Breakpoint

Register to attend live or join the livestream for the Great Lakes Symposium at colsoncenter.org/greatlakes.

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In response to a Breakpoint commentary about the murders in Nashville in March, the Colson Center was identified by a critic as being "proudly, if quietly, Dominionist." To be clear, we aren't, but he was particularly troubled by how the commentary described Christians as victims which, of course, they were.

In that commentary, we wondered aloud whether in fact we have entered a new cultural moment, characterized by an increased hostility toward Christians and others who are, shall we say, culturally non-conforming. The strange and shameful reversal of who is victim and who is guilty in the reporting on the Nashville incident has only continued since, and now there are additional incidents to consider as well.

On March 29, while speaking on abortion at Virginia Commonwealth University, Kristan Hawkins and a group from Students for Life were confronted, threatened, and assaulted by an obscenity-crying crowd who failed to notice the irony of suppressing free speech by screaming "fascists!" Rather than remove those disrupting the presentation, the campus police removed the pro-lifers.

Two days later, on March 31, authorities in Colorado arrested 19-year-old William Whitworth for two counts of attempted murder, in addition to other charges. Whitworth, who goes by the name Lily and was in the process of "transitioning," was planning a series of bomb and gun attacks on several sites in Colorado Springs, including schools and churches. As with the Nashville shooter who identified as transgender, police have not revealed the "manifesto" that would reveal Whitworth's specific motives. However, there is ample evidence that rhetoric about the so-called "trans genocide" is leading advocates to increasingly violent means to make their point.

Then, on April 6, college swimmer Riley Gaines was physically assaulted while giving a speech at San Francisco State University. As she argued against the inclusion of men in women's sports, she was berated, threatened, and blockaded in a room until she paid a ransom. Media accounts employed terms like "allegedly" to cast doubt about what happened, but audio and video recordings were plain. Afterward, rather than condemn the violent and threatening acts, the vice president of student affairs praised activists for "defending diversity and free speech."

Three incidents in nine days are notable, but when placed alongside a host of others in the last few years, a disturbing trend begins to emerge. After examining the data, The Family Research Council concluded that over 400 "acts of hostility" have been committed against churches in the last five years including "vandalism, arson, gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and more." Of these incidents, 137 occurred between January and September of last year.

The headline is not that there are suddenly those who disagree with Christian conviction or similar beliefs. That has always been the case. And frankly, the Christian view of the world hasn't held the dominant cultural position for some time. However, the old-school atheists and secular humanists of yesterday were content enough to let Christians have their say, if for no other reason than to ridicule and deride. To think of something as "outdated," or "silly," or "non-scientific" is one thing. To think of it and the one who advances it as "evil," "oppressive," and "fascist" is something else.

Whereas an older secularist thought of truth as something "out there" to be discovered through study, discussion, and even debate, truth in the contemporary critical mood isn't about what is said but who is saying it. More specifically, it's about where everyone is pre-ranked in an ever-shifting, intersectional hierarchy.

Anyone who insists that there are truths of a higher order, particularly truths that establish sexual morality and identity, will become a target of those who are blinded by today's ideologies. Fifty years ago, Francis Schaeffer explained, "No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions." The refusal to live by lies subverts the required certainty in the new orthodoxy.

For the sake of our neighbors, all who believe in the importance of truth must continue to say so. We cannot beat ideological opponents into conformity, and it is sinful to try. We'll have to say what is true, even when there is a cost. We'll have to remind the world of the beautiful legacy of the Judeo-Christian view of humanity and the world. We'll have to hold together truth with love.

This is why I've invited Kristen Waggoner, CEO and general counsel of ADF, and Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, to join me for the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview on July 27th at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Go to colsoncenter.org/greatlakes to attend live or join the livestream.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to colsoncenter.org.

Revised from a Breakpoint released on 4.14.23.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently in The New York Times, Catherine Pearson noted how the growing cultural stigma against boredom burdens parents. Research shows that parents across cultural and economic lines believe it's their job to fend off their kids' boredom with activities.

