Breakpoint

Although the announcement didn’t mention which groups would no longer be funded, most media outlets covering the Chick-Fil-A Foundation’s press release on Monday did: “Chick-Fil-A to stop donating to some groups following LGBTQ protests,” read the USA Today headline. “Chick-Fil-A will no longer fund anti-LGBTQ organizations,” said ABCNews. “Chick-Fil-A to stop funding groups that oppose gay rights,” read the United Press International headline.

Those are very different headlines than the one the Chick-Fil-A Foundation gave to its own announcement: “Chick-Fil-A Foundation Announces 2020 Priorities to Address Education, Homelessness, Hunger.” Of course, it’s obvious why the headlines were so dramatically different. After all, one of the groups that will no longer be funded by Chick-Fil-A is the Salvation Army. They specialize in ministering to the homeless and the hungry. Clearly, there was more to the announcement than new priorities.

What’s not clear, however, is why the fast food chain made this decision now, after fully weathering the storm they faced over seven years ago, when then CEO Dan Cathy stated his views on traditional marriage. Today, seven years later, having not made any public statements on sex or marriage since, the only real “guilt” critics can point out is who they give money to. Still, their reputation among some is as a hateful, bigoted organization. In fact, a friend who teaches in a comparatively conservative business school on the west coast just told me of a student who called Chick-Fil-A “anti-woman.” I have no idea where that one came from.

In fact, Chick-Fil-A stopped giving to so-called “culture war” organizations a long time ago. Monday’s breathless headlines were referring to groups like the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who are called anti-gay not because they advocate for historic and orthodox Christian views on sex and marriage, but because they merely hold them. And, at least when it comes to the Salvation Army, it depends on what you mean by “hold them.”

Of course, as a private company, Chick-Fil-A can support any organizations it wants. Not every person, much less every company, much less a chicken restaurant has to join a side in these culture wars. Although the left has been incredibly effective at weaponizing companies, from Gillette to Sprite, in order to advance ideological goals, I don’t begrudge any company, even if founded and owned by Christians, for trying to sit out some of these unwinnable battles. Especially, while they still can. Soon, I predict, not actively fighting for progressive causes will earn you all the labels and adjectives Chick-Fil-A is trying to shed.

Still, I find Chick-Fil-A’s decision sad on at least two levels. First, their growth to being the third largest fast food chain on the planet has clearly shown that you don’t have to cave to the pressure in order to survive and grow as a company. In fact, I’ll bet you a #4 meal with 4 chicken strips right now that this decision will be the one that hurts their bottom line. Millions of Americans rallied around the restaurant in 2012 when LGBT advocates called for a boycott, and again in more recent years when cities like San Antonio banned the restaurant from their airports. This decision not only will lose them the support they’ve had, it will embolden the bullies and make it hard for other companies not to likewise cave to the pressure.

Even more sad, however, is that without ever mentioning their names, the Chick-Fil-A Foundation’s decision will only reinforce the slander that the organizations they are no longer giving to are, in fact, anti-LGBT. It will only reinforce that all the good these organizations do is immediately made invalid, if they are Christian groups with historic and biblical Christian convictions. By refusing to offer any clarity on the reasoning behind their decision, Chick-Fil-A allowed the headlines to be re-written in a way that furthers the goals of the LGBT bullies, that ultimately there is only one acceptable position on these controversial issues: full-support and full affirmation.

I found it ironic that, also on Monday, pop superstar Ellie Goulding announced she would not pull out of a half-time performance during a Thanksgiving Day football game to officially launch the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle holiday campaign. Like Chick-Fil-A, she had faced pressure to dissociate from the Salvation Army. Unlike Chick-Fil-A, she decided not to do so.

An oft-repeated claim by skeptics is that geneticists have disproved the possibility of Adam and Eve. Because existing human genetic diversity is so great, there can be no original couple from whom all people are descended. Or, that’s what we’re told.

         Biology professor and author Dennis Venema summarizes this argument up in his book, “Adam and the Genome.” In it, he claims that “every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple.”

         Some Christian authors have reacted to this apparent consensus by proposing new ways of reading Genesis that make Adam and Eve either mythological or not really our first parents. The goal has been to accommodate theology and the Bible to what we’re told is “settled science.”

         But what if the science on Adam and Eve isn’t so settled? That’s the argument of a new paper by Discovery Institute senior fellow and developmental biologist Ann Gauger and Swedish mathematician Ola Hössjer, recently published in the journal, “BIO-Complexity.”

