informed” is not satisfying. In a new book called Why Boredom Matters, Professor Kevin Hood Gary proposes a  solution to this problem, which he summarizes in the subtitle: “Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life.”   Today, “leisure” carries connotations of wealth and laziness, which makes it difficult for Christians to defend. However, since the early modern era, “leisure” has referred to the pursuit of curiosity for curiosity’s sake. German philosopher Josef Pieper called leisure the “basis of culture,” defining it as “everything that lies beyond the utilitarian world.” In other words, to engage in leisure is to have the energy and the will to learn about the world, even when that learning isn’t necessary for survival or wealth.  Leisure, when understood in this sense, pushes us further into what it means to be human. No other creature engages in leisure like humans do. Animals build dams and burrows to stay warm and survive. Humans need shelter, too, but we decorate them. Not to mention, we also build cathedrals, theme parks, museums, and restaurants. We write sonnets, compose operas, and make eight-course meals. This is the behavior of creatures made in the image of God, a Creator who loves beauty for beauty’s sake.  Strictly utilitarian societies can be productive and efficient but are, in the end, unsustainable. The Communist experiment of the Soviet Union is an example of what happens when a society is built upon a wrong understanding of the human person. When creativity and imagination are suppressed and individuality rejected, the result is widespread dehumanization. (I’m not just talking about the architecture, although there’s a reason it’s called “brutalist”).  Still, throughout human history and even under brutal regimes, humans have always found the will and the means to engage in leisure. One of my favorite paintings, by Russian artist Nikolai Yaroshenko, is called Life Is Everywhere. Three men, a woman, and a baby are crammed into a prison car but, through the bars of their window, they watch, amused, the fevered activity of a group of birds on the ground outside. The child is smiling.   Even in war-torn countries and in the poorest slums, there are people making beautiful things, inventing games and stories, and imagining a world different than what they know. This is because leisure is an insuppressible part of being human, made in God’s image.   In most of the Western world, people have all the means and opportunity to pursue classical leisure but choose distraction instead. Lacking in motivation to go deeper, Kevin Hood Gary suggests the only solution is education.  He doesn’t mean institutional higher education as it is currently, unfortunately built around a utilitarian approach. Highly specified academic programs teach students what they need to pass a test, obtain a license, or make money. A truly meaningful education instead capitalizes on the God-given capacity for leisure incorporating a broad survey of subjects–including those that seem to have nothing to do with “getting a job.”   Often, those subjects assumed to be irrelevant to a job are the most consequential. Do we want geneticists capable of splicing genes and rewriting DNA who have never taken an ethics class? Do we want elementary teachers versed in all social-emotional learning theories of second graders, but who do not know even the basics of the history of Western civilization?  Education should be an antidote to boredom because it should teach us how to wrestle with the questions boredom brings up, such as: Who am I? Why am I here? What is life for? Am I living well? What should I love?   Philosophers call these the “ultimate” questions. Christians know that the source of these questions is God Himself, and that bearing God’s image makes life inherently meaningful. To learn about God’s world, through history, art, philosophy, mathematics, science, and literature, is to learn about Him. Thus, it is always beneficial, even if it accomplishes nothing more than giving us a wider glimpse of His glorious creativity.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

Typically, People magazine publishes stories lamenting reduced access to abortion that has resulted for some women since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But earlier this month, the magazine published a heartbreaking story lamenting an abortion.   Las Vegas mom Tamika Thomas unexpectedly lost her two preborn babies after a local pharmacy wrongfully gave her an abortifacient. Having undergone in vitro fertilization, Thomas was picking up pills that she thought were going to help kickstart her pregnancy. Instead, the pharmacist, failing to decipher the doctor’s note, prescribed Misoprostol, a drug used to abort preborn children within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Unaware she had received Misoprostol, Thomas took the pills and lost her children.   This heartbreaking story is not about victims of bad handwriting. Rather, these two children were the victims of bad ideas and our culture’s upside-down thinking about women, the preborn, and the purpose of medicine. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