Doing so implicitly teaches kids that boredom is bad for them, and entertainment a right. This plays well in an age that treats any discomfort as dangerous, and that having fun, or at least avoiding suffering, is the meaning of life.

This understanding of life robs kids of finding the joy, the meaning, and the truth of self-sacrifice, service to others, and devotion to things bigger than self. It's also cruel to teach kids who live in a fallen world that suffering and discomfort can be avoided and that you can't truly be happy if you fail to avoid it.

Allowing kids to be bored and uncomfortable, on the other hand, teaches them that they actually can handle tough things.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In 303 Creative vs. Elenis, the Supreme Court upheld Lorie Smith's free speech rights, deciding that the state of Colorado could not force her to produce websites for so-called same-sex weddings. Ever since, media pundits and public officials have distorted the ruling, claiming that it will allow people to refuse service to LGBT individuals. However, even the state of Colorado acknowledged that Smith serves all people with her business, but she would not provide services that meant expressing a view that violates her faith. The state made clear its intent was to suppress Smith's ideas about marriage. By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court found this a clear violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression.

The dissent in the case was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. It featured a rambling history of civil rights and public accommodation law, law that prevents discrimination of the public in services. Sotomayor argued that the decision violated the trajectory of the expansion of civil rights to more and more marginalized groups in society. She claimed that creating a website was a matter of providing a service and had nothing to do with expression, implausibly arguing that creating a website for a so-called same-sex wedding would not compel Smith's speech.

Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch dismantled the dissent, noting that the history of public accommodations and civil rights had no bearing on the matter, and that Sotomayor's argument that the question involved service rather than expression was contradicted by both the state of Colorado and the Tenth Circuit Court. He also noted how the dissent contradicted itself.

Still, the problems with Sotomayor's dissent extend beyond the issues identified by Gorsuch. When Sotomayor appealed to the murder of Matthew Shepard and the mass shooting in Orlando's Pulse Nightclub as examples of the dangers LGBT people face in the country, she was appealing to a revisionist history. The motive for Matthew Shepard's murder is at best unsettled and likely had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. The shooter at the Pulse nightclub had pledged allegiance to ISIS and apparently targeted Pulse because of its lax security.

While Sotomayor may simply have been sloppy–relying on popular rhetoric without investigating further–it is more likely that these are examples of her worldview commitments. Specifically, she employed standpoint epistemology and intersectionality, the idea that truth is ultimately unknowable so we can only rely on identity markers like race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation to determine what is right and wrong.

In standpoint epistemology, minorities have greater insights about the world because they know how to operate both in their own setting and in the dominant culture. This is the reasoning behind Sotomayor's infamous statement given at the University of California, Berkley before her nomination: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

However, though Sotomayor may assume her lived experience offers a fuller view of reality, her perceptions become more authoritative to her than the facts of reality. Rather than committing to an objectivity, she can determine via cultural narratives of oppression what happened regarding Shepard's murder or the Pulse shooting, or the conflict between Lorie Smith and the state of Colorado. Even worse, the objective facts (at least those that counter the accepted narratives) in these cases can be ignored, neglected, or revised.

Since objective truth doesn't exist, justice is left to the eye of the beholder. Once, in a presentation to congressional staffers, Sotomayor was asked about the foundation of justice in our country. She replied by admitting that she had never considered the question "in that form before." And then after a long pause said something like, "I suppose for me, it would be the inherent dignity of all people. But I don't know what it should be for anyone else" (emphasis added).

While it may be surprising that a sitting Supreme Court justice had never considered the question of justice, her response is fully consistent with her previous speech delivered at Berkley. In it, she claimed that "[t]o judge is an exercise of power," not a matter of interpreting law. In her dissent to the majority opinion that ended affirmative action in college admissions, she accused the majority decision of "an unjustified exercise of power." In other words, if judging is only a matter of power, no amount of facts could ever justify a decision she did not agree with.

