Breakpoint

“Controversy erupts around Drew Brees,” proclaimed news outlets on Friday, the very same news outlets who erupted the controversy engulfing one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.

Here’s the story: In a short video, Brees encouraged students to participate in Focus on the Family’s “Bring Your Bible to School” project. He never once mentioned anything about sexual orientation or gender identity since, well, that’s not what Bring Your Bible to School Day is all about. To my knowledge, Brees has never spoken publicly on LGBTQ issues. He really didn’t clarify his views even on Friday, when he was forced to respond to the “erupting controversy.”

Perhaps Brees hasn’t talked much about LGBTQ issues because he’s a football player, and that’s not what football is about. Or perhaps he’s realized, as a public figure who is also a Christian, what would happen if his views were revealed as anything less than a full-throated endorsement of the new sexual orthodoxy.

Either way, Brees seemed honestly surprised by his presumed guilt simply because of a connection to this Focus on the Family project. That in and of itself is a lesson for all of us.

Theologian N.T. Wright suggests that Christians need to ask the question “What time is it?”, meaning that Christians should understand where they are in redemptive history – within the overarching historical framework the Scriptures present from the creation to the new creation. I’d add that Christians should also ask the question “What time is it?” also in regard to what cultural moment do we live in? What is being asked and expected of people of faith now, in this time and in this place?

Friday’s Washington Post article on Drew Brees is a case in point. Widely assumed by many, especially by Allyson Chiu in the Washington Post piece, is that even associating with anyone who holds less-than-affirming views on LGBTQ issues is no longer acceptable, even if the association is completely unrelated to LGBTQ issues in any way. No argument was offered by Chiu or any other critic why this is now the case. It was almost as if no argument was necessary.

That’s more than a little frustrating, because as one blogger noted recently, any movement that spends years trying to shut down a Denver bakery and discredit a chicken sandwich restaurant is a movement that has, long ago, run out of real injustices to fight. This second-degree-of-separation guilt-by-association campaign against Brees indicates that the gatekeepers of the LGBTQ movement have moved on, and are now demanding that everything, and I mean everything—from football to business to education to politics to Stranger Things—has to be about this.

As Focus on the Family Jim Daly demonstrated so well in his response to this nonsense, Christians should resist the demand to frame every issue of life and culture around LGBTQ issues. There’s so much more to life than this.

It’s strange that Christians are constantly being asked why we spend so much time talking about sex. But we aren’t the ones turning reality upside down, making this the one issue that every other issue has to be about.

On the other hand, as Mr. Brees found out, we won’t always be able to sit this one out. If you are even perceived as being on the “wrong side of history,” it may not matter how nice you are.  That means that in this time and in this place, we’ll have to be ready to speak to those issues when appropriate or unavoidable.

Christians, what time is it? It’s post-sexual revolution, a time in human history in which nearly everything about life and our life together, from our understanding of right and wrong to our understanding of what it means to be human, has been reimagined along the lines of sexuality.

If you were Drew Brees, targeted because of a completely unrelated story about your opinion on homosexuality or gender, what would you say? Too many Christians are unprepared for the tough questions that, like it or not, are inevitable in this time and this place.

But there are answers. And last week, the Colson Center launched a new video series to help. It’s called “What Would You Say?” and it provides understandable, repeatable, and convincing answers to the hardest cultural questions.

New videos will be posted every week at WhatWouldYouSay.org.

 

What would you say if someone asked you to explain gender identity?  Or when life begins?  Or why a family with a mom and a dad is better than two moms or two dads?

These are tough questions.  And they are questions we hear every day from our family, our friends, the media, sometimes even in our churches.

And even if you know where you stand, could you explain the biblical position on these and other questions in a civil and concise way?

The Colson Center has launched a new project to help Christians with short, sharp, and biblical answers to questions we hear every day.  We call this project “What Would You Say?”  It’s a collection of videos you can watch and share that will help you answer some of life’s toughest questions.

The Colson Center’s Joseph Backholm leads this project.  And he’s our guest on today’s podcast.

Joseph Backholm is legal counsel and Director of What Would You Say?  He joined the Colson Center after a decade as the President and General Counsel of the Family Policy Institute of Washington in Washington State where he managed educational, legislative, and electoral operations on behalf of life, marriage, religious freedom, and parental rights.

Joseph received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and his law degree from Seattle University. He and his wife Brook, live with their four children near Dallas, Texas.

