Breakpoint

Mary Eberstadt is one of America’s foremost public intellectuals.  She is a  senior research fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute.  But that just begins to touch the surface of her accomplishments. She is the author of an important new book, “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. Mary Eberstadt recently spoke with The Colson Center’s John Stonestreet about the book and about identity politics, the sexual revolution, as well as  religious liberty

Mary Eberstadt recently spoke with The Colson Center’s John Stonestreet about religious liberty, its importance, its challenges, and what we can do to preserve it.

 

Resources

Get your copy of "Free to Believe" with your next gift to BreakPoint and the Colson Center

Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics

Mary Eberstadt, Templeton Press, 2019

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris marvel at the only thing that could grab more attention than the impeachment inquiry, even if only for a day: The dramatic courtroom scene of Brandt Jean forgiving and embracing the killer of his brother and urging her to give her life to Christ. We have the video for you here.

Also on today's episode: The protesters in Hong Kong want to preserve their freedoms, but how long before Beijing cracks down--and will the U. S. accept refugees from Hong Kong? More grisly news about the deceased abortionist who collected thousands of corpses from aborted babies, and no, pro-choicers, focusing on this episode is not "nut picking." It goes to the heart of the abortion culture; and finally, major religious freedom victories to talk about.

 

Resources

Brandt Jean forgives Amber Guyton, video

Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious Liberty in America

Luke Goodrich, Multnomah, 2019

In Psalm 60, the Psalmist describes the totality of God’s victory over Israel’s foes, proclaiming “Moab is my wash basin; upon Edom I cast my sandal.” 

This is only one of more than 100 mentions of Edom in the Old Testament. The Edomites were descendants from Esau, Jacob’s older brother. The Genesis account of the troubled twins describes Esau as red all over when he was born. Esau, you might remember, sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red stew. Edom means “red” in Hebrew; thus, Esau’s descendants came to be known as Edomites.

Over the years, many scholars doubted the Edomites even existed, at least as described in those biblical accounts. Specifically, they regarded the depiction in the Pentateuch of the Edomite to be largely mythical. The real Edomite kingdom, they believed, emerged three or more centuries later, during the latter part of Israel’s divided monarchy, and was “read back” into the story of the Exodus.  

Well, these scholars were mistaken. Recently, a team excavating in Israel’s Timna Valley found evidence of a “thriving and wealthy society” dating back to the 12th century before Christ. What kind of evidence? An extensive network of ancient copper-smelting facilities were found in the parts of Israel and Jordan that the Bible associates with Edom. 

As team leader Ezra ben-Yosef told the Jerusalem Post, “copper-smelting was essentially the hi-tech of ancient times.” Given how complex the process is, any society responsible for such facilities would likely be technologically sophisticated and politically well-organized.  

According to Ben-Yosef, “(these) new findings contradict the view of many archeologists that [the region associated with biblical Edom] was populated by a loose alliance of tribes.” Instead, “they’re consistent with the biblical story that there was an Edomite kingdom here.” 

Hmmm… there it is again: “consistent with the biblical story.” That phrase seems to pop up a lot in the world of ancient archeology these days. For example, the excavations at Ashkelon that confirm the biblical account of the Philistines; findings on Mount Zion confirming the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem—not just that it happened, but also when it happened; and on and on.

You’d think the sheer number of findings in recent decades that are “consistent with the biblical story” would soften the systemic scholarly skepticism toward Bible. It should, but it hasn’t.

One reason some scholars remain stubbornly skeptical is that most archeologists and social scientists see Judaism and Christianity in the same way they see every other religion, an approach that obscures important distinctions.

Unlike other religions, historical detail is central, even crucial, to biblical faith. The biblical story reports on events that took place in actual human history. Unlike other religions, the protagonist of the biblical story is a God that has acted in the human arena, not in a mythical past or in another universe, but in the same setting as you, I, and everyone else who has ever lived, live. 

Since historical memory, and the actual acts of God within human history, is so central to biblical faith, we ought not be surprised when we find evidence of His activity in the ground.

At the same time, we should be ready to communicate the connections between history and faith when appropriate and when asked. It’s a wonderful way to communicate to our skeptical friends, family members, and co-workers what we believe and why we believe it.  

