Breakpoint

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On Friday, the Supreme Court delivered a smashing victory for free speech. Lorie Smith is the founder of 303 Creative, a graphic design company that, among other services, creates custom websites for weddings. Concerned that a Colorado law would force her to design websites for same-sex weddings or take on other projects that would violate her deeply held religious beliefs, Smith filed a pre-enforcement challenge, asking the court to weigh in on whether the law violated her freedom of speech and conscience.

The state decided that Lorie did not have the right to choose which messages she uses her talents to express. It even forbade her, for example, from posting a notice on her website stating she is unable to create websites that express messages contrary to her Christian beliefs, including websites that promote abortion services, celebrate same-sex marriages, or advance a transgender ideology. In July 2021, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Smith and for the state of Colorado.

Friday, on the last day of the 2023 docket, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision and ruled in favor of Lorie Smith. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch, explained:

The First Amendment's protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. ... Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation's answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment.

Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom who argued the case before the Court, described the win in a press release:

This is a win for all Americans. The government should no more censor Lorie for speaking consistent with her beliefs about marriage than it should punish an LGBT graphic designer for declining to criticize same-sex marriage. If we desire freedom for ourselves, we must defend it for others.

It's not yet clear what implications this decision will hold for others, such as Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips, who are being forced to choose between their businesses and their deeply held religious beliefs. However, unlike the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop case, this decision was far broader and clearly dealt with questions of speech, conscience, and government coercion. In the Masterpiece case, the Supreme Court smacked down the state of Colorado for showing clear and extensive animus toward Jack's faith. The state civil rights commission responded by not only showing similar animus again, but by also allowing and enabling another citizen to harass Jack Phillips, beginning on the same day that Jack's first case was approved to be heard by the Supreme Court, and continuing today.

Already, voices as significant as dissenting Supreme Court justices and major media outlets have reported that, in the 303 Creative decision, the Court has allowed business owners to refuse service for LGBTQ people. That is simply not true. In fact, Justice Gorsuch specifically said as much in his majority opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, however, repeated that falsehood anyway before articulating a revisionist history of LGBTQ rights. For example, she repeated falsehoods about the murder of Matthew Shepard, wrongly claimed that the Colorado law did not affect Lorie Smith's rights "in any meaningful sense," and neglected the condition established by Smith that she would not refuse service to anyone because of their sexual orientation.

To the dissent, Justice Gorsuch retorted in the majority opinion, "It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case."

Lorie Smith never asked for the right to refuse service to a particular group of people. She asked not to be forced to produce speech that she did not agree with. That's what the Court affirmed on Friday. It is important that, whenever possible, all Americans who are concerned about the rights of conscience, including the freedom of speech, correct the falsehoods about this decision.

As Lorie Smith said in ADF's press release,

This is a victory not just for me but for all Americans across our great country—for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different beliefs. Whether you're an LGBT graphic designer, a Jewish calligrapher, an Atheist speechwriter, or a pro-life photographer, the government shouldn't force any of us to say something we don't believe. I love people and work with everyone, including those who identify as LGBT. For me, it's always about what message is requested, never the person requesting. I hope that, regardless of what people think of me or my beliefs, everyone will celebrate that the court upheld the right for each of us to speak freely.

Congratulations to ADF and to Lorie Smith.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Heather Peterson.

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

John Stonestreet takes a first look at the new decision from the U.S. Supreme Court siding with 303 Creative in Colorado. The mainstream media says Christians and Muslims are competing for followers in Africa.

— Recommendations —

What Would You Say?: Is the Bible Still Relevant?

To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond by Dr. Katie J McCoy

Section 1 - 303 Creative SCOTUS Ruling

303 Creative v. Elenis

Section 2 - The Competition for Believers in Africa is Transforming Christianity and Islam

The Wall Street Journal

Section 3 - College Loan Forgiveness SCOTUS Ruling

Section 4 - US Companies are Talking Less about Pride Month

"In landmark case, Supreme Court rules LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination"

NBC News

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

For a moment last week, Russia seemed headed for a coup or even civil war. After months of complaining about mistreatment by Moscow, the Wagner mercenary group marched on the capital. Then came dueling speeches by Wagner's leader and Russia's president, elites fleeing en masse, and an armored column outside the city.