He’s interviewed by our colleague here at the Colson Center, Warren Cole Smith.

 

Resources What Would You Say?

• The Colson Center's new video series to equip Christians to answer the tough questions

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith highlight the Christian organizations rushing to help those in need in the wake of Hurricane Dorian.

They also discuss the Colson Center's new video series, "What Would You Say?", designed to help Christians answer the tough questions we face these days with clarity and confidence.

Rounding out today's episode: Benny Hinn renounces the "prosperity gospel"; and online dating replaces church, family, and mutual friendships as the main way couples meet

Resources   What Would You Say? The Colson Center's New Video Series to Help You Answer the Tough Questions   Water Mission--matching grant opportunity for Dorian relief   Convoy of Hope Hurricane Dorian relief effort   The Peanut Butter Falcon John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris, BreakPoint, September 6, 2019   Benny Hinn renounces prosperity gospel, says ‘Holy Ghost is just fed up with it’ Leonardo Blair, Christian Post, September 4, 2019

For years now, Christians defending the biblical definition of marriage have dealt with a particularly frustrating retort: “Well, Christians used to be against interracial marriage, too,” people will say. 

         Not only is this assertion meant to equate Christian morality with racism, it implies an historical inevitability—that, in a generation or two, Christians will join the march of progress and affirm same-sex relationships, just as they affirm relationships between men and women of different skin colors.

         America’s very real and shameful history of racial prejudice and violence—and especially the sinful co-option of Christians, clergy, churches, and entire denominations in that history—gives those who make such a comparison plenty of ammo. And stories like the one out of Mississippi last week don’t help. But this one has an interesting twist.

         Last week, the owner of Boone’s Camp Event Hall, a wedding venue, reportedly canceled the ceremony of a mixed-race couple, citing her Christian beliefs. She was later caught on camera equating interracial marriage with gay marriage, and saying her facility can’t host either because of her faith.

         What she did was indefensible, as is what she said. But don’t miss what happened next: She changed her mind and publicly apologized. Why? Well, when confronted about her actions, and with the urging of her pastor and husband, this business owner says she opened her Bible and found nothing there forbidding or even mentioning interracial marriage. And so, she changed her mind.

         Happy ending? Not for critics of the Christian view of marriage, who couldn’t let such a good headline go to waste. Many saw the incident as proof that objections to gay “marriage” are really no different from objections to interracial marriage. If a plea of religious freedom doesn’t excuse one type of discrimination, they say, it shouldn’t excuse the other. In other words, Jack Philips is really no different from Jim Crow.

         Now, I can’t deal with the religious freedom question in this commentary—specifically, whether religious freedom justifies racists running their businesses in racist ways. For the record, I think the answer is “no.” Religious freedom has limits.

         Instead, I want to deal specifically with the claim that Christians who believe in man-woman marriage today are just doing the same thing that those who opposed interracial marriage did in past generations. And for the record, I think the answer to this question is also “no.”

         The reason this teachable business owner couldn’t find racist views of marriage in the Bible is because they’re not in there. Quite the opposite, in fact. St. Paul told the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens that God made every nation of mankind from “one blood.” The Christian view of “races,” quite frankly, is that there are none—at least not as defined since the 19th century.          On the other hand, Scripture is not silent at all on sexual morality and the structure of marriage. You could write a book about what it has to say on the subject—in fact, I have! The biblical testimony for one man and one woman marriage is overwhelming.

         Genesis, which Jesus points to when He is asked about marriage, clearly describes how and why God created humans—not black and white, not gay or straight, but male and female. He joins the two, forbidding anyone to put them asunder, and then tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Our Western concept of race is irrelevant to this biblical definition of marriage, but being male and female is central. And Scripture frequently and directly condemns homosexual behavior.

         So to be clear: Support for same-sex “marriage” and opposition to interracial marriage both require the dismissal of Scripture. Study the Scriptures and you’ll discover, like this person did in Mississippi, that God condemns racism in all its forms, and that there is no biblical case to be found in opposing interracial marriage. Nor is there a biblical case to be found in supporting same-sex marriage.

         Now this is an example of the sort of issue that creates really tough questions for Christians to answer, and that’s why the “What Would You Say?” video project is so important. Every single week we will release a video that articulates a Christian answer to one of the most difficult questions to come out of our culture. You can find out more at whatwouldyousay.org

Imagine Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” only with a crab-pot thief and a young man with Down syndrome, instead of Tom and Huck. And instead of the mighty Mississippi, imagine the estuaries of North Carolina. And instead of skipping school to run away, imagine running away to attend school (well, wrestling school).