In a recent “X” post that went viral, a young woman lamented:   "[I’m] Realizing at 32 that I don’t care about building a career or climbing any corporate ladder. All I want to do is make the most amount of money working the least amount of hours possible so I can spend the MAJORITY of my time with my family, living life on my own terms instead of spending 40+ years working for a boss who’s paying me what he thinks is 'fair.'" This woman speaks for many 30-and-40-somethings who wish they’d prioritized marriage and children earlier. As births in the U.S. sink farther below the replacement rate, and the average age of first marriage hovers near an all-time high, a growing number of people are seeing the appeal of a life centered more around family than career, success, or status.    In fact, Gallup’s Social Series survey recently found that desire for larger families is at a 50-year high: 45% of respondents said that three or more children is their ideal, a big change from 20 years ago, when only 33% of Americans wanted that many kids. This, however, only makes our nation’s empty maternity wards and rock-bottom birth rates more puzzling. What is growing in America are not families, but the chasm between the families Americans say they want and the families they are forming.   In a Wall Street Journal article in May, Janet Adamy described how the “gap between women’s intended number of children and their actual family size has widened considerably. ... [B]y the time women born in the late 1980s were in their early 30s, they had given birth, on average, to about one child less than they planned.”  Multiplied by tens of thousands, that’s a lot of missing kids. This “birth dearth” has become so serious and undeniable that even mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have finally acknowledged it and even debated ways to reverse it. Adamy thinks that economic and social factors are to blame. Women cannot afford to have as many kids as they want and can’t find mature, financially stable men with whom to have them.  These factors cannot sufficiently explain the numerous ways Americans actively opt for child-free lives. For instance, more and more households are choosing pets over children, and our spending on those pets increased by a whopping 30% between 2018 and 2021. More importantly, marriage is rarer than ever, especially among lower-income Americans even though marriage is the most reliable means of building and keeping the financial stability required for children.  Also, the rate of vasectomies has risen by more than a quarter in the last decade and are easier than ever to obtain. Planned Parenthood of Oklahoma City recently advertised free vasectomies on Facebook with the slogan “snip away the stress.” They were fully booked in two days.  And finally, if, as several writers have asked recently, our lack of fertility can be chalked up to “it’s the economy, stupid,” how did previous generations manage far higher birth rates in much more difficult times?  Louise Perry offered a better explanation than any of these in an article published earlier this year in The Spectator. In it, she blamed our “progressive” lifestyle:   "The key features of modernity—urbanism, affluence, secularism, the blurring of gender distinctions, and more time spent with strangers than with kin—all of these factors in combination shred fertility."  In other words, we are witnessing the domination of a life-script in which children feel superfluous. The way we live, the things we value, the roles we assume, and the priorities we set have made family an afterthought.   We’ve been culturally conditioned, at nearly every turn, to put other things ahead of marriage and children. We believe that marriage and family “will just happen when it’s time.” But these things rarely do just happen in our culture, which is why so many find themselves like the woman in the viral video, wishing things had gone differently but painfully aware that lost time can never be reclaimed.   Mega trends like this cannot be changed overnight. Certainly, there are policy moves, like those recently suggested by Brad Wilcox and David Bass of the Institute for Family Studies, that can make change easier. Ultimately, it comes down to individual choices to plan life in a way that centers, rather than marginalizes, marriage and family. That means these things can’t be an afterthought, seen as a kind of “capstone” that young people expect to simply fall into place when the time is right. Rather, they must be thought of as foundational realities and, as such, things to pursue and around which other aspects of life should revolve.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

