Breakpoint

Every Johnny Cash fan remembers that song, “A Boy Named Sue,” about a young man’s quest to find his dead-beat dad and punch his lights out for giving him a girl’s name. Well, in a completely unrelated factoid, “Sue” is also the name of the Chicago Field Museum’s famous Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, one of the largest ever unearthed.

This tyrant lizard queen is named after discoverer Sue Hendrickson, who spotted the massive meat-eater’s bones sticking out of a hillside in South Dakota back in 1990.

Since then, most paleontologists have concluded that Sue the T. rex was indeed a female. Even though all we have are bones, the theory goes that theropod dinosaurs, like many animals today, were sexually dimorphic, with females being larger than males.

Whether dinosaur Sue was male or female, she might have taken Cash’s advice and punched out whoever put up her new exhibit—if her arms could reach them. In accordance with a Twitter announcement back in 2016, signs around the T. rex skeleton now inform museum visitors that Sue prefers to be referred to as “they/them/their,” rather than “he” or “she.”

I wish I could tell you I’m making this up.

In an interview with online LGBT magazine “Them,” the Field Museum’s public relations manager said that docents will now be trained to answer questions about Sue using gender-neutral pronouns. “Science is for everyone,” she said. “If this makes one person more comfortable in our museum, if it helps people get more accustomed to using they and them pronouns, then it’s worth it.”

Sue’s discoverer and namesake, Sue Hendrickson, wasn’t nearly as excited about her fossil’s coming-out. This dinosaur, she said, “never worried about the proper nomenclature for various descriptions of sexual preferences.”

Increasingly today, some human beings seem to worry about nothing else. Writing in the Washington Post a few days ago, two scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, warned that using gendered language to refer to animals like frogs can “fuel bigotry.”

“Biologists,” they complained, “too often employ imprecise terminology when describing the biology behind changes in sex, like those seen in amphibians.” Terms like “feminize” and “demasculinize,” they argue, “embolden homophobic groups” and give them language with which to attack “trans and queer people’s rights...”

I don’t know about homophobic groups, but I can tell you our BreakPoint editorial team was emboldened to scratch their heads and chuckle loudly at this ridiculous article, as well as at a major museum giving serious thought to the gender identity of an extinct carnivorous reptile.

Lost, of course, in all of this is anything recognizable as science. As several critics have pointed out, Sue was a real animal, not a persona the Field Museum created on Twitter. And as a real animal, it was either male or female. Any talk about a T. rex being “gender-nonbinary” is a fantasy—one that has no place in a museum.

And the same is true of people, whether or not they are referred to by gender-neutral pronouns. Excluding the rare disorder of intersex genitalia, every human being is born objectively male or female. Unlike some animals which science tells us can switch back and forth (a list that doesn’t include dinosaurs, by the way), we are fixed at birth. No amount of Twitter activism, flag-waving, parading, or museum signage will ever change that.

In our own bodies, just as in the ground of South Dakota, we encounter realities that are not subject to our feelings, preferences, or chosen identities. We don’t create those realities, and we’re not in charge of them, not even if we conscript the king—excuse me, the queen—of dinosaurs for our cause.

Our ideas about reality, including ourselves, will always have consequences. If those ideas are bad, they will have victims.

For years, LGBTQIA activists and advocates have proclaimed that their view of human sexuality and Gender Theory is historically inevitable, and that any and all who resist will be swept into the dustbin of history along with the racists.

Given the movement’s thorough sweep of cultural arenas and institutions, including the caving by some Christian denominations on marriage and sexuality, it’s not hard to see where their optimism and even arrogance on the matter comes from.

But they are wrong. First, you can’t be on the right side of history if you are on the wrong side of observable biological realities.

And second, a growing number of Christian ministries, universities, and denominations have publicly reaffirmed their commitment to a biblical view of sexuality and marriage, including both evangelical and Protestant bodies.

And now, just last week, the Vatican released a publication entitled, “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education.”

That title may not be very exciting, but in the document, the Roman Catholic Church unequivocally rejects any gender ideology that denies the intrinsic biological differences between men and women, or that treats gender as something that people choose for themselves.

“Male and Female He Created Them” was quickly and roundly denounced by many who assumed the Catholic Church would eventually cave on human sexuality. After all, many proponents of the new Gender Theory and revisionist ideas about sexuality and marriage have long believed, and often stated, that Pope Francis was clearly on their side.

It turns out he’s not. In the document, the Pope is quoted as saying that Gender Theory “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”

Another important aspect of the document is indicated by its subtitle. Just a few weeks ago, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, one of the oldest all-girl Catholic schools in the country, announced it would include announcements of same-sex unions in its alumnae magazine. It did this despite acknowledging that the Catholic Church “is clear in its teaching on same-sex marriages.”