Then suddenly, it stopped. Each side stood down. Even now, days later, it is not clear what exactly happened or what will happen next.

The whole bizarre scene offers important lessons about the human condition, and especially politics. We may think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but, as in this case, sometimes he's still an enemy. Just because a guy is on our side doesn't mean he's good, or that we are and aren't bad guys too.

What happened in Russia is an extreme example to be sure, but we should be careful to see our political leaders through a biblical lens, not political pragmatism.

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

Recently, a school district near Salt Lake City, Utah removed the Bible from elementary and middle school libraries. Though it quickly reversed course and returned it to the library shelves, the original decision was made in response to a complaint that the Bible contains pornographic content, and that certain parts are too "violent or vulgar" for young children. Meanwhile, school districts across the country require LGBT content, much of it grossly explicit, in elementary school classrooms as well as libraries. Some even refuse to allow parents to excuse their children from such content.

It is, to put it mildly, upside down to silence the Bible in order to "protect" children while forcing radical ideas about identity and sexuality on them. Though the Bible speaks plainly about the violence and barbarity of fallen humanity (see the final three chapters of the book of Judges, for example), it is not gratuitous. More importantly, the Bible portrays evil as evil, rather than celebrating the brokenness under the guise of "authenticity," "autonomy," and "diversity."

Eliminating the Bible from education also ignores the crucial impact the Bible has had on the world, especially in shaping Western culture. On one hand, this is simply part of the wholesale condemnation of Western culture so common today. However, even if the Western heritage in the sciences, technology, human rights, freedom, and the arts are downplayed or ignored, at least some knowledge of the Bible is basic to knowing human history at all. Put differently, to assume that the Bible is no longer relevant to the modern world is to misunderstand both the Bible and the modern world.

The latest episode of the Colson Center's What Would You Say? video series offers a response to the claim that "the modern world has moved beyond the Bible." Here's a sample:

The Bible's positive influence on the world as we know it has been so profound and so thorough that it's easy to forget just how much it has shaped our understanding of science, morality, politics, literature, music, language and so many other aspects of life and culture.

Every video in the What Would You Say? series offers thoughtful, reasoned, and reliable answers to common cultural questions. This video explains how the Bible shaped Western culture, how the Bible's description of reality provided the grounding for modern science, and why there will be a growing demand for the Bible as more and more people come to faith around the world.

For example, there is a reason that the scientific revolution did not emerge out of other cultures. Despite the common narrative that Christianity is anti-science, science requires a consistent natural order, something described from the very beginning of the Bible:

The Bible describes a world that was made by God to be intelligible and orderly. Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer says, "Because we have an intelligence that has, as its source, the intelligence that built the world, we can understand the world…."

This is why we expect consistency and order in nature. And why we expect, as humans, to be able to study and comprehend that consistency and order.

In fact, the biblical description of reality provided the impetus for most arenas of learning and academic study, including history, medicine, math, and sociology. After all, learning requires that humans are knowers, that they are able to learn, and that the world is knowable. Most worldviews simply cannot ground these assumptions.

Other videos in the What Would You Say? video series, which has now garnered over two million views, address questions about science, apologetics, sexuality, race, politics, and more. These videos are for parents to watch with their kids, teachers to use in class with students, and in small groups and Sunday School classes, too. New videos, each addressing a different question, will be added every couple of weeks. Please visit whatwouldyousay.org, or search for and subscribe to the What Would You Say? channel on YouTube. And please share these videos with friends, family, and on social media.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Michaela Estruth.

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

This week is the anniversary of two dark and pivotal cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. In June 2013, the high court ruled in United States v. Windsor that the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 violated Due Process. This essentially made the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges judgment, which redefined millennia of law on marriage, inevitable.

Justice Anthony Kennedy unwittingly defined our chaotic age in the majority opinion for Obergefell when he declared, "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity."