And to help you answer the tough questions you face, not only about Christianity and history but about all kinds of issues, the Colson Center has launched a new resource called “What Would You Say?” Each week, a new video tackles a tough question, offering clear, useable answers that you can pass on by sharing or by conversation. Check it out, and subscribe, at WhatWouldYouSay.org. That’s WhatWouldYouSay.org.

 

Last week, before news of an impeachment inquiry stole the headlines, sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg grabbed top billing with her “How dare you?” climate change speech at the United Nations. In fact, even before Thunberg had been declared as the voice of a generation, the ultra-liberal Church of Sweden tweeted that Jesus had appointed her as one of His successors.

         While I, as I’ve discussed a few times recently, don’t share her climate alarmism, the international beatification of Thunberg mirrors something we saw in the wake of the Parkland shooting a few years ago: Elevating teenage spokespersons for political causes. In at least the cases of Thunberg and the Parkland victims, their activism jettisoned reasoned discourse for melodramatics, complete with screaming and swearing and absent anything that could be considered “respecting your elders.”

         And as a Babylon Bee headline parodied, challenging these elevated spokespersons is just not allowed: “I Will Stop at Nothing To Take Away Your Constitutional Rights—Whoa Bro, Why Are You Attacking Me, I’m Just A Kid!”

         The increasing trend to block debate with angry teenage shields is the next step in a culture captivated by what I call the cult of adolescence. Adolescence, as Brett Kunkle and I have written about in our book "A Practical Guide to Culture," is a recent innovation in western society. In most cultures throughout the history of the world, kids went from being kids to being adults. Today, they become adolescents. It’s so normal, we actually expect kids to lose their minds during their teenage years.

But along the way, two things happened.  First, people began to enter adolescence earlier and earlier, and are leaving it later and later. Adolescence has expanded dramatically. In fact, many experts today identify adolescence as the stage of life between ages 11 and 30!

Second, adolescence has moved from being a stage of life to being the goal of life. Long gone are the days when grown men and women wished to appear older and wiser. We are now a culture that wants to stay young and free forever, one that sees the “good life” as the ability to be adolescent as long as possible.

         What does this have to do with Greta Thunberg and the students from Parkland? Well, for many people in a culture like ours, chronology equals correctness. Beliefs and opinions of kids matter more than adults, not because they are informed or accurate, but simply because they’re younger.

         In a culture captivated by a cult of adolescence, we should do what teenagers like Thunberg and the Parkland activists say (and dismiss their tendency toward hysterics and hyperbole) despite the lack of good arguments and evidence, as if youth confers a kind of sainthood and argument immunity. In fact, all across our culture, on both the right and the left, we've allowed our most important conversations and debates to become adolescent-like, in which emotion always trumps facts.

         Some conservatives have reacted by telling Greta and other teenage activists to sit down and shut up. One popular podcaster told his audience he has no interest in the political opinions of 16-year-olds, because they couldn’t possibly know anything of value.

         This is equally misguided. The core problem with the cult of adolescence is that we penalize young image-bearers with low expectations. We do this when we elevate teen spokespersons without requiring them to know what they are talking about. We also do this when we say teenagers can’t know what they are talking about.

Both approaches mistakenly assume that this mythological period of life called “adolescence” actually exists— a time when young people can’t be expected to act like grown-ups.

         In our book, “A Practical Guide to Culture,” Brett Kunkle and I debunk the myth of adolescence. Young adults should champion big ideas and important causes, and in the process, they should expect to encounter and be ready to answer opposing arguments—something they’re also fully capable of doing.

One of the best things we can do for young adults is respect them enough to expect more of them—and, of ourselves.

There are reasons that religious freedom is the called the “first freedom.” Of course, it’s the listed first in the Bill of Rights, but more importantly, it is a freedom on which all other freedoms depend.  Chuck Colson once said it this way: “Our founding fathers . . . believed, as I do, that without freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, all of our other freedoms aren’t worth the paper they are written on. If government can dictate what we may or may not believe, or how we may or may not live out our beliefs, then we are no longer a free people.”