         In order to test whether it really is impossible to account for modern variation in human beings by starting with just two people, these researchers did something that, incredibly, no one had tried before: They started with just two people, and ran the numbers.

         Using accepted population growth and mutation rates, Gauger and Hössjer programmed a computer to start with a genetic Adam and Eve and replicate the known distribution of diversity in today’s human population. Their results, to put it simply, fly in the face of the much-touted consensus.

         According to their model, a couple who shared some genetic markers could generate all the diversity we see today within about 2 million years—which Venema and others claim is impossible.

         However, given two people who share no genetic markers—in other words, two people who weren’t born but were created with four unique sets of chromosomes—that time frame drops to a few hundred thousand, not millions, of years.

         Writing at Evolution News, Gauger points out that further tweaks in the rates of population growth, structure, mortality, birth, and mutation could place that theoretical first couple even more recently in history.

         In any case, the authors are careful to note that the point of their paper was not to date Adam and Eve, or even to prove from a genetic standpoint that they existed. Rather, they just wanted to demonstrate—contrary to the oft-repeated claim—that it is possible for all human beings to have descended from an original pair.

         Of course, much more work remains to be done, but the paper has served to clarify two things.

         First, scientists’ assumptions about the past can change their results. Gauger explains that once hurdles in computing power were overcome, this experiment was an obvious way to test existing dogma on human origins. But in her words, no one bothered because “They believed that starting from two was useless.”

         In fact, many researchers failed to use standard methods for modeling population genetics because of their baked-in evolutionary assumptions. For instance, one popular tool relies on comparisons between human and chimpanzee DNA to track mutations—something Gauger points out is useless if we don’t share a common ancestor with chimps.

         Second, and more importantly, this paper hints at how tentative so-called “settled science” can be. Christians who rush to revise their understanding of characters like Adam and Eve to make way for the latest consensus should think more about the theological consensus they’re tinkering with, like the fall, the image of God, original sin, and creation.

They should also consider all the un-tinkering they may have to do one day when that scientific consensus changes.

The works of Dickens, Shakespeare, Dante, and other giants of Western literature are filled with scriptural references—references the authors knew their audiences would understand. Most of these of course are lost today among modern readers, even modern Christian readers.

How can an alienated culture, and alienated people, re-connect with their common Western and Christian heritage?

Warren Cole Smith caught up with with Anthony Esolen at the recent Touchstone Conference. Esolen is a Christian social commentator and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts.

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris talk about two major developments in Washington: the impeachment hearings and oral arguments before the Supreme Court about the fate of DACA. How are we to understand them from a Christian worldview?

John and Shane also discuss rockets raining down on Israel and the increasingly dangerous situation for protesters in Hong Kong who see their way of life threatened by the totalitarian communist government in Beijing.

They wrap up this episode by talking about the promise of adult stem cell research--and wonder why the government is still funding embryo-destructive stem cell research, when a grand total  of zero cures have resulted from it.

On November 6, 2010, the Hallmark Channel aired a made-for-television movie entitled “A Family Thanksgiving” about an unmarried lawyer and a “genie [who] comes along and changes the whole situation.”  Though I doubt anyone back then thought this would launch a television phenomenon, Hallmark’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” is, for many, an annual tradition. 

Now in its tenth season, the 232-and counting-movies may not be exact clones of a “A Family Thanksgiving,” but they’re pretty close. If you’ve seen one of these movies, you’ve seen them all.  

The sappiness of “Hallmark’s Countdown to Christian” triggers a Pavlovian snark response for many of us. None of these movies are, shall we say, “critically acclaimed.” Still, what these movies lack in Oscar nominations, they make up for in something that those creating and distributing edgier flicks would kill for: millions and millions of viewers.  

A typical “Countdown to Christmas” movie premiere attracts between three and five percent of all viewers during its time slot. In other words, these are the most-viewed non-sports and news shows on cable television.  

In no way am I suggesting that “popular” is the same thing as “good” or even “worth your time,” but it’s clear that “Countdown to Christmas” has struck a nerve with an audience.  

Why? Part of the answer is probably sentimentality, but I think that “Countdown to Christmas” is also tapping into people’s longing. Specifically, the longing for an alternative to modern society and culture.

For example, I wonder if many viewers long for a world in which “boy meets girl” doesn’t have to include “boy and girl have sex.” In stark contrast to what hits the tube and silver screen these days, in Hallmark Channel movies said “boy” and said “girl” often don’t even appear tempted by the idea.  