         That’s the plot of a new indie film, directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, and starring no less than Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson. “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is not only beautifully shot and set, its message is badly needed in a culture like ours.

         The film stars newcomer Zack Gottsagen, who plays the role of a 22-year-old man with Down syndrome, who escapes a nursing home to chase his dream of becoming a professional wrestler named, you guessed it, The Peanut Butter Falcon. Along the way, he gets mixed up with Shia LaBeouf’s character, a guy on the run from a pair of revenge-hungry fishermen.

         Against all odds, these two “fugitives” forge a brotherly bond and eventually come to understand that their journey is more of a pilgrimage than an escape.

         Dakota Johnson’s character is Eleanor, an educated caregiver bent on chasing Zak down and returning him to state supervision. When she finally catches up with him and his new friend, she’s surprised to learn that Zak’s not only happy, he’s a pretty good fisherman.

         And so, just as Zak forces Tyler to question his identity as a bad guy, he also forces Eleanor to question her well-meaning but stifling, overly-clinical approach to Zak’s condition, one that leads her to miss something important: Zak, himself.

         Ultimately, she joins in on this pilgrimage to find “the Saltwater Redneck’s” wrestling school. Through hijinks and scrapes, they learn that human beings can’t be defined by their guilty consciences, or their college degrees, or even their chromosomal disorders.

         That’s a lot to get across in a single movie, which “The Peanut Butter Falcon” does beautifully, without being in-your-face or preachy. The story and characters bring the message, while everything else from the camera work, to the directing, to the music creates the space necessary for the message to be heard.

         At the same time, the reality of life with disability is brought to life here too. Zack Gottsagen not only plays a title character who has Down syndrome, he really does have Down syndrome. When his character faces rejection and ridicule, and is relegated to a facility, he’s portraying what is, for far too many people, reality. It’s this down-to-earth portrayal that makes this a movie worth seeing.

As is the story behind the film. In a compelling interview on a website called the Playlist, the writer-directors describe how they met and worked with Zak on a short film they made for a camp with people with disabilities. Zak became a friend and told them he wanted to be a movie star. Knowing how hard it is for anyone to make it in Hollywood, much less someone with disabilities, they tried to dissuade him. But Zak simply replied, “Cool. Sounds like we’ve got to do it together. You [guys] can write and direct, and I can be the movie star.”

So, they wrote “The Peanut Butter Falcon” to make Zak a movie star. It’s cool enough that such a crazy idea actually worked, but the fact that this film was produced on such a tiny budget offers a lesson that all Hollywood, and especially Christian filmmakers, should embrace: Budget constraints are no excuse for telling bad stories or churning out bad art.  

         Now, I’ll warn you that this film does include some salty language, including a word that would have earned an R-rating once upon a time. It’s definitely not a movie for younger kids.

Still, in a culture like ours in which the overwhelming majority of children diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are targeted for abortion, a film that affirms the value we all share as image-bearers, and the needs we all share as people who are created for community, is especially timely and especially important.

 

Usually, infringements on religious freedom come from the government: legislatures, regulatory agencies, or local agents of inquisition like the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. But emerging and serious threats to religious freedom are also coming from the private sector.

An obvious example is the workplace. I’ve talked for months now that Christians need a “theology of getting fired.” You might be great at your job (and you should be as a Christian), but you might also face pressure to affirm and support your employer’s political agenda, one that has little to do with the company’s business model or strategic goals. Many companies today face an incredible amount of pressure by outside advocacy groups, especially pro-LGBT organizations.

The influence of these groups, especially the Human Rights Coalition, is incredible, and they reach well beyond the workplace. Recently, I hosted a Colson Center webinar with Jeremy Tedesco of Alliance Defending Freedom to discuss the influence of these LGBT advocacy groups, including new attempts to restrict the ability of religious groups to raise money.

The main strategy comes by weaponizing so-called “hate group lists.” Once groups like ADF are designated as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, corporations are pressured to cut ties with any and all organizations that bear the scarlet “H.”

Consider the “Amazon Smile” program. When participants in the program make a purchase on Amazon, half-a-percent of the price of their purchase can be designated as a donation to the charity of their choice. Zero-point-five percent might not sound like much, but as of last fall, Amazon had donated more than $100 million to eligible charities through the Smile program.