         If that’s true—which it is—then we can rightly say that American freedoms are less secure today than they were a decade ago. And, without the courage of people like Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Green Family of Hobby Lobby, among others, we’d be in an even more fragile state.

         These folks believed that religious freedom was worth standing for, and that their most precious and most deeply held beliefs did not belong to the government. They placed their businesses, livelihoods, and in some cases, personal safety, at stake to defend that freedom, enlisting the wise legal counsel of organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and Becket.

         But even this impressive string of important, crucial legal wins in court are insufficient to sustain religious freedom, if we do not rebuild a cultural consensus of what religious freedom actually is and why it matters.

         The fact is, a growing number of Americans see religious freedom as a self-serving relic of America’s past, that only offers contemporary believers a license to discriminate against others. As America has become more and more secular, and religious beliefs seen more and more as matters of private preference, the very idea that we ought to have the freedom to order not only our personal moral choices but our public lives around our deeply held beliefs seems strange. When those beliefs collide with the values ushered in by the sexual revolution, they seem intolerant, bigoted, and even evil.

         The days when religious freedom is considered as American as baseball and apple pie are over. And though strong wins in the courts and a dramatically improved judiciary have helped slow the speed at which religious freedom is being lost, there’s not a future for religious freedom until we are able to convince people of the intrinsic good it brings, and has brought, to the world.

Thankfully, Luke Goodrich, a member of the Becket legal team that has won four Supreme Court cases just in recent years, has made a marvelous contribution to the task ahead of us in his new book, Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious Liberty in America.

         Goodrich was there when the Supremes ruled in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, which protected nuns from being forced to violate their faith; he was there for Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Products, which protected family business owners from being forced to violate their faith; and he was there for Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, which protected the right of churches to select their ministers.

         Goodrich not only provides a clear picture of the state of religious freedom in America, he offers clear steps for what we need to do to better explain it and defend it.

A recent Barna poll revealed that about 55 percent of Americans strongly agree that “True religious freedom means that all citizens must have freedom of conscience, which means being able to believe and practice the core commitments and values of your faith.” Just five years ago, the percentage was 69 percent.  Even Protestant clergy are significantly less concerned today about religious freedom.

         To me, this means one thing: We’ve got lots of work to do.

We’ll be hosting a free webinar with Luke Goodrich to talk about his book. Just come to BreakPoint.org to register. It takes place Friday, October 4 at noon Eastern. If you can’t make it to the live session, we’ll send you a link to the recording.

And, we will gladly send you a copy of Goodrich’s “Free to Believe” for your donation of any amount to BreakPoint and the Colson Center this month. Just come to breakpoint.org/book.  

 

This Monday, Oct. 7, the Supreme Court will begin its annual session.  The Supreme Court’s decisions are always important, but this year promises to be particularly interesting if you care about life, marriage, religious liberty, and related issues.

That’s why we wanted to bring Elizabeth Slattery to the BreakPoint podcast to give us a preview of the upcoming session.

Elizabeth Slattery is a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.  In that role, she analyzes cases before the Supreme Court.  She also studies judicial nominations and the proper role of the courts.

Her work includes testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives.  And her commentaries have appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, National Review, and U.S. News & World Report.

She also hosts SCOTUS101, a podcast breaking down what’s happening at the Supreme Court.

Elizabeth Slattery gives us a preview of the upcoming Supreme Court session in this conversation with the President of The Colson Center, John Stonestreet.

 

Resources

Overview of the Supreme Court’s 2019–2020 Term

Elizabeth Slattery, The Heritage Foundation, September 24, 2019

 

Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious Liberty in America

Luke Goodrich, Multnomah, 2019

If someone described a preacher’s style to you as “robotic,” you probably wouldn’t consider it a compliment.  For worshipers at one Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, however, robotic qualities are not a bug of their new clergy, they’re a feature. 

The new “priest,” named Mandar, is an actual robot. For now, its clerical repertoire is limited to delivering the same sermon repeatedly. But its creators hope to use artificial intelligence to enable it to perform other duties, such as counseling. 