This pair of dissents should not be viewed in a vacuum. Rather, they are based on a worldview rooted in Neo-Marxist ideas of oppression and class struggle and on postmodern ideas about knowledge and power. This is why it is important that a biblical vision of truth, justice, government, and the human person guide our thinking, not only so we can counter the false ideas shaping so much of our culture but so that we can offer a better way.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A lot of disinformation has been spread about the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case defending a Colorado graphic designer's free speech rights. John and Maria discuss some new thoughts surrounding the ethics of medicine.

— Recommendations —

Further Up & Further In

The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession by Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen

Section 1 - Correcting Misinformation on 303 Creative v. Elenis

"The Smearing of Lorie Smith"

The Wall Street Journal

"Correcting the Record on 303 Creative"

Breakpoint

Section 2 - What is medicine for?

"What is medicine for?"

Section 3 - Further Up and Further In

Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview

Further Up & Further In

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The cases involving affirmative action and Lorie Smith and 303 Creative have received the most attention from the recent Supreme Court term, but another ruling has important implications for religious liberty. The Court ruled that U.S. Post Office employee Gerald Groff could not be forced to work on Sundays.

Thanks are due to Groff and his lawyers at The First Liberty Institute. In the past, employers could get away with merely offering lip service to religious exemptions for workers because any vaguely defined "undue hardship" for the bosses overrode their faith concerns. Now, employers must demonstrate that accommodating an employee's faith would entail a "substantial increased cost" before demanding their conformity.

The ruling is a final blow to the "now abrogated" Lemon Test that hampered religious liberty for a half-century. It also provides legal standing for challenging other impositions on religious liberty at work—such as being forced to use "preferred pronouns," or post rainbow flags, or join "pride" marches.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A recent CBS News article claims, in its very title in fact, to separate "medical facts from misinformation" around so-called "gender-affirming care." However, rather than separate the facts from the falsehoods, the article peddles lies and half-truths, assuming the conclusions it claims to prove in a thinly veiled piece of progressive propaganda. And that's about the nicest thing that can be said about it.

The first dead giveaway about the piece is how it smuggles transgender ideology into its chosen language and terminology. Rather than refer to boys and girls, or young males and females, the author refers to "kids with testes" and "those with ovaries."

The piece then claims to set the record straight about what is involved in diagnosing gender dysphoria and administering "gender-affirming care." Here, too, its claims could not be further from the truth. According to the author, "the process informing these treatments is a long and intensive one." This directly conflicts with an increasing number of testimonies from whistleblowers and de-transitioners who sought out this kind of care, not to mention the information given by providers like Planned Parenthood.

According to a whistleblower and former case manager at Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, "[T]he majority" of young people who came to them "received hormone prescriptions." Likewise, Helena Kirschner, a young woman who detransitioned, received testosterone as a teenager after her very first visit to Planned Parenthood.

It's notable that Planned Parenthood doesn't even cover up this information. On some office webpages, the abortion giant happily promotes that "[i]n most cases your clinician will be able to prescribe hormones the same day as your first visit. No letter from a mental health provider is required." Getting high-powered, life-altering drugs on your first visit hardly involves a "long and intensive" diagnosis process.

The piece also falsely presents the effects of chemical "transition" interventions as reversible and harmless, peddling the lie that puberty blockers are like a "pause button" for puberty, which can be stopped and restarted with no long-term effect. Contrary to this claim, recent studies have found that the lasting adverse effects of the puberty-blocking drug Lupron, which is used to halt puberty primarily in young girls, include brittle bones and faulty joints. The piece also tries to soften the truth about cross-sex hormones by saying that some of their effects are reversible. However, changes caused in secondary sexual characteristics, such as deepened voices, facial hair, breast growth, and infertility are not reversible in the least.

At the heart of most transgender propaganda is the claim that transitioning children has mental health benefits and can save them from suicide. Unsurprisingly, this piece repeats that claim while ignoring the facts that do not line up. The piece cites a popular but deeply flawed study among trans-advocates that those who received cross-sex hormones as minors had better mental health outcomes than those who received them as adults.