I also wonder if people today are longing for the sort of world that is the setting for these movies, a place my colleague has dubbed “Hallmark Town.” In “Hallmark Town,” people are friendly, cheerful, and neighborly. Families are close and also prepared to welcome strangers into their homes and lives.  

In “Hallmark Town,” no broke, single mother facing Christmas in a cheap hotel with her kids needs to worry. Some group of people will always be there to make sure she has a job, a home, a tree, and presents for her kids by Christmas, even if it is (spoiler alert) just in the nick of time.  

Given the hyper-individualism, selfishness, loneliness, isolation, and family chaos that characterizes our modern culture, who wouldn’t want to live in “Hallmark Town?”  

Unfortunately, “Hallmark Town” just doesn’t exist.   

The Kingdom of God, however, does exist, having been inaugurated two millennia ago. The church, as Chuck Colson often said, is tasked with making this invisible kingdom visible.

John Stott called the church “God’s New Society” and, when functioning well, it’s far better than “Hallmark Town.” We aren’t motivated by some vague “spirit of Christmas.” The kindness the church can display is a tangible reflection of what St. Paul called the “kindness of God our savior.” This kindness saved us from the sin, malice, envy, and hate that marked our lives.  

Not only did God’s kindness deliver us from our broken and misguided passions and from constantly pursuing but never actually gaining a pleasure that can satisfy our souls, it freed us to live for the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. When Christians do that, it blesses and serves others.

In a world where people seek to escape and take refuge in made-for-television movies, the potential if the church would be the church is amazing. In fact, the gates of hell couldn’t stand against it.

A recent open letter from the Alliance of World Scientists began this way: “We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world…that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.” The letter is filled with urgent language and what the authors consider irrefutable proof that human beings are destroying the planet.

         And, they offer their prescription. In addition to emissions reductions, renewable energy, and carbon taxes, the authors think it’s time to say “no” to children. 

         World population, they write, “must be stabilized—and ideally, gradually reduced...” To this end, they urge governments and international bodies to make “family-planning services”—including abortion—“available to all people...”

         If that sounds like a call for state-run population control, it is. Ironically, the call comes at a time when developed nations are already saying “no” to children at an unprecedented rate, and not for environmental reasons. In fact, an increasing number of demographers are now convinced that we’re on the brink of a global population bust. As we’ve pointed out many times on BreakPoint, a childless society brings devastating economic, social, and spiritual consequences.

         In a survey reported last year in the New York Times, one of the main reasons young respondents give for wanting fewer children (or none at all) was a desire for more leisure time. As one young woman put it, she’d rather be traveling with her fiance, focusing on her job and education, and “playing with her cats,” than having kids.

         Increasingly in a culture habituated toward self-interest and sexual freedom, children are viewed as curses rather than blessings, as obstacles to achieving dreams, finding happiness, and even to keeping the planet cool.

         Against this backdrop, the Christian view of children as gifts from God is as counter-cultural as it gets. Yet counter-cultural is exactly what the Church is called to be right now, especially in how we welcome and talk about the next generation.

         The newest statement from Evangelicals and Catholics Together—an initiative Chuck Colson co-founded with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus years ago—points the way forward. It’s called “The Gift of Children,” and it’s a bold and detailed reminder of how God views little ones. It’s also the kind of statement that’s bound to offend modern sensibilities:

         “As Evangelicals and Catholics,” the statement reads, “we agree that a society in which nearly all fertile women are, in one form or another, rendered infertile by contraceptive technologies...reflects a profoundly disordered view of sex, children, human nature, and environmental responsibility.”

         Increasingly today, couples are forced to justify their desire to have children, but this statement insists that parenthood is “the most natural of things.” It’s also worth sacrifices—even if it means fewer zeros on a paycheck, less square footage in a house, or fewer cars in the garage.

         More fundamentally, the statement proclaims, the birth of a child is “charged with transcendent meaning.” Children are living affirmations that God’s creation is good, and they compel us, like nothing else in life, “to serve a future we cannot control” and to trust that God is not yet finished with this world.

         “The Gift of Children” offers the radically counter-cultural understanding of children that is needed right now. More importantly, it’s a challenge to the church, to conform ourselves to our professed beliefs—to bear witness, through welcoming new life, to the love of the God who gave us life.

I hope you’ll read it in full and share it with your friends, your family, and your pastor, and use it to spark a long overdue discussion.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a.k.a, DACA. 

In 2012, President Obama issued an executive order that allowed “unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, to live and work in the United States” legally. Approximately 700,000 people, dubbed “Dreamers,” are currently covered under DACA.   