It is tempting to dismiss the idea of robotic clergy as a publicity stunt or an example of Japan’s cultural eccentricity, but as an article in Vox suggests, “some cultures are more open to religious robots than others.” The article cites specific examples from Asian cultures deeply influenced by Buddhism. The differences between eastern religions like Buddhism and biblical religions, especially how they understand God and His relationship to humanity, are significant.

As the temple’s steward told Vox, “Buddhism isn’t a belief in a God; it’s pursuing Buddha’s path. It doesn’t matter whether it’s represented by a machine, a piece of scrap metal, or a tree.”  In Buddhism, chanting sacred mantras are not prayers to a personal deity. Instead, they are recited for psychological or spiritual benefit.  

This is not the case for biblical religion. At the heart of Christianity is belief in a personal God, one with a will and a plan, who has gone to incredible lengths to make Himself known to His creation. Christianity, at heart, is not a moral path. It’s a personal revelation of who God is and what He wants from us.

Vox erroneously stated that biblical religions are “dualistic,” dividing the world into the “sacred” and the “profane.” In reality, that’s exactly wrong. The Bible divides up reality into Creator and creation – all of which is sacred space infused with His presence.

In eastern religions, salvation means being released from the prison of material existence. For biblical faith, salvation is ultimately about the redemption of the created order, including the material aspects of it. This is the same material order that God repeatedly called “good,” according to Genesis 1. 

God intends to fully restore His “good” creation to His original design, and He intends for redeemed humans to play an essential role in His work of restoration.  This idea of repairing the world, as opposed to escaping it, is called “Tikkun Olam” in Hebrew. It’s an important part of what it means to be created in the image of God, and it’s an idea that has no counterpart in eastern religions.  

 Of course, the ultimate means by which humans participate in the work of restoration is through the Incarnation. Instead of distancing Himself from creation, God became a full participant in it. By becoming, as Hebrews 2 says, “fully human in every way,” He reaffirmed humanity’s role in this story of redemption.  

From the earliest days of Christianity, some were repelled by the idea that God would take on human flesh. For them, the flesh was irreparable, it was evil—and salvation came through an enlightenment kind of knowledge that allowed people to escape this messy and evil material order.  

This was known as “Gnosticism,” from the Greek verb “to know.” It’s a heresy that keeps popping up, over and over again, throughout the history of the church. The Vox article offers an example or two.

Interestingly enough, religion scholar Elaine Pagels, in her book “The Gnostic Gospels,” offers the possibility that Gnosticism and Buddhism are somehow connected.

Whether that’s historically true or not, they clearly share fundamental beliefs about the nature of God and the kind of world we live in, beliefs that are irreconcilable with Christian orthodoxy.  So much so, we can definitively say that any worldview that could embrace robotic clergy cannot be “Christian” in any sense of the word.

Any worldview that allows for robot clergy is one that disconnects divine personal revelation from its Source, reduces sin to simple ignorance, and replaces human salvation with a path deeply disconnected from the human condition. Robot clergy will work for Buddhism, but never for a religion built around a God who took on flesh.

 

So far, in each of the movies in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, the genetically-resurrected dinosaurs that terrorize tourists, lawyers, and scientists mostly stay on the island. But in the newest movie, the dinosaurs escape and terrorize America, doing... what movie dinosaurs do best: victimize people in increasingly creative ways.

This is not unlike what happens when experimental ideas get loose in a culture, though the damage ideas do is more profound, subtle, and lasting. Plus, it happens in the real world and not on a Hollywood set.

That sort of describes a remarkable confession, offered in writing at the Quillette website recently. Christopher Dummitt, an historian of culture and politics, owns up to a particularly nasty idea he helped release into the wild: the notion that gender is socially constructed. He now says he can’t believe how quickly the idea took over and even wishes he could undo it. In his own words, and I quote: “I was making it all up.”

Of course, he didn’t think so at the time. Dummitt and other social constructionists who applied postmodern thought to the sexes truly believed they were uncovering hidden power structures that oppressed whole groups of people. They argued that everything—even the obvious differences between men and women—were social constructs designed to preserve white male power and keep marginalized groups down.

He now admits there was no proof for any of this. In fact, when he needed proof, he just cited other scholars who said what he was saying—especially, he writes, “if their names were French.”

