Breakpoint

More American corporations, including a few having to do with sports, have joined a growing list of American companies who seem committed to appeasing the People’s Republic of China.

Late last week, in response to the blow-up between the NBA and China (more about that in a moment), the sports publication Deadspin reported on a leaked internal ESPN memo. In it, the Disney-owned sports network mandated that its reporters avoid any discussion of tensions surrounding the NBA, China, and Hong Kong, and instead focus on “related basketball issues.” 

In other words, a network that goes out of its way every year to celebrate gay pride month has forbidden commentators from even talking about actual human-rights abuses.

That news came as Blizzard, an e-gaming company behind the uber-popular video game World of Warcraft, suspended a professional gamer from its international tournament and docked his prize money after he shouted, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!” in a post-match interview. The gamer, Ng Wai Chung is a native of Hong Kong, but his actions, according to the company, violated the rule against gamers bringing Blizzard into disrepute.”

I’m glad that more than a few public figures and politicians were willing to call out these companies for their cowardice, including Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. In response to the outrage, the president of Blizzard announced over the weekend that the company has now “had a chance to pause, to listen to our community, and to reflect on what we could have done better."  That means Blizzard reduced Ng’s suspension and returned his winnings.

I don’t think we’ll see that sort of course-reversal from the National Basketball Association anytime soon. To recap the story, when the general manager of the Houston Rockets expressed his support for Hong Kong in a tweet, China went nuts, banning the NBA from state TV and ditching NBA-related sponsorships.

Facing the loss of a billion or so dollars, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed regret that Daryl Morey’s tweet offended the league’s “friends and fans in China,” while—but might I say, barely—acknowledging Morey’s right to free expression. Players then tripped all over themselves to talk about “how complicated” the situation was, even while lavishing praise on China and their fans.

Even worse, the league’s attempt to eliminate any non-approved opinions has now even moved into the stands. Fans in Washington D.C. had their pro-Hong Kong signs confiscated, while fans with similar signs at, get this, a Philadelphia 76’er game, were kicked out. In case it’s not obvious, their mascot name refers to 1776. Not 1876 or 1976.

The leagues actions, and especially their unwillingness to make any kind of a moral stand here, are in stark contrast to their convicting moral clarity back in 2016, when the NBA threatened to boycott the state of North Carolina and even canceled an all-star game over the so-called “bathroom bill.”

In other words, the #NBA will boycott North Carolina over bathrooms but will morally hem and haw and say “it’s complicated” when it comes to China’s practices of harvesting organs, imprisoning and otherwise persecuting religious minority groups, and forcing abortions on women?

Cowardice.

In direct contrast, the City of Prague suspended its sister city relationship with Beijing, risking Chinese investment in the Czech Republic. The mayor’s political party explained why on Facebook: “We are a country of free people …We refuse to bow to such an authoritarian regime that is responsible for ‘re-education’ camps.”

Why is it that these professional sports associations, broadcasting networks, and so many other companies often line up with communist China in their virtue signaling? It’s because, like China, they see human beings as expendable compared to their real priorities: for China, it’s the Party; for these companies, it’s profit. Both are willing to sacrifice humans on the altars of their false gods.

A recent article at WORLD Magazine reported how the Chinese-language app called “WeDevote” recently surpassed 10 million downloads. 

That number, as well as the overall success of WeDevote, is even more remarkable given the back story, one that illustrates Beijing’s ongoing war on the Bible.  

“WeDevote” is a Bible-reading and devotional app known for its “aesthetically-pleasing” design and respect for copyright laws, a rarity in China. The month after its launch, China’s biggest app store listed WeDevote as a “Recommended App” right on its homepage. 

The Communist Party’s crackdown on Christianity in recent years meant that both the app and its developers faced increasing government scrutiny.  Eventually, they were given a choice: shut down the app or face jail time.  

Well, a third option, transferring ownership of the app to a Hong Kong-based company, provided a temporary respite from the ultimatum, but the government has now banned “WeDevote” from Chinese app stores. Though the developers are actively seeking some kind of work-around, it’s a struggle to get the app in the hands of users on the mainland. 