This idea—that people can freely craft their identity independent from nature, science, and reality—is behind so much of the moral confusion of the last few years. But it has certainly not led to the "liberty" that Justice Kennedy promised. This is the opportunity for Christians to point not only to an abstract moral position, but to reality itself and to the God who made it.

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

Few subjects seem less political than math. There is little room for subjective judgment because its truths are universal. No matter what you look like or where you're from or how you feel about it, two plus two will always equal four, and the area of a circle will always be π r². Math is so objective, in fact, some scientists have theorized that prime numbers could offer the basis of communication with supposed intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.

However, even if aliens know that math has no racial or gender bias, some educators on Earth seem to think otherwise. Even amid plummeting math scores in the latest Nation's Report Card data, a growing chorus of progressive voices insists that racism and sexism are the biggest problems we face in how to teach math.

A couple years ago, in an article in the Scientific American, Rachel Crowell complained about the racial and gender disparities among those who make a career out of mathematics. She pointed out, for instance, that "fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African Americans" and that only 29.1 percent "were awarded to women." More mathematicians, she writes, have been pushing to discuss these issues and "force the field to confront the racism, sexism and other harmful bias it sometimes harbors."

Though, undoubtedly, examples of identity-group bias in all fields exist, Crowell chose to root her complaint in intangibles: Math doctorates are not "earned" or "received" or "completed;" they are "awarded," a word choice that not so subtly reinforces her conclusion that something about math education is racist.

Writing at Newsweek, Jason Rantz cited examples of public schools teaching students that math itself, and the way it has always been taught, is oppressive. In Seattle, recently introduced guidelines for K-12 math teachers in several pilot schools claim that "mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture" and that "math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color."

In 2021, Oregon's Department of Education introduced a new toolkit called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, created by what Rantz calls "a coalition of left-wing educators." The toolkit promises "an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and [m]ultilingual students in grades 6-8." It also warns teachers that "[t]he concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false," and that "[u]pholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity as well as fear of open conflict."

This ideological trend in which everything is read through lenses of oppression and victimhood is not isolated in extreme, left-wing enclaves but has become widespread in education. Given the "Critical Theory mood" inflicting Western culture today, it is only likely to grow in the coming years.

One of the many problems with this obsession with racism and oppression in math is that it inevitably leaves students worse at math. In the case of the Seattle pilot schools, for example, performance among black students in the state math exam plummeted after implementing the woke curriculum. Bad ideas with good intentions are still bad ideas. In an effort to empower students, they are instead radically disempowered.

The wonder of mathematics lies precisely in its objectivity, as Melissa Cain Travis describes in Thinking God's Thoughts, in the miraculous way that math corresponds to and describes the world around us. In her book, Travis chronicles how the beauty and objectivity of numbers led 16th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler to discover the three laws of planetary motion and to correctly describe the structure of our solar system. Kepler, as much a student of God as he was a scientist, believed that the truths of numbers were eternal, existing eternally in the mind of God and structuring all of reality. Our minds—as beings made in God's image—are uniquely suited to unlock those mysteries.

Students who are taught that answers to algebra problems depend on the color of their skin and that calculus professors are oppressors are not only not going to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but they will also believe what is not true about who they are and the world in which they live. Woke educators may hope to liberate students. But by depriving them of objective truths they are subjugating them to bad ideas. It's a tragically ironic and disastrous miscalculation.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.

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

Earlier this week, the pro-abortion group NARAL tweeted in tribute of the Supreme Court decision that mandated "same-sex marriage" on all of America:

"Eight years ago, Obergefell v. Hodges recognized the right to same-sex marriage. But the fight to start or grow our families—however and whenever we want—continues."

"Same-sex marriage" was sold with the claim that with birth control and abortion, modern marriage had been divorced from procreation in any meaningful sense. "Love is love," the line went, though even if morality is left out of the discussion and only male-female relationships produce children.

So, the word "spouse" was redefined in law. Now, according to NARAL, true equality requires that inherently sterile relationships be able to have children "however and whenever [they] want."

Science is busy making it easier to access this want, and if California lawmakers get their way, insurers will have to cover pregnancy treatments for same-sex couples.