In 2017, the Trump administration announced it was ending DACA, giving Congress six months to offer a possible replacement solution. 

We all know what happened next. Nothing.

In recent years, both political parties have shifted talking points on immigration and now effectively hold positions dictated by their most extreme members. Any hope for a legislative solution seems impossible. Rulings by various federal courts against the White House only have entrenched the stalemate. 

What will the Supreme Court decide? Three outcomes seem most likely.

The Court could agree with lower courts that the Administration failed to meet the necessary legal requirements for ending DACA.  That wouldn’t be the same thing as saying the administration can’t end DACA, since it was an executive order and not an act of Congress. This would be more of an immediate decision based on a technicality.  

Or, the Court could rule that the Administration’s decision to end DACA was legal and also legally implemented. If that happens, Dreamers would face deportation as soon as their current authorization expired. 

Or, the Court could issue a more sweeping ruling that President Obama’s initial DACA executive order was illegal. That is the argument being made by the Trump administration and would prevent a future president from reinstating DACA.

Predictions based on oral arguments are notoriously pointless, but it seemed the conservative justices believed the administration had legal discretion to end DACA, while the liberal justices believed the administration had nefarious intent in ending DACA. If those lines hold, we’ll likely see a 5-4 decision in favor of the Trump Administration. I don’t make predictions, but if I were to make a prediction, which I won’t, that would be it.

            The better question is, of course, what should the Supreme Court decide?

Frankly, I don't know. In a perfect world, a decision on this would have been made years ago, one that balanced concerns over immigration numbers, enforcing borders, human dignity, and constitutionality. But the thing we can’t change is that we’re now having this debate in the context of a full-on immigration mess, with the futures of 700,000 human beings on the line, who are largely in this country through no fault of their own.

         Like I said, it never should’ve come to this. But it did—because this is what happens when politics takes over everything.

In an upcoming video in our “What Would You Say” series, we answer the question about whether churches should be engaged in “political issues.”

Our answer is that the question is wrong from the very beginning. Why? Because, in reality, there is no such thing as a political issue.

There are economic issues, environmental issues, criminal justice issues, national security issues, and, yes, immigration issues. But politics is not a category of issues. Politics is a process by which we work through issues in an attempt to order our lives together. What side of the road should we drive on? What’s the definition of marriage? Who should be allowed in the country and who shouldn’t?

But in America almost everything has been reduced down, and is now thought of, as entirely political issues. When that happens, moral decisions become matters of power and influence. In cases like DACA, when what’s at stake are actual people, then both citizens and immigrants alike become dehumanized victims of a process out of its lane.

So, what’s the way forward? I’m not sure there is one, until we first go back and de-politicize most of American life. I know that’s not a satisfying answer, and I wish I had a better one.

Several years ago New York Times columnist Ross Douthat made a splash with his provocative book, “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.” As the title implies, religion isn’t vanishing in America, it’s simply embracing heretical ideas—from the prosperity gospel to sanctifying sexual immorality to political idolatry.

What Douthat wrote back then still applies.  Warren Cole Smith caught up with Douthat at the recent Touchstone conference.

And as we begin the countdown to calendar year end, we'd ask you to consider making a donation to BreakPoint and the Colson Center to help us end the year strong and reach more believers than ever before in 2020 through BreakPoint, the BreakPoint Podcast, and our other Christian worldview programs. Simply go to Colsoncenter.org/November to help. Thank you.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the number of volunteer firefighters across the country has been steadily in decline, with a drop of over 132,000 volunteers in just the last four years. Many volunteer fire departments, especially in rural communities, are struggling to meet the demands of their districts.

Even more alarming, the most drastic demographic decline of volunteers is young people. In fact, over 50 percent of current volunteers across the country are over the age of 40. The widespread decrease in volunteering among young people threatens EMS services, pregnancy resource centers, shelters, and non-profits —from the Red Cross to retirement homes.

In other words, a live and pressing question we face as Americans is this: Will younger citizens be prepared, not to mention willing, to step in and maintain so many of the things we take for granted as Americans who rely on volunteers?

Several federal, state, and local government entities have seen the problem, and are experimenting with programs that will incentivize young people to volunteer—from high school and college credit, to scholarships, to tax rebates. Pennsylvania has even proposed a program to forgive up to $16,000 in student loans for those who volunteer for four years as a first responder.

While these sound like good ideas and we should applaud these innovative efforts, government solutions don’t always work out as advertised, and we can’t fix what are ultimately cultural and spiritual problems through political means.