However, the study's flawed design makes it impossible to sufficiently isolate cross-sex hormones, or lack thereof, as the determining factor of mental health outcomes. In fact, better research shows the opposite conclusion. For example, in states where youth were able to access chemical "transition" interventions without parental consent, youth suicide rates were higher than those who required parental consent. Additionally, the longest-term study on the effects of transitioning has found that those who transition are over 19 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

Far from causing harm, denying irreversible and sterilizing chemical and surgical interventions actually helps children who are distressed by their bodies. Granted time and space, many learn to accept their bodies and God-given identities. However, propaganda pieces like this one published by CBS confuse those called to care for children and only contributes to their harm. If journalists and media outlets really want to dispel misinformation and help vulnerable children, they should stop blindly repeating the lies of gender ideologues.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

This week 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—the 100-meter—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 1982 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 who also "made [him] fast." He ran every race, including the race of life, to "feel God's pleasure."

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

This Point was originally published 6.12.22.

Recently, in the wake of the Supreme Court's important decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis, a lie has been propagated about the case, a lie that purportedly implicates plaintiff Lorie Smith and the Alliance Defending Freedom. Thanks to the willingness of media outlets, public officials, and pundits to repeat these accusations and misrepresent what they mean, this lie has the potential to poison the cultural memory about this critically important case. The accusation is that 303 Creative, the graphic design company at the center of the lawsuit, and ADF invented a fake customer request for a same-sex wedding website and that, because of this deceit, the Court should have never heard the case in the first place.

It's important to correct the record. Many Christians joined with other champions of free speech to celebrate the Supreme Court's decision in the 303 case. However, Christians do not believe that the "ends justify the means." A win derived out of false witness and deception cannot be celebrated. That's the kind of win that headline after headline has proclaimed. However, that's not what happened here, as Kristen Waggoner, president and general counsel of ADF, and Erin Hawley, senior counsel of ADF, explained this week in The Wall Street Journal.

The origin of the 303 Creative case dates to 2016, when Lorie Smith, who founded the creative design company four years earlier, wanted to include a disclaimer on her website. Hoping to add custom website design for weddings to her menu of services, she wanted to clarify that, as a Christian believer, she could not create custom wedding websites for "same-sex weddings." Given the hostility the state of Colorado had leveled at cake baker Jack Phillips, Lorie knew that she'd likely be considered in violation of the state's broad anti-discrimination law.

With the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Lorie and 303 Creative filed a pre-enforcement challenge, a common legal procedure that allows people to challenge a law before they are penalized under it. This procedure recognizes what should be obvious, that free citizens should not have to first be punished under an unconstitutional law before they are able to challenge its constitutionality.

The day after ADF first filed Lorie's case, Lorie received a request to create a custom wedding website for someone named Stewart, who said he was marrying someone named Mike. ADF included this request as an addendum to 303 Creative's lawsuit, not as the basis for it, in order to demonstrate that Lorie was under real pressure to violate her beliefs.

From the very beginning of Lorie's case—from the federal district court in Colorado where ADF first filed the lawsuit, through the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, all the way to the Supreme Court—each judge acknowledged that Lorie had both the right and the standing to bring her case as a pre-enforcement challenge. As Waggoner and Hawley wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "Every one of the 12 appellate judges who heard the case agreed that Ms. Smith had standing, and none of their opinions even considered whether she received a request for a same-sex wedding website." However, just days after the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects Lorie from state coercion and that she cannot be forced to say something that violates her beliefs, a news outlet alleged that the website request Lorie Smith had received was fake. According to the report, a man claiming to be Stewart, whose address and contact information matched what had been submitted in the 2016 request, denied ever making it.

Immediately, the false memory machine was in motion. Multiple news outlets seized on the accusation, suggesting the case was illegitimate. Even being accused of faking anti-Christian discrimination is often functionally sufficient to be convicted in the court of cultural memory.