The government’s shut down of “WeDevote” is part of a disturbing trend. Last year, China banned online Bible sales. Of course, that doesn’t mean Bibles are unavailable in China. Chinese publishers continue to print Chinese-language Bibles. Some are exported, of course, but plenty remain in China.  

That’s good news. The bad news is that soon, at least spiritually speaking, Chinese-language copies of the Bible may not be worth the paper they’re printed on. According to the Guardian, the Communist Party has plans “for ‘retranslating and annotating’ the Bible,” in order to “establish a ‘correct understanding’ of the text.” 

Is there any doubt this “correct understanding” will include reinforcing the primacy of the Communist Party? As one pastor told the Guardian, “The Chinese Communist party . . . wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God.” The reality on the ground is that “The government is scared of the churches,” and is cracking down on them. 

Any attempt to control and re-write the Bible is a tacit admission by the Communist Party that it’s failing to eradicate Christianity. It’s way too late for that, of course. Depending on who you ask, there are between 60 and 100-plus million Christians in China.  

Since they cannot eliminate Christianity, the Party’s goal is to pervert it, creating a version of Christianity that doesn’t threaten the Party’s claim of ultimate authority.  

This demand for sole allegiance not only targets Christians, but other religious minority groups, like the Muslim Uighurs. Anyone who believes that “only God is God” is a threat to the Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping.  

Such repression also reflects that the Party is concerned about its rule. As many experts have pointed out, China’s stability rests on an implicit bargain: The Party promises economic growth and broad-based prosperity in exchange for the Chinese people giving up the kinds of political freedoms taken for granted in the West.  

With the Chinese economy slowing down, the demographic legacy of China’s “one-child” policy, the pervasive corruption and the ever-widening chasm between urban “haves” and rural “have nots,” it’s not clear the Party will be able to hold up its end of the bargain.  More and more the Party is looking like yet another would-be “god” that has failed its worshippers. We know, given China’s tumultuous history, the sort of bloodshed and chaos that comes from disappointed worshipers there. We also know, given the inherently religious nature of human beings, that such dissatisfaction will only catalyze the growth of the Church and the spread of the Gospel.

That means we should pray that God’s Word will prosper in China . . . and that God will protect all those who preach it.

Tim Goeglein is the guest on today’s BreakPoint podcast. Tim Goeglein is Vice- President for External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family. But this job, which he’s had for a decade, is just his latest in what has been 30-year career in Washington, including eight years working in the West Wing for President George W. Bush.

Tim Goeglein says his time in Washington hasn’t made him cynical. In fact, as you’ll hear, it’s made him hopeful. But it’s a hope underpinned by the hope of the Gospel, and a belief that Christians can and will engage the current culture and not flee from it.

These are ideas he explains in his new book “American Restoration:  How Faith, Family, and Personal Sacrifice Can Heal Our Nation.” It’s a book he co-wrote with Craig Osten.

The Colson Center’s Warren Cole Smith had this conversation with Tim Goeglein at Tim’s office on Capitol Hill, within site of the Supreme Court Building and the United States Capitol.

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith are together at the Touchstone magazine conference: "Fight or Flight: The Benedict & Other Options for Facing the World, the Flesh & the Devil." If we truly believe, along with theologian Abraham Kuyper, that every square inch of creation belongs to Christ, then how do we live faithfully in a culture that is growing increasingly hostile to Christianity?

John and Warren also discuss the consequences of the sudden U. S. withdrawal from Syria, the NBA's cowardly response to Communist China going nuts over a tweet supporting Hong Kong, and Ellen DeGeneres's response to folks angry at her because she's friends with George W. Bush.

Resources

The U. S. Withdrawal from Syria

John Stonestreet and Mindy Belz, The BreakPoint Podcast,October 9, 2011

Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction

Richard Mouw, Eerdman's, 2011

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretic

Ross Douthat, Free Press, 2013

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation

Rod Dreher, Sentinel, 2018

Batman’s arch-nemesis is back on the silver screen in full face paint and purple suit, along with the uncomfortable questions his character raises about the state of our culture.          Joaquin Phoenix is the new “Joker,” this time in an origin story about the comic book villain who, until now, didn’t have one. The trailers for this movie make it look more like an art-house film than a superhero movie. While Marvel movies like to pack on the laughs, this one is too deadly serious to put a smile on anyone’s face.