Not only does “Male and Female He Created Them” leave no room for doubt as to where the Catholic Church stands on sexuality and gender, it aims this clarification directly at Catholic educational institutions like Georgetown Prep.

The document clearly lays out exactly why Gender Theory is incompatible with historic Christian teaching about the human person, and it’s therefore incompatible with any educational project that would seek to deny or alter the Christian teaching about the human person. “Male and Female He Created Them” is squarely aimed at education and educators, and insists that the family must “be recognized as the primary pedagogical environment for the educational formation of children.”

This task, which is called in the document “the formation of formators,” must shape education outside of the home, too. Catholic schools should be “an educating community in which [people can] grow in [their] humanity.” By the way, that should be true of all Christian schools.

Of course, nothing in the document, which was issued by the Congregation for Education, is particularly groundbreaking. Anyone who’s read Ryan Anderson or has listened to BreakPoint will be familiar with the anthropology the document clearly articulates. Still, it is another indication that predictions of historical inevitability are almost always a reflection of hubris more than anything else.

The past twelve months have been anything but a cake walk for religious bakers. First, we had the seven year fight of Masterpiece Cakeshop’s Jack Phillips that initially led to a victory at the Supreme Court, only to be followed by ongoing harassment by Colorado officials and a transgender activist. They seem intent on proving that they really are driven by animus.

Then there’s the recent story about a bakery in Ohio that was targeted for protests and slander. They were just awarded $11 million by a jury after Oberlin College officials were shown to have instigated their students to believe that the owners of the bakery were racists.

Finally, on Monday, the Supreme Court gave what is, to many, an unexpected kind of victory to Melissa and Aaron Klein, the owners of “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” in Gresham, Oregon.

Now technically, the Court didn’t rule in their favor. The justices instead declined to hear the case, telling Oregon’s courts to rethink their ill-treatment of the Kleins in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision.

The Klein’s ordeal began back  in 2013 when Rachel Bowman-Cryer visited their Oregon bakery to order a wedding cake for her upcoming wedding to her partner, Laurel. The Kleins told Bowman-Cryer that their religious beliefs wouldn’t allow them to fill that request.

Seven months after the visit, Bowman-Cryer and her partner filed a complaint with Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries. The administrative law judge there appointed by the then-Labor Commissioner, Brad Avakian, sided with Bowman-Cryer and her partner and awarded them $135,000 in damages.

The ruling was then reviewed by Avakian who, even before his Bureau filed a formal complaint against the Kleins, publicly stated “Everyone has a right to their religious beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they can disobey laws already in place.”

Not surprisingly, Avakian not only affirmed the financial award, he prohibited the Kleins from ever speaking “publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.”

An Oregon appeals court upheld the Bureau of Labor’s actions, and the Supreme Court of Oregon declined to hear the case. So the Kleins, represented by the First Liberty Institute, appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

On Monday, the Court declined to hear the case, at least for now. Instead, it decided to vacate the decision by the Oregon appeals court and ordered it to reconsider the matter in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

In Masterpiece, of course, the majority on the high court declared that “religious hostility on the part of the State itself” is a factor that violates the “State’s obligation of religious neutrality" under the Free Exercise Clause. That opinion cited numerous examples of conduct by Colorado officials that clearly demonstrated “religious hostility.”

By vacating the Oregon court’s decision and instructing it to apply Masterpiece to the Sweet Cakes case, the Supreme Court did at least two things.

First, as the First Liberty Institute put it, the Court “reaffirmed an essential principle: that everyone is entitled to a fair trial before an unbiased judge”—a benefit the Kleins clearly did not enjoy in Oregon. The second thing the Court’s ruling does is leave open the possibility of hearing the case in the future.

Given the record of hostility toward the Kleins and their beliefs, the Oregon court could rule for them on narrow grounds without addressing their broader religious freedom claims. But if it doubles down, like the state of Washington did in the case of Barronelle Stutzman, the Kleins could once again appeal to the Supreme Court. The current makeup of the Court seems much friendlier to religious freedom than the court that Jack Phillips visited.

All of this makes the Court’s actions on Monday good news. Not only for Melissa and Aaron Klein and the First Liberty Institute, but for anyone who cares about religious freedom, which should be all of us.

Our theme for this year’s Wilberforce Weekend was “Is Christianity Still Good for the World?”

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, we want you to hear from the founder of Generous Giving, Todd Harper, as he answers the question, “Are Christians Generous?”

Now, as you might expect, Harper’s answer is “Yes.” But the extent of Christian generosity, historically and statistically may surprise you. Harper also challenges us to think about Jesus’ call to radical generosity.

Resources

Support the BreakPoint Podcast and the Colson Center

Thanks for helping us end our fiscal year strong!