Dummitt describes how fashions in academia let a whole generation of scholars make laughable claims. For instance, he wrote a paper identifying the rise of backyard grilling in post-war Canada as an expression of patriarchy.

“I should have known better,” Dummitt writes. “...that’s what makes it so disappointing to see that the viewpoints I used to argue for so fervently—and so baselessly—have now been accepted by so many in wider society.”

His article reminded me of one of my former students who became fascinated with postmodernism. He questioned everything about reality, right and wrong, and truth itself.

After graduation, the student went on to teach high school and, as he told me later, quickly realized the chaos he’d unleash if the teenagers he taught believed and lived out these ideas. He’d only be giving them intellectual justification for their worst impulses.

See, that’s the thing about ideas. They have consequences. They have feet. They walk off the pages of our books and polysyllabic essays into the real world of people. It’s impossible to keep them caged in the experimental confines of an ivory tower. Sooner or later, they show up among real people. The worse the idea, the worse the consequences for those people. Which is why we say so often: Ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims.

Francis Schaeffer realized how often bad ideas start in the academy. He wrote about a “line of despair” that overtook every institution in our time, starting with higher education. Ideas that begin with intellectual elites become embodied in elite institutions, and then influence other institutions, especially shaping art and education, before trickling down into music, pop culture, fashion, entertainment, and eventually everyday life. Even the church.

The out-of-control identity politics we see all around us, as well as the direct abandonment of observable truths about things like sex and gender, largely began with academics a generation ago monkeying around with ideas. And as this particular academic bravely admitted, they were about as prepared for what would happen when those ideas inevitably escaped as were those “in charge” of Jurassic Park.

It’s good to see that someone, at least, regrets that experiment. But regret never gets dinosaurs—or bad ideas—back in their cages.

 

Nearly a million abortions will take place in America this year.  Since 1973, when Roe v. Wade effectively legalized abortion nationwide, we have seen more than 50-million abortions in this country.  Given such daunting and tragic statistics, is it possible even to dream about ending abortion in this country?

Justin Reeder, who leads Love Life in Charlotte, N.C., says yes.

We had Justin on the podcast a couple of years ago, when he was expanding his local Charlotte ministry to other cities in the Carolinas.  Today, though, Love Life has its mind and heart set on an even bigger city:  New York.

In the Carolinas, Reeder and the team at Love Life refined a model that united and mobilized more than 100 churches and more than 23,000 people in the past two years to significantly reduce the number of abortions in Charlotte.  As you’ll hear, he now wants to take that model to New York, and he wants to share it with others who want to do something similar in their cities.

The Colson Center’s Warren Cole Smith had this conversation with Justin Reeder at the headquarters of Love Life in Charlotte, N.C.

 

Resources Sign up for the October 2019 Short Course: How Not to Be a Secularist   Claim a copy of "Carpe Diem Redeemed" by Os Guinness with your September donation to the Colson Center

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith discuss what might lie ahead with the "impeachment inquiry" into President Trump's phone call with the president of Ukraine. But they also look back at Chuck Colson's  Christian and political perspectives on Watergate and past impeachment proceedings.

Also on today's broadcast: How is it that teenager Greta Thunberg is lionized for her performance at the UN, where she dressed-down adults (actually screaming at them) over climate change.  Since when did teenagers become the sages of public debate and policy? John and Warren also share their thought's on Mattel's new gender-neutral dolls (and how parents need to think about them) and Merriam Webster's decision to use the plural pronoun "they" for individuals who describe themselves as "non-binary."

 

Resources

How to Think About Impeachment: Timely Words from Chuck Colson

John Stonestreet and David Carlson, BreakPoint, September 27, 2019

 

The Danger in Doomsday Prophets

Warren Cole Smith, BreakPoint.org, September 25, 2019

 

TIME Magazine Denies Climate Change Deniers

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, BreakPoint, September 26, 2019

 

Warren Cole Smith's Series on Climate Change

 

Greta Thunberg and the Road of Good Intentions

Timothy Padgett, BreakPoint.org, September 27, 2019

 

He, She, It, and They: Words Have Power

John Stonestreet and David Carlson, The Point, September 26, 2019