         The film’s spotlight is fully on the Joker, who at last has a name: Arthur Fleck—a failed comedian who loses his mind and leads a murderous October Revolution-style uprising in Gotham City.

         This iteration is, of course, being compared with Heath Ledgers’ chilling performance from “The Dark Knight” (2008). Certainly, the nihilistic angle of Ledger’s Joker was more than a few steps further down into depravity than Jack Nicholson’s portrayal in the first Batman film. And, when Ledger died of a drug overdose before the film’s release, many speculated the character had consumed him.

         Adding to this twisted plot is that the perpetrator of the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, with his dyed, clownish hair and deranged expression, targeted the opening weekend of the 2012 sequel to “The Dark Knight.”

         No wonder authorities were on alert last weekend as the new “Joker” movie opened. Both the FBI and LAPD issued warnings about potential online threats, and police forces around the country beefed up security around theaters. Warner Brothers even reminded audiences that their movie isn’t an endorsement of mass-violence, and that the Joker is not a hero to be emulated.

         Thank God, the opening weekend was uneventful. But the very fact that we breathed this collective sigh of relief over a movie shows what a meme of mass-violence the Joker has become.

         This criminally psychotic clown has taken on a life of his own, and ever-darker depictions on-screen have reinforced it. Movie by movie, the villain we’re supposed to hate and fear seems to be edging out Gotham’s Dark Knight on center stage, spreading fear of senseless killing in the real world—a world where, tragically, such crimes are already far too common.

         The very existence of a Joker origin film reminds me of something C. S. Lewis wrote in the opening of “The Screwtape Letters”: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils,” he explains. “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

         Writing at Christ and Pop Culture, K. B. Hoyle argues our kind of interest in the Joker is that kind of unhealthy. She compares our culture’s growing fascination with bad guys to the sympathy some feel for John Milton’s tragic Satan in “Paradise Lost.”      

         But this trend is much more recent. In his book, “Shows About Nothing,” Thomas Hibbs identifies the rise of what he calls “demonic anti-heroes.” These characters—whether we’re talking about Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, or Angelina Jolie as Maleficent—invite us to do more than pity evil. They invite us to root for or even identify with it. And it’s not just the supernatural evil heroes stealing our cultural support, as Ocean’s Eleven and all of its derivatives amply demonstrate.

Of course, such movies get made because they sell. “Joker” has already broken box office records for October. Having not seen it yet, I can’t say what its real moral message is.

         But I have seen “The Dark Knight” and, despite Heath Ledger’s incredible performance, his Joker—like Milton’s Satan—is not the intended hero. The fact that so many received the character as a hero says a lot about our culture. It betrays a culture-wide fascination with evil we now bring to the theater.

         It’s a fascination that’s long since crossed over into what Lewis called “unhealthy and excessive,” and the real-world consequences of our collective inability to tell good guys from bad guys are no joke.

At the heart of a pending, and one of the most significant, Supreme Court decisions since Obergefell v. Hodges is whether or not the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

On Tuesday, the Supremes heard oral arguments in two cases where plaintiffs claim they were fired because they were gay, and in a third case involving the termination of a biological man who identifies as a woman. They believe, and their attorneys argued, that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, should protect them as well.

They face two significant hurdles. First, sexual orientation and gender identity are not included in the Title VII list of protected classes. Second, Congress has had fifty-five years to amend Title VII to include sexual orientation and gender. But it hasn’t.

Neither of these facts were disputed on Tuesday. In fact, the first question asked—by Ruth Bader Ginsburg no less—was how the plaintiffs “would answer the argument that back in 1964, this could not have been in Congress's mind because in many states male same-sex relations was a criminal offense; the American Psychiatric Association labeled homosexuality mental illness?”