Redefining words has consequences. Redefining "spouse" meant redefining "parent," and redefining a child as a "right."

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

Recently, the East African nation of Uganda passed a law that will increase criminal punishments for homosexual acts. Same-sex activity was already illegal in Uganda, as it is in several other African nations, and Ugandans convicted under the law already faced life in prison. Under this new law, people convicted of attempting to engage in homosexual behavior could face 10 years behind bars. Those convicted of "aggravated homosexuality," defined as sexual abuse of a child or knowingly spreading HIV, could face the death penalty. Anyone convicted of "promoting homosexuality" could be imprisoned up to 20 years.

Reaction in the West was quick and fierce. President Biden immediately denounced the law, threatening to withhold humanitarian aid from Uganda. United Nations officials claimed that the law would criminalize Ugandans for "being who they are." An early draft of the legislation did include a provision criminalizing merely identifying as LGBT, but that didn't make it into the final bill.

There is plenty wrong with this new Ugandan law, including the severity of punishment and the unrealistic level of police activity that would be required to ever enforce it. A pioneer and strong advocate for criminal justice reform, Chuck Colson believed that the goal of criminal law and enforcement should be rehabilitation and restoration whenever possible, not punishment for punishment's sake. Unfortunately, in Uganda, as in many nations both Western and developing, the criminal justice process is more punitive than restorative.

Of course, the specifics of the Ugandan law and its prescribed punishments didn't drive the reaction from Western media and government officials. Instead, the very idea of regulating sexual activity at all is now largely unthinkable, at least in those places in which it has taken decades to normalize, de-stigmatize, and now celebrate sexual deviation in the name of "pride."

(To be sure, the West also claims to celebrate things like "cultural diversity" and indigenous values and claims to oppose things like "cultural imperialism" and colonialism. So, shouldn't we respect a country that will not be overrun by our modern Western ideals? Shouldn't we resist the urge to impose our culture on theirs, as if ours is somehow better? Yet that's not the way it went.)

Largely overlooked is that most Western nations have never experienced the level of devastation from the continuing AIDS crisis like nations such as Uganda have. According to the UN, 1.4 million Ugandans have HIV/AIDS, including roughly 5.4% of the country's entire adult population. An estimated 800,000 Ugandan children are orphans of the AIDS crisis there. Meanwhile, in the U.S., only 0.3% of adults live with HIV or AIDS and, because of technology and wealth, most are able to manage the condition.

Up until quite recently, most nations had laws intended to restrain certain kinds of sexual activity. In fact, nearly all of them still do. For example, nearly every nation restricts and punishes relationships with animals or incest. Though many primitive and pagan societies did not regulate sexual behaviors, as the world became more civilized, governments across time and cultures found compelling reasons to regulate some sexual behaviors because of wide implications for public life, public health, population growth, women's rights, and the safety and wellbeing of children. Historically speaking, nations in decline were the ones that deregulated sexual behaviors. Progressing nations understood why certain legal restrictions are necessary.

Governments have the right and the responsibility to exercise authority over private acts that carry significant public consequences. That does not mean that all laws are feasible in all societies. A law to restrict sexual behavior, even one nothing like Uganda's, would be a political nonstarter in the United States. Uganda, however, has not weathered a decades-long, extremist sexual revolution. In fact, it is entirely possible that the Ugandan law is the result of the dominance of LGBT lobby groups over every area of Western culture including education, the harm done to the minds and bodies of children, and government leaders realizing, "we don't want that here." Or perhaps, "we could never survive that here." In other words, the fact that Uganda's law could never pass in the U.S. says as much about the extremism of our culture as it does theirs.