In response to outside pressure, Amazon now excludes any organization designated as a “hate group” from the program. So, ADF, the Family Research Council, and others are barred from “Amazon Smile.”

That’s a relatively minor example. As Tedesco told us on the webinar, activists and their corporate allies have even more effective strategies to accomplish their goals.

For example, companies that process credit card payments are also pressured from doing business with anyone deemed a “hate group,” whether they are or not. Some of our close ministry friends have been refused services. If a ministry you love and support cannot find someone to process their credit card donations, that’s a huge blow.

A new strategy is to target “Donor Advised Funds.” These funds manage charitable donations on behalf of families, individuals, and organizations, carry along specific tax benefits, and are offered by most of the major wealth management organizations. Essentially, they allow a donation to be made now, with the tax deduction, but distributed later according to the wishes of the donor.

What many people who use donor advised funds fail to realize is that they actually surrender ownership of the assets they donate, and essentially become advisors as to how the funds will be used.

Now there is now a move afoot to persuade those who offer these funds to exclude “hate groups” from receiving donations. All it would take is a stroke of a pen, and the donor couldn’t designate his funds to the groups that he wants to give to anymore.  Thankfully, there are Christian based donor advised funds through groups whose Christian worldview lines up with people of orthodox faith. If you carry a donor advised fund with someone else, it may be time to consider transferring to these providers. Two of these providers, National Christian Foundation and Waterstone, joined Tedesco and me on the webinar. And you can listen to a recording of that webinar by coming to our website: BreakPoint.org

Look, these challenges are a moving target and they are becoming more serious and more challenging by the day. I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a lot more rainbow flags flown by corporations during Pride Month this year. This new “woke capitalism” means that corporate America could be an even bigger threat to religious freedom than anything coming out of the halls of government.

 

Every day on BreakPoint, our goal is to equip believers to live out their faith in the public square with clarity, confidence, and courage. It’s the same mission Chuck was on when he launched this commentary decades ago.

And in the past few years, we’ve all watched the culture change at warp speed. Christians are confronted with questions everywhere – from media, from skeptics, from friends and neighbors, even from our own children and grandchildren… Too many Christians have no idea what to think, much less know what to say.

Here’s the good news: Good answers exist.  But, they can be hard to find. Not anymore.

Starting today, the Colson Center is launching a brand-new series of short videos that answer the toughest questions Christians face. It’s called “What Would You Say.” Think short, understandable, trustworthy, useable, and shareable answers.

For example, when an abortion supporter says, “a fetus doesn’t have a right to a mom’s body,” well, what would you say? These videos will equip you to answer questions like that with clarity and confidence. Here’s a clip from a video that answers one of the most common things we hear in our culture today: “Doesn’t Love Make a Family?”

Here’s Katy Faust:

“When someone says, ‘love makes a family,” what they typically mean is that when it comes to marriage or parenting, things like gender, marital status, and biological connections are less important than simply being loved.

It’s a nice sentiment. After all, many of our closest and most important relationships are with people we aren’t related to. But is it true about families?

Sociologists have been studying family structure for decades. They overwhelmingly agree that by far the best situation for children is being raised in a home with their married mother and father.

That means three things: Gender matters, biology matters, and marriage matters.

First, Gender matters. So different are the ways that men and women interact with children, that many sociologists say there’s no such thing as parenting. There are only mothering and fathering.

From the way they communicate, to the way they play, to how they discipline, men and women offer distinct and complementary benefits to children.

There are heroic single parents out there. They face major challenges because the other parent is gone. When one parent is missing, the father for example, children fall into almost-predictable negative patterns.

Fathering encourages independence, mothering encourages emotional security. Men don’t mother. Women don’t father. Kids need both.”

Okay, that’s just a quick sample. Katy Faust goes on to make three key points, and each on is backed up with facts.  In this video, like in each and every “What Would You Say?” video, you’ll be given a memorable way to answer the question. In this case, “Does love make a family?”

“Let’s not let a slogan get in the way of what’s really best for kids,” Katy says. “When it comes to what’s best for children,” love matters, “but that’s not all that matters.”

Gender matters. Biology matters. Marriage matters.

We’ve been working on these videos for a long time, and I am so excited to see them launch. Check them out at whatwouldyousay.org. Our first three videos are live right now: the one you just heard, “Does Love Make a Family?”, plus “Is Sex Assigned at Birth?”, and “Does Life Begin at Conception?”  We’ll be releasing new videos each and every week.