Generous Giving

Website

Last week probably marked a milestone in American political extremism. For more than forty years, former Vice-President Joe Biden held what he called a “middle-of-the-road position on abortion.” He backed bans on late-term abortions and voted more than fifty times on Capitol Hill to uphold the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion.

Writing at The Washington Post, Mark Thiessen notes how that middle-of-the-road position has, at least in the last few years, made Biden something of a dinosaur among Democratic leaders. (That’s not an age joke, by the way.) To put it bluntly, the former Vice-President was one of the last high-level representatives in the Democratic Party of an older liberal view on abortion. Not that long ago, abortion was proclaimed, by the political left, a necessary evil to be used in extreme circumstances—you know, “safe, legal, and rare.”

I say Biden “was” one of the last, because just days ago he caved to the extreme abortion lobby that now drives the Democratic Party. He dropped his support for the Hyde Amendment. This happened after a backlash from fellow Democratic presidential contenders. Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren all tweeted their outrage at Biden’s “moderate” position. They were joined by organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL, all demanding federal funding for any abortion as a matter of women’s rights.

Biden’s surrender came just before another presidential contender, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, compared pro-life views to racism and antisemitism. Speaking with the Des Moines Register, Gillibrand said, “I think there’s [sic] some issues that have such moral clarity that we have as a society decided that the other side is not acceptable.”

That’s no minor statement. For forty years, pro-lifers and pro-choicers have fought viciously over abortion. Pro-lifers were called “religious,” and “hypocritical,” and “wrong.” But unlike other issues today, pro-lifers were not dismissed from polite society as “evil.” Well, at least until now.

Still, as Thiessen points out, the percentage of Americans who think abortion should be available at any time during pregnancy for any reason is a small minority—only about 13 percent. By contrast, a new Marist poll commissioned by NPR and PBS found that a super majority of Americans—75 percent—support some restrictions on abortion and oppose federal funding.

Apparently, Biden has joined the rest of his party’s leadership by giving in to the extremists.

As Ryan P. Burge at Eastern Illinois University points out, the General Social Survey reveals that until the late 1980s, the two parties weren’t that far apart on the abortion issue. Up till then, only about a third of Democrats and Republicans supported abortion for any and all reasons. But then something happened, and the parties diverged dramatically.

What that something was is anyone’s guess, but looking at the hockey stick graphs, one thing is clear: Republicans today are more opposed to abortion and Democrats more in favor of it than ever before. The country is unquestionably polarized.

Democratic Party leaders have shifted more quickly and more dramatically than their voters. By celebrating killing as a positive and liberating thing, they have abandoned the position most Americans still hold—that abortion should be legal but heavily restricted.

That’s not to say that’s a right position, or that there’s any kind of moral equivalency between the sides on this issue. Intentionally killing an unborn child is always wrong. But as President Trump showed recently when he (wrongly) criticized Alabama’s new abortion law, it’s still possible within the party to be a moderately pro-life Republican officeholder. But it’s not possible anymore to be a moderately pro-abortion Democratic officeholder.

Remember that the next time you see a headline or find yourself in a conversation about those “pro-life extremists.”

If it weren’t so jarring and tragic, the contradictory laws and language tolerated in our country about abortion would be laughable.

On the one hand, we prosecute anyone who harms a pregnant woman and causes her to lose her baby, sometimes even charging them with murder. Meanwhile, that same woman could legally have her unborn child killed with no consequences just down the street. We have baby announcements—not fetus announcements—and yet, most people who call themselves “pro-choice” insist on referring to the victim of abortion as something other than a baby. According to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a pregnant woman who is “abortion-minded” is not a mother, but apparently any other pregnant woman is.

And then there’s miscarriage—a tragedy familiar to millions of women in this country, as well as their families. In her memoir, former first lady Michelle Obama tells about a miscarriage she suffered, and how she’d grieved as if she’d lost a child. Because of course, she had.

Recently, NPR highlighted Mrs. Obama’s story and others like it in a segment on “demystifying miscarriage.” It’s a powerful hour of radio, filled with women describing the heart-wrenching grief of losing a baby. One described it as a “loss of a secret companion,” and others talked of their longing to protect their tiny children, even after they were gone.

Tragically, our culture and our laws de-legitimize the grief of miscarriage, communicating to mothers, indirectly and sometimes directly, that it’s no big deal. Nearly all of the mothers interviewed by NPR described how few people seemed to fully appreciate what they had gone through, even shrugging off their tragedies as if they hadn’t really lost something or someone precious.

Incredibly, NPR even tried to make the case that restrictions on abortion have harmed women who’ve suffered miscarriages! This government-funded outlet ignored the government-funded industry that dehumanizes the unborn and treats their deaths as no big deal.