It is not clear how or if this law will be implemented in Uganda in any meaningful sense. It is not, in my view, a good law. It is over-punitive and would, if enforced, punish victims as well as perpetrators of the ideas it hopes to eliminate. At the same time, a society that truly understands and promotes human flourishing would, in fact, have laws aimed at restricting and eliminating harmful ideas and behaviors, and at protecting those who would be victimized by them.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

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

Recently, Illinois lawmakers voted to withhold funding from public libraries if they removed sexually explicit books, and officials in Virginia voted to withhold funding for libraries until they dealt with the sexually explicit books in the kids' and teens' sections. Amid the library wars, new graduate of the Colson Fellows program Ashley Borrego decided to give her neighborhood a better kind of library. This fall, the Cornerstone Living Library will open inside Cornerstone Bible Church in Lilburn, Georgia. Ashley is filling the shelves with donated books—from Christian authors to homeschooling resources to Nancy Drew mysteries—that respect kids as kids. Parents will soon be able to take their kids to a library without having to screen everything for obscenity and lies.

What if all churches served their communities by providing libraries? Colson Fellows like Ashley are agents of restoration wherever God has placed them.

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

What does music mean? Most people today, without realizing it or giving much of a second thought, think of music and art along the lines of 18th-century philosopher David Hume, who wrote:

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty.

Beauty, in other words, is in the eye of the beholder, and nothing more. Therefore, Hume continued in words that resemble a teenager telling mom and dad to get off his back: "Every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others."

Rejecting notions of objective truth and universal morality, many in the modern world assume that beauty is not a category of reality that exists outside of the human mind but is entirely a subject of individual taste. Music can be fun, edgy, or distracting. It might even carry therapeutic benefits. But it isn't rooted in anything transcendent, eternal, or objective.

Recently on the Upstream podcast, my colleague Shane Morris discussed music and meaning with Dr. Jeremy Begbie, a theologian at Duke Divinity School and the University of Cambridge. Dr. Begbie, whose work centers on the intersection of music and theology, argued that music is in fact not neutral. Rather, it is a function of the way we are made by God and ultimately points to deep truths about God and about ourselves.

Here's Dr. Begbie:

I was speaking to an atheist musicologist, a very distinguished musicologist not so long ago. And he said that music, he believes, ultimately, is about tuning us in to each other and to the physical world at large. It's about belonging, you see. 'Oh, how interesting,' I said. It's interesting that Christianity has a little bit to say about that. It's not primarily our job in the world ... to be individuals who simply express themselves or simply get things off their chest, so to speak.

God has made us for each other and has made us to live in harmony with this physical world in which we're set. And for me, therefore, it makes wonderful sense to say that this is what music is about. Indeed, it's what language is about. It's what hundreds of things are about—just this kind of worldview.

Historically, many philosophers—from Plato to Aristotle to St. Augustine—reflected on the "three transcendentals": goodness, truth, and beauty. Christian thinkers argued that these are attributes of God and therefore clues to the meaning of life. In this view, beauty is an objective reality, grounded in the nature and work of God Himself. This explains why beauty can make such a meaningful impact on human beings. Even those who reject the idea of universal truths and are cynical about our ability to truly know anything cannot help but wrestle with the pull of beauty.

Joseph Pearce explained it this way in a recent article in The Imaginative Conservative, "What … is the role of good art? … The answer is to be found in the power of beauty to touch heads that have forgotten how to think and hearts that have forgotten how to love."

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky famously suggested that "Beauty will save the world." Dostoevsky's friend, 19th-century philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, explained why he believed this:

In his convictions he never separated truth from good and beauty; in his artistic creativity he never placed beauty apart from the good and the true. And he was right, because these three live only in their unity. The good, taken separately from truth and beauty, is only an indistinct feeling, a powerless upwelling; truth taken abstractly is an empty word; and beauty without truth and the good is an idol. For Dostoevsky, these were three inseparable forms of one absolute Idea.

This is not to suggest that there is no room for subjective experience and interpretation of beauty. Expressions of art, including music, must be perceived by those with tastes and preferences shaped by experiences, culture, knowledge, and various degrees of virtue. We might disagree on whether a Bach concerto carries more or less aesthetic value and technical excellence than a modern rock ballad. Still, that both can be distinguished from meaningless chaos, says something about order and design in the world.

As does the fact that music is more than mere stimulus-response. Even if we don't know why, musical beauty points us beyond ourselves and offers a clue about the meaning of the universe and the God who made it and us.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.

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