The most likely scenario, of course, is that the request was made by an activist who either hoped that it would undermine the 303 Creative case or could be held (as it was) and brought out in case of an unfavorable decision. Still, whether the request came from a legitimate customer, an activist, or ChatGPT is irrelevant because the case was always a pre-enforcement challenge. Critics are free to dislike the ruling, in which case they should take it up with the U.S. Constitution. But they can't change the facts. In fact, they are also free to express a lie about the case if they choose, though ironically, that's at least partly due to what the Court ruled in this case they are committed to undermining.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

It is typically entertaining when two popular intellectuals get into a public spat. Recently, Canadian psychologist and YouTube star Jordan Peterson called out the famous British biologist Richard Dawkins with an "I told you so!"

After Dawkins complained on Twitter about New Zealand elevating traditional Maori stories to the same level as Western science, Peterson retorted, "Welcome to the world of post-humanism, sir. A world which you sadly helped birth. … [I]t wouldn't surprise me at all if the woke polytheistic neopaganists destroy science faster than they destroy Christianity."

On one hand, Dawkins is right that the whole genius of "Western" science is that it isn't just Western. But, as Peterson not so gently noted, Dawkins has spent his career tearing down the religious foundations upon which Western science is built. Without God and all that His existence implies, there is no solid ground for saying that any knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is true for everyone.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Jessica Bates lost her husband a few years ago in a car wreck. This would be devastating for anyone, but through her grief over her loss, she's decided to open her heart and home to others. As she lacks a husband, she's now reaching out to those who have no parents, trying to adopt children in her home state of Oregon. Mind you, this is in addition to the five children left fatherless by her husband's death. It takes a special love to take in those who need a home. It takes a strong love and a strong heart to do so while raising little ones alone.

You can imagine Jessica's surprise when the state turned her down on ideological grounds. To warrant the state's approval to care for parentless children, she had to sign off on "affirming" any potential adopted child's desire for transgender pronouns, chemical sterilization, and other practices that would have been rightly seen as child abuse just a few years ago.

As the Alliance Defending Freedom said of her case,

"Oregon officials are preventing Jessica from adopting a child because of her Christian beliefs — despite the fact that they otherwise accommodate people of different religious and cultural backgrounds and try to pair children with families who are well suited to each other. It's a blatant act of religious discrimination, and it must end."

This ideological enforcement is not an isolated thing. Last year, the governor of Michigan used her veto power to cut from the state budget millions of dollars allocated to help pro-life groups and Christian adoption agencies. It's not enough, apparently, that these groups work to help "the least of these." To get state funds, they also must toe the party line when it comes to supporting abortion.

In America today, there are nearly 400,000 children in the foster care system and over 100,000 waiting to be adopted. Adoption is a beautiful gift that's close to the heart of Christianity, a legacy of the Church's earliest days when unwanted kids, mostly girls, were left on the trash heap by Roman parents. Christians responded by taking these little ones into their homes.

There's hardly a better picture of who we are in Christ than adoption. As sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, lost through their Fall, we have been brought into the household of God. The Apostle Paul notes in Galatians,

"... born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."

Drawing on this same beautiful theme, few acts live out this love that God has shown for us than this unique way of loving our neighbor. What better way to reflect the love poured out on us and to realize the restoring work to which our adoptive heavenly Father has called us than to fix what's broken in these little lives?

This is an opportunity to move from outrage to a constructive strategy. If you are in a state that is holding back this Christian love from showing forth in children's hearts, call on your representatives to tell them that this is not the way. Or, wherever you live, think of supporting adoption agencies and awaiting parents with funds and goods to help them bring the homeless into their families. Or, if God calls you in this way, prayerfully consider opening your home and heart to those either in temporary foster care or permanently orphaned.

As Chuck Colson said almost 30 years ago now,

"More than ever, we need to work to promote alternatives to abortion, especially adoption. Couples who take in needy infants and selflessly care for them should not be penalized by policies motivated by political correctness."

Working to free potential parents from unwarranted state restrictions and to support them in these adoptions is a clear case where Christian love meets civic duty.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org