You can subscribe right there on the What Would You Say website, for free, and we’ll notify you each time a new video is posted.

The questions are coming. What would you say? Learn more and sign up at whatwouldyousay.org.

 

Nothing in our culture so clearly demonstrates the controlling power of one’s settled presuppositions like how we think and talk about sexuality. This time the topic is a new study, the largest ever done, on the relationship between genetic makeup and same-sex sexual behavior.

“Research Finds Genetic Links to Same-Sex Behavior,” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times agreed, using this headline, “Many Genes Influence Same-Sex Sexuality, Not a Single Gay Gene.” But NPR, looking at the exact same study, chose a different headline: “Search for ‘Gay Genes’ Comes Up Short in Large New Study.” The AP put it this way: “New Genetic Links to Same-Sex Sexuality Found in Huge Study.” But Science News announced, “There’s No Evidence that a ‘Gay Gene’ Exists.” The Washington Post played it more in the middle with, “There’s No One ‘Gay Gene’ but Genetics Are Linked to Same-Sex Behavior.”

Oh, and then there’s the Guardian’s approach, which I predict will be the settled conclusion from most media outlets within a few days. They chose to Op Ed this story, which is garnering inconsistent and even contradictory headlines, by confidently concluding: “Gay Gene theories belong in the past – now we know sexuality is far more fluid.” In other words, the science is settled on sexuality despite what any new science tells us. Or as Owen Jones, author of the Guardian article actually wrote, “…while the research may be interesting, it is surely irrelevant.”

Since the 1980s, researchers have been on the hunt for the elusive “gay gene” as a way to prove what was the defining argument of the early LGB movement (this was before the “T” was added): “Born this way.” Of course, as early as 1989, gay advocates admitted that what was increasingly being called sexual orientation was obviously a mix of both nature and nurture. Still, it proved to be not only useful, but effective, so it stuck.

That’s what makes the reaction to this new study so interesting. Clearly newspapers across the spectrum are clamoring for a headline that follows the instructions they were given a couple decades ago about the biological basis of sexual orientation. What they’ve missed (except for NPR and the Guardian) is that advocates have moved on. “Born this way” is no longer a necessary talking point. The cause has won, so the fact that a study like this comes up empty-handed in proving today the very thing everyone proclaimed yesterday as settled science will elicit only a shrug.

But newspapers know the sort of abuse they face if they get this wrong and, apparently, so do the researchers. They couched their study in all kinds of politically correct jargon and clarifications, even consulting with science communication teams (?) and LGBTQIA+ advocacy groups to help them communicate what they found about LGBTQIA+. The study’s lead author, Andrea Ganna, was careful to say that homosexuality is “a natural part of our diversity as a species.” See how she couched that ideological presupposition in the verbiage of scientific authority?

What the study showed, however, was unremarkable. There was no evidence of a single “gay gene.”  There was evidence of modest to weak correlation between a combination of genetic factors and those who had reported to have had a same-sex sexual experience. That last clarification is important for two reasons: First, it’s being assumed that having had a same-sex sexual experience is the same as having a particular sexual orientation. And second, the same genetic combination also showed correlation for risky behavior. Might the decision to have risky sexual experiences be connected to the tendency to engage in risky behavior overall? And even that tendency only has a correlation with this combination of genetic factors which, of course, is not the same as genes causing the behavior.

While the researchers behind the study and the media reporting on it were being so careful to couch these unimpressive results as previously instructed, the movement they are trying to accommodate has long since moved on. After all, they’ve been far more effective capturing the cultural imagination, including much of the scientific community, without needing the science to back it up.

 

Civil disagreement—or civility in discourse—seems a lofty goal in our angry and polarized public square. But as Christopher Love argues, it is a necessary ingredient to a well-ordered society. In this presentation given at St. George’s Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, Love defines civil disagreement, presents a case for it from secular and a theological perspective, and provides strategies for engaging in civil discourse.

Love is an Active Duty officer who teaches philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He writes on civil disagreement and related topics at civil-america.blog. He is also a Colson Fellow from the Class of 2018-2019. The views expressed here are solely his own and do not represent those of the U.S. Air Force Academy or the Department of Defense.

During his presentation, Love mentions a handout he gave to the audience. We have that for you here.

Christopher Love is introduced by Sarah Stonestreet, wife of Colson Center President John Stonestreet, and the leader of the Colson Fellows cohort in Colorado Springs.