The plantiff’s answer was pretty straightforward. The Supreme Court back 1989 ruled that Title VII prohibited discrimination “against a woman who cursed like a sailor, walked like a man, and didn't wear makeup.” In other words, treating someone differently because they don’t conform to gender stereotypes is discrimination based on sex and violates Title VII. 

And, according to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, same-sex attraction and transgenderism are “the ultimate case of failure to conform” to gender stereotypes. 

Justice Elena Kagan proposed that the test should be whether a person would have been treated differently if they were a different sex. For example, a woman fired because she dates women would not be fired if she was a man who dates women.   

Like Kagan, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch asked whether a meaningful distinction could be made between sex and sexual orientation. “In what linguistic formulation,” he asked, “would one say that sex, biological gender, has nothing to do with what happened in this case?” What’s not clear is whether this question was from a position of skepticism, or was an attempt to allow the defense to make the key point that needs to be made.

Gorsuch also seemed concerned about “the massive social upheaval that would be entailed” if the Court read gender identity into Title VII, for example, “something as drastic a change in this country as bathrooms in every place of employment and dress codes in every place of employment that are otherwise gender-neutral.” 

Another source of mild concern for me was the ease with which the Court adopted the linguistic conventions of transgenderism. Justices were careful to say “they” instead of “he” or “she.” That may be an overreaction to what was said, but language matters, especially when it comes to how ideas are embedded into culture.

Though ADF attorney John Bursch was terrific, as expected, I’d be lying if I denied that my “spidey-sense” is tingling on this one.

If the Supreme Court decides that the meaning of the word “sex” in the Civil Rights Acts should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity, denying biological reality and embracing the linguistic rethinking so popular today, it’s a big deal. Not only will the pressure on Christian institutions, hospitals, non-profits, schools, and colleges increase exponentially, there will be social upheaval indeed.

Predicting Supreme Court decisions is about as accurate as predicting Colorado weather. So, what should our response to this be? First (and I’m saying this first and foremost to myself), let’s take a deep breath and pray. And let’s keep praying: early, late, and often.  Second, every one of us needs to learn to make the case for the biological basis of sex, and why men and women are both unique and necessary for the culture to function well.

On Sunday, President Trump announced that some 1,000 U. S. troops would be withdrawn from Kurdish-controlled regions of Syria.

         Lawmakers, policy experts, and the media—liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican—immediately reacted, condemning the announcement as unwise. While the President sees the move as fulfilling a campaign promise of getting us out of what he called “ridiculous, endless wars,” most others see it as a cruel and dangerous betrayal of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and their Christian and Yazidis allies.

The Kurds will now have to defend themselves against NATO-member Turkey, which views them as terrorists and wants them out of Syria. In fact, the President announced that Turkish forces would be “moving forward” into the region.

         So, who exactly are the Kurds? They are a minority ethnic and mostly Islamic group in portions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They have been loyal and effective allies to the U. S. in the fight against ISIS. The areas they control in Syria have become last-resort havens for persecuted Yazidis and Christians.  

         With U. S. troops out of northeastern Syria, the Kurds—and the Yazidis and Christians they protect—will be fully exposed, and therefore in grave peril. They will be forced to turn their attention and their fighters away from ISIS to confront the existential threat from Turkey. The resulting vacuum could lead to a resurgent and emboldened ISIS, much as President Obama’s unwise and impulsive withdraw from Iraq led to a re-organizing of our enemies there.  

And there’s an additional problem: The Kurds currently hold thousands of ISIS prisoners. The Administration assumes that Turkey will take control of them, but it’s far from certain if and how that would happen if Turkey launches an all-out assault on the Kurds.

         Some 11,000 Kurds have given their lives in the fight against ISIS already. They need and deserve U. S. support. To withdraw that support now sends a message around the world about the U.S.’s reliability as an ally.

         The President has responded to criticism of the withdrawal by tweeting he would “totally destroy and obliterate the Turkish economy” if it does something the President considers off-limits. As Mindy Belz pointed out on the BreakPoint podcast today, his threat points to the success U.S. sanctions had on Turkey in securing the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson last year. It’s not clear such sanctions would be as successful today. For their part, Turkey has rebuffed the President’s threat and is prepared to strike the Kurds.