A 2012 headline in U.S. News and World Report asked, “Is It Time to Rate Young Adult Books for Mature Content?” According to the article, there was an increase in profanity in children’s books and sexual content in young adult novels. In fact, a survey that year revealed that 55% of the readers of young adult novels were adults, not teens.  A decade later, no one seems to be asking questions about graphic content in books for young people anymore. Rather, that content is being defended and promoted. Especially in fiction aimed at young adults, there is explicit content, including aggressive LGBTQ content, and themes of rape, abuse, BDSM, even incest.   There seems to be a commitment, in both literature and law, to relentlessly sexualize children in aggressive and even predatory ways. In a saner world, we would call this what it really is: abuse. In our world, sane adults must do everything we can to protect children. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

A recent episode of The Daily podcast from The New York Times ominously warned, “The Mosquitoes Are Winning.” Mosquitoes, believe it or not, are mankind’s deadliest predators, carrying disease that result in over 219 million infections and over 400,000 deaths every year. Even that number is dramatically reduced from previous highs. Highly effective efforts to combat malaria through bed nets, vaccines, and insecticides have reduced global deaths by more than a third.   Today, however, the world’s deadliest insect is making a comeback. A new breed of mosquito, Anopheles stephensi known to researchers as “Steve,” has adapted to evade old methods of pest control. Not only does it reproduce year-round and in water as shallow as a bottlecap, but it also lives primarily in cities rather than more rural areas. Between 2019 and 2021, global malaria deaths rose by 8%, primarily because “Steve’s” range expanded from Asia into Africa.   Pensées is a collection of writings from Blaise Pascal that were found and compiled after his death. It contains Pascal’s astute observations about the human condition. For example,  "What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle?" Pascal was a brilliant mathematician who converted to Christ late in his life, a life that ended with his untimely death at just 39 years old. Many of his writings that can be found in Pensées are responses to the skeptics of his day. He especially wrote about the failure of these skeptics to grasp the human person. In one of his best-known passages, he wrote,  "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this."  Had Pascal known, he may have referenced the mosquito instead of a vapor. After all, a child can swat a mosquito, but nothing has been more deadly in human terms than this little insect.    Despite his young faith, Pascal brilliantly articulated humanity’s value, as well as our complex relationship with the rest of the world. His words stand in contrast to both pagan thinkers, who thought of humanity as subject to the whims of capricious deities, and to the utopian idealists of his day, who believed that man would soon fully master nature.   Today as well, different views of the human person emerge from different worldviews. Philosophical naturalists see human beings as animals, shaped purely by instinct and desire. Eastern pantheists think of human beings as part of the divine Oneness that includes all things. You might say that, for the atheists, humans are animals. For the New Ager, humans are gods. The truth, according to Scripture, is that we are made in the image of God but tend to act like animals.  Even the smallest living things remind us of our fragility. Contrary to the promises of transhumanism, we will always be forced to reckon with human frailty, both in our mortality and our morality. Yet, our situation is not as hopeless. We alone, among all of God’s creation, have the capacity to shape the world around us.   The mosquito story is case in point. Malaria vaccines exist but need better methods of transportation and delivery. Better infrastructure can reduce the amount of stale, standing water, but building it requires capital supported by a robust private sector. Research and strategies that could improve things are often bogged down by government regulations.  C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Mistaken for our mother, [nature] is terrifying and even abominable. But if she is only our sister—if she and we have a common Creator—if she is our sparring partner—then the situation is quite tolerable.”  Even more, Christians know that the end of the story is God restoring all things, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Thus, as “thinking reeds,” fragile and powerful, we have every reason to do our best to advance good, reduce evil, and restore God’s world in whatever ways we can.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Joel Rosenberg and Eric Patterson discuss the war in Israel, exploring topics like the brutality of the conflict, Israel's control over Gaza, promoting love and understanding, the Just War Tradition, deterrence and Israel's track record, history of Israel's attacks, and cultural myths about Israel.