Culturally speaking, ours is a far more mobile society than previous generations, but volunteerism and community engagement are rooted in a sense of ownership for a community. Simply put, it’s hard to foster ownership of a time and place among those always on the move.

Culturally and spiritually speaking, we are all susceptible in this world to the hyper-individualism that marks our age. All of us, but especially young people, are drawn today toward either the pursuit of social media celebrity-status, or personal happiness as our definition of “the good life.”

 What we get instead, as we’ve said before on Breakpoint, is increasing anxiety, loneliness, and depression, especially among young people. The “Joker” film is just the latest to picture what can happen to those who lose all social ties and abandon any sense of social responsibility.

Not only is the decline of the volunteer ethic physically dangerous to the health of citizens in communities with no EMS providers to answer a call, it’s dangerous to the health of our young people if they don’t hear that they’re needed and that their life matters to their local community—wherever that is. That’s because volunteering protects the health of those providing care, as well as those being cared for. 

Here, of course, is where the church comes in—or should come in. We can create a sense of community and belonging, instilling civic virtue, helping people experience the truth that “no man is an island unto himself,” and that our faith, though personal, is certainly not private.

 Think about it. God has revealed Himself as a community—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Relationship aren’t merely something God does. It’s Who He is. Made in His image, we too are made for community. In other words, there’s simply no loving God without loving our neighbor.

So, here we have this place where a cultural need and a theological truth intersect. How might the church respond? What opportunities can we create, or can we join, that will draw young people into the life of the church for the good of the world?

And who knows, that young person we place at a soup kitchen today might be answering our 9-1-1 call tomorrow.

In November of 1938, Nazi paramilitary forces destroyed 267 synagogues, plus thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, institutions, and homes throughout the Reich. “Kristallnacht,” or “The Night of Broken Glass,” made clear what awaited Jews under Nazi control. 

Even as the Jewish victims of Nazi violence were forced to clean up the broken glass and indemnify their persecutors, the world did nothing. It couldn’t even bring itself to offer refuge to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. 

This inaction gave rise to a phrase now permanently associated with Israel and Jews throughout the world: “Never Again.” History cannot be allowed to repeat itself.  

Well, it is.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Fred Hiatt, who is Jewish, wrote that “In China, every day is Kristallnacht.” The comparison to Nazi Germany is especially powerful when you learn that Hiatt’s grandfather founded an organization to help settle Jewish refugees after World War II. In other words, Hiatt’s comparison is not made lightly. 

In the article, he calls Beijing’s war on its Muslim Uighur population “a cultural genocide with few parallels since World War II.” This “cultural genocide” includes imprisoning one million Uighurs in concentration camps, “where aging imams are shackled, and young men are forced to renounce their faith.” There are also credible reports of beatings, rape, denial of basic medical care, and even organ harvesting. 

Not only is Beijing imprisoning Uighurs, it’s eliminating their history. Between 10 and 15 thousand mosques, shrines, and other religious sites have been destroyed. As Hiatt writes, “Anything that looks too ‘Islamic” is flattened, even a dome on top a department store.

A new report entitled “Demolishing Faith: The Destruction and Desecration of Uighur Mosques and Shrines” provides all the evidence we need.  “Before and after” satellite photographs reveal the extent of the destruction in Western China. We can see with our own eyes where mosques are turned into parking lots and Muslim cemeteries erased.

By reproducing these photos, Hiatt has made it impossible for Beijing to deny what it is actually perpetrating here: cultural genocide.  

Hiatt and the Washington Post have done the world a valuable service. Now we are left with the question: “What have we learned in the past 81 years?” 

For the sake of the Uighurs, not to mention the Chinese Christians whose faith is also being targeted by Xi Jinping and his henchman, I hope we have an adequate answer. 

We often say things like “seeing is believing,” but to paraphrase writer Upton Sinclair, it’s difficult to get someone to look when their getting paid depends on not looking. Too many corporations, governments, and other institutions are refusing to look at China right now.  

The NBA is only the most recent and obvious example, but their response is like a profile in courage compared to the non-response of companies such as Apple, not to mention so many in academia, Hollywood, video game companies, and the government. As Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao puts it, “the West kowtows to China through self-censorship.”  Even more, China is exporting its authoritarianism to other countries. Beijing is not only a threat to its own people anymore.

Christians must do whatever we can to make people look with painful clarity at the persecution of religious minorities in China. We must care, and we must call our leaders to care.  

Business-as-usual with a regime committing cultural genocide is no more acceptable today than it was 81 years ago. There can be no excuse for doing nothing yet again.