For all the reasons Evangelicals have had to applaud the Trump Administration over the past two years, from nominating conservative federal judges and Supreme Court justices to defending religious liberty to protecting the unborn, I have to say this decision is not one of them.

Evangelical Christians, who are key to the President’s reelection prospects, must make it clear that we expect the Administration to do all it can to protect persecuted Christians wherever it can. The largest towns in the region, Qamishli and Hasakha, are mainly Christian.

 Working in conjunction with Kurdish forces while protecting the world’s most ancient Christian communities is something the U. S. must continue to do. Pulling U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria puts the lives our brothers and sisters in Christ at risk, not only at the hands of a potentially resurgent ISIS but also at the hands of our ostensible ally in Turkey.

Christians must let the Administration know. Come to BreakPoint.org. We tell you how you can contact the White House, Secretary of State Pompeo’s office, as well as your representative and senators in Congress.

And today, on the BreakPoint podcast, Mindy Belz of WORLD Magazine fills out the complete picture about the region and why the President’s announcement stunned so many. Again, come to BreakPoint.org or download the Breakpoint Podcast to listen to this important interview with Mindy Belz.

And please, pray for our brothers and sisters in Syria and throughout the Middle East.

Today on the BreakPoint podcast, John Stonestreet interviews WORLD Magazine’s Mindy Belz about President Trump’s alarming announcement that he is pulling U. S. troops out of northern Syria—one that clears the way for a Turkish invasion of Syria and imperils  our Kurdish allies and Syria’s remaining Christian population.

Mindy Belz is a senior editor at WORLD Magazine and author of They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

Wise parents try to keep their kids from being influenced by the lies in our culture. That often means not taking them to certain movies, not letting them watch certain shows, play certain games, or listen to certain music. And we have to keep an eye on their friends too. It can be exhausting.

         Still, there comes a point—and we are here—when the world around us is so saturated with false messages that ignoring them and hoping they will go away is not only impossible. It’s perilous.

         A number of recent stories drives this point home. This week reports surfaced that Disney plans to out the lead character in its enormously popular “Frozen” movies as lesbian. Now, I’m not the kind of guy who spends time browsing Disney princess rumor websites, but if it does happen—and let’s get real, something like this is inevitable—anyone with a daughter knows it’ll be impossible to keep her from finding out. She’s going to hear about it, even if you never let her see the movie.

What’s the dangerous thing to do? Ignore it and hope she doesn’t notice.

         Here’s another thing many hope to ignore: the redefinition of words. Last month, America’s oldest dictionary announced it’s now acceptable English to use the plural pronoun “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun: as in, “Bill told me they doesn’t identify as male or female.” If you think changes to language aren’t that big of a deal, you may need to re-read “1984.”

         Last but not least, Barbie-maker Mattel has introduced a new line of gender-neutral dolls, complete with androgynous bodies and faces plus mix-and-match hair and clothes. Oh, for the days when the only kid swapping toy parts was Sid from “Toy Story.”

         As one senior vice-president explained, this new doll line is “designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in,” because apparently, “kids don’t want their toys dictated by gender norms.”

         I’ve got to wonder who did Mattel’s market research. As I predicted last weekend on our BreakPoint this Week podcast, anyone with sons knows just how quickly these non-gendered toys will be gendered. The boys will send them into combat against supervillains or space aliens, and the girls will turn them into families. One of my colleagues recently wrote a column describing how his daughter tucks her brother’s toy trucks into bed. Children have to be talked out of what they innately know about gender identity.

And make no mistake, the companies behind these toys, dictionaries, and movies are doing an awful lot of talking. Perhaps a better way to describe it as catechesis. The constant repetition of lies—through everyday cultural artifacts such as movies, language, and even toys—has now reached a religious pitch.