According to the National Academy of Medicine, 17 million Americans care for an older parent, spouse, friend, or neighbor with medical limitations. It is costly, beautiful, and important work, especially as so many push to eliminate suffering by eliminating sufferers.  There are, as a full-time caregiver put it recently, important lessons learned and blessings received in bearing each other’s burdens:   "Over the years, I have prayed many prayers for the people whom I’ve been entrusted to care for. But … more times than I can count, … the script has felt flipped, and it is I who walk away feeling tended, knowing I have received nurture, kindness, and patient love."  Any culture in which the call to care for others lessens, and the pressure to eliminate the sufferer intensifies, becomes an impoverished culture. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas put it, “In 100 years, if Christians are known as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have done well.”  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Nearly 15 years ago, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled Germany in order to homeschool their children in the United States. Under Germany’s education laws, the Romeikes were subject to severe financial penalties for attempting to homeschool. On a few occasions, police came to their home and escorted their children to school. In 2009, they moved to the U.S. and petitioned the government for asylum.    They’ve lived here since, mainly in Morristown, Tennessee. Never formally granted asylum, they were granted indefinite deferred action status in 2014 by the Obama administration. They’ve since added two children, their two oldest have married U.S. citizens, and they have even welcomed a grandchild.    Last month, during a “routine check-in,” the Romeikes were told they had to return to Germany. According to Home School Legal Defense Association attorney Kevin Boden:    "They were basically given four weeks to come back. They (were given) a report date in October. They (didn’t) know what (was) going to happen in that meeting. They (didn’t) know if they’re going to be forced to leave. They (didn’t) know if they’re going to be taken into custody."    Given how long the family has been in the United States and how unconcerned the Biden administration seems to be about illegal immigrants pouring across the Southern border, it’s difficult to make sense of why they would be so concerned about the Romeike family status now. After a significant amount of public pressure, the INS has given the family a one-year reprieve, but their story seems part of an increasing hostility to religious refugees on the part of the U.S. government.   According to a 2023 report from World Relief and Open Doors US, the number of religious refugees admitted to the U.S. has plummeted, though the number of Christians facing persecution around the world continues to climb. An estimated 360 million Christians live under threat of persecution and discrimination, an increase of 100 million in the last three years. Last year, the United States only resettled 25,465 refugees, excluding the Afghans and Ukrainians who entered the U.S. via a separate parole program. This number represents a dramatic reduction from pre-2017 levels when the U.S. resettled an average of over 80,000 people per year.  And, as the World Relief and Open Doors report outlines, the number of religious (including Christian) refugees from historically dangerous parts of the world have decreased even more sharply. In 2022, refugees from Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, and Iraq were down “85 percent, 95 percent, 92 percent and 94 percent, respectively” compared to 2016 levels. Between 2016 and 2022, refugees from Burma (including most Rohingya) declined by 62%, total Christian arrivals by 70%, and Yezidis by 100%.  “America,” the author concludes, “is no longer the safe haven for displaced persons that it once was.”    Though refugee resettlement in the U.S. slowed to a trickle during the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend goes back earlier. In 2019,  I observed in a Breakpoint commentary that though the Trump administration had stalwartly defended religious liberty at home, it had shut down legal channels for religious—including Christian—refugees while trying to stop the crisis of illegal immigration.    Now, America faces a heightened crisis of illegal crossings due to the Biden administration’s open border policies, especially on the southern border. However, fixing that problem should not include closing off all options for religious asylum seekers. Especially since the administration promised to specifically increase the number of religious refugees but instead arranged for  472,000 Venezuelans to come work in the U.S.    The strange targeting of the Romeike  family, along with an unaddressed crisis of green-card applications, which could see thousands of faith leaders in the U.S. sent home  after years of residency, suggests that the religious aspect of these stories may be an outsized factor.   Admittedly, reversing this trend now seems impossible in light of the war between Israel and Hamas. None of the surrounding Muslim nations are opening their borders to those seeking to flee the imminent ground assault of Gaza. And large, angry, and violent immigrant populations are protesting in many Western cities in support of the atrocities committed against Israel. Though it is possible to secure our borders and to properly vet and assist refugees facing religious persecution, the system will need to be rebuilt around completely different assumptions.  The current system invites mistreatment and exploitation. Encouraging the lawlessness of some while abandoning others, especially many who belong to what Paul called “the household of faith,” only feeds a narrative that America is becoming a more hostile place for religion, especially Christianity. That narrative is supported by more than enough evidence already.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. To help us share Breakpoint with others, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org