         We may hope our kids won’t notice that Elsa has a girlfriend, or that Barbie isn’t gendered, or that pronouns are being used in bizarre new ways, but that’s the problem. If they don’t notice, it may be because these wrong ideas seem quite normal to them.

         You see, culture is most powerful not where it’s loud and in-your-face, but where it’s quiet and assuming. We’ve experienced these shifts in culture. Our kids haven’t. So, the abnormal becomes normal without any arguments even being made. We might find that, before we even taken the time to point out the lies to our kids and counter them, they’ve already accepted them as normal.

         The right response to the cultural catechism all around us is a catechism of our own. As an Anglican, I mean that literally. Teach them the truths of the faith—including God’s design of male and female—with the same dedication and the same persistence (and hopefully before) the culture does in teaching lies.

         Instead of ignoring the stuff in movies, commercials, television, and music, and hoping it goes over their heads, take the time to point it out and discuss it with your son or daughter in an age-appropriate way. Help them to understand they’re being sold more than toys and entertainment. They’re being sold a false worldview.

And the best defense against a false worldview is to notice it, and to expose it for what it is.

Back in February, federal judge Stephanie M. Rose ruled that the university could not strip recognition from Business Leaders in Christ for requiring leaders to follow traditional Christian teaching on sexual morality.

Rose, an appointee of President Obama, didn’t find a problem with the university’s “Human Rights Policy,” which the university claimed the Christian group violated. But she did think it a problem that the university applied the policy inconsistently, in a way that violated students’ free-speech rights.  

Did the University of Iowa learn their lesson? Ummm… no. Last week, university officials found themselves back in Rose’s courtroom. Despite the very clear ruling from February, university officials de-registered InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in June, for the same reason.  

I’m not sure what the university expected, but Judge Rose had not changed her opinion about what the Constitution requires in the last seven months.

In fact, this time she let them have it. Since the February ruling, she wrote in her opinion, university officials “proceeded to broaden enforcement of the Human Rights Policy in the name of uniformity applying extra scrutiny to religious groups in the process -- while at the same time continuing to allow some groups to operate in violation of the policy and formalizing an exemption for fraternities and sororities. The court does not know how a reasonable person could have concluded this was acceptable.” 

Back in her February ruling, Rose pointed out how “the Chinese Students and Scholars Association limits membership to Chinese students, and the Iowa Hawkapellas, an a capella group, only accepts women.” Yet neither of these groups were de-recognized for violating the Human Rights Policy.  

Nor were fraternities and sororities or LGBTQ student groups required to open their leadership policies. Just about the only groups the policy applied to, according to university officials, were Christian groups that uphold traditional Christian teaching about sexuality. 

Rose made her opinion about that quite clear: “The Constitution does not tolerate the way defendants chose to enforce the human rights policy.”  She correctly identified the double standard clearly at work, which can be summed up as “some freedom of speech and association is freer than others.”  

Frustrated with their stubbornness and determined to not have them re-visit her court for the same reason, Rose decided to hit officials where it really hurts: their wallets.  

In her February ruling, Rose said that university officials were not personally liable for any potential damages awarded to the group Business Leaders in Christ. But, but that will not be true regarding any damages awarded to InterVarsity, since officials ignored her February ruling.  

Becket’s Daniel Blomberg, who represented InterVarsity, said it was "too bad it took twice for the university to learn its lesson.” He added that “University officials nationwide should now take note that religious discrimination will hit them in the pocketbook." 

Even if InterVarsity never collects a nickel from these hostile university officials, the ruling is still a big win for religious freedom on college campuses. And it’s another chapter in what’s becoming quite a long story of why believers ought to actively defend their religious freedom. InterVarsity’s win is a win for every campus group in America.

To ensure religious freedom has a future, more will be forced to take action like InterVarsity did. And, we’ll all have to learn to make the case for religious freedom and why it matters.

This month the Colson Center is offering an outstanding new book by Becket attorney Luke Goodrich entitled, “Free to Believe.” It lays out exactly what we all can say and do to make sure our religious freedoms have a future. Come to BreakPoint.org/book to get your copy of Free to Believe. That’s BreakPoint.org/book.