In fact, a recent documentary on another government-funded media outlet, PBS, goes to even greater lengths to normalize abortion, even comparing it to miscarriage as a way of convincing viewers that it’s no big deal. Who’s minimizing miscarriage, again?

In the documentary, a mother at a Philadelphia “women’s center” is filmed taking the abortion pill RU486 while a doctor describes the twins she is carrying as “pregnancy tissue.” Medical abortions are an increasingly common early-term form of abortion that are carried out entirely with medication.

“A medical abortion is very similar to inducing a miscarriage,” explains the doctor, later describing the “miscarriage symptoms” her patient will experience when she takes the second drug to expel her baby.

What an insult to the millions of women who know what a miscarriage means. Disturbingly, this mother made it clear she knew what abortion means: “What I hope I feel,” she said, “is a sense of peace...with these two beings that I’ve chosen not to bring into the world. Thank you for choosing me,” she tells them. “I’m honored to be given this gift of life. And also, I can’t do it right now.”

The attempt to sentimentalize abortion isn’t just misguided and wrong. It’s an insult to every woman who has suffered the unchosen loss of miscarriage. More than that, it demonstrates a culpable knowledge—on the part of this woman, PBS, NPR, and everyone else involved in this industry of death—of what really happens when a doctor ends a pregnancy by abortion.

That muffling gauze of medical euphemisms cannot change what is true. Even abortive women themselves, some who are stricken with grief, can’t suppress it either.

Our prayers to end this casual destruction of life should include, on behalf of our whole nation, an acknowledgement: “Father, forgive us, for we know what we’re doing.”

As you may have heard John Stonestreet say on BreakPoint, Christians these days need to develop a theology of getting fired. Because many of us may one day have to choose between our careers and our faith.

 David and Jason Benham know what John means. When they stood for their Christian principles, they lost their popular HGTV show. But as you’ll hear in today’s BreakPoint podcast interview with Warren Smith, the Benhams know who they are: ministers of Christ, as we all are. And that’s a role they continue to play off the air.

Resources

Bold and Broken: Becoming the Bridge Between Heaven and Earth

David and Jason Benham, Salem Books, 2019

Warren Cole Smith and G. Shane Morris (sitting in for John Stonestreet) discuss how the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic bishops in America are addressing their clerical abuse scandals--and the effect of those scandals on the faith.

Also on this weekend's episode: Maine approves assisted suicide, the Trump  Administration ends funding for a project that used cell lines from aborted babies, Missouri's last abortion shop remains open, the Netflix series "Chernobyl," and "Emanuel," the new documentary about the victims and survivors of the Charleston church shooting.

Resources

Support BreakPoint and the Colson Center

Thank you for helping us end our fiscal year strong!

BreakPoint Podcast: Can Christianity Answer Tragedy, with Brian Ivie, Director of "Emanuel"

A Climate of Death

John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris, BreakPoint, June 7, 2019

Go See "Emanuel"

In Movie Theaters June 17 and 19

Last week, Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term as India’s Prime Minister. His party, the BJP, won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections.

As Indian pundits – a word that is, by the way, of Indian origin – will tell you, if Modi and the BJP were the obvious winners, their political rivals, the Congress Party, were the big losers. But there’s another potential loser in these elections, one that should especially concern American Christians, and that’s Indian Christians.

To understand why, you need to understand Hindutva, which is the BJP’s governing ideology. It literally means “Hinduness,” and defines what it means to be an Indian in religious—to be specific, Hindu—terms. Hindutva regards Christianity and Islam as foreign religions, and therefore any Indian who claims to be a Christian or a Muslim is less than truly Indian. According to this ideology, Hinduism is central to what it means to be an Indian.

While most of the world mistakenly sees India as a land of Gandhi, gurus, and nonviolence, there’s nothing peaceful or tolerant about Hindutva. For instance, the man who assassinated Gandhi was an adherent of Hindutva who felt Gandhi had betrayed the Hindu community.

In the runup to the election, one BJP candidate called Ghandi’s assassin “a patriot.” Though Modi denounced the comments, they are consistent with the principles of Hindutva. More concerning are the many examples of Hindutva-inspired persecution of Christians in India, especially in the five years since the BJP first came to power.

In the weeks before the election, there were reports of “food deprivation, beatings, and jail” directed at Christian converts in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.

As Open Doors put it, “because radical Hindu nationalists view followers of Jesus as alien to the nation, all Christians in India are suffering persecution. Driven by a desire to cleanse their country from Islam and Christianity, nationalists do not shy away from using extensive violence to achieve their goals.”

Part of their campaign to cleanse India of Christians involves anti-conversion laws. At least six Indian states effectively prohibit conversions to Christianity. I say “effectively,” because Hindu nationalists there have found a way around the freedom of religion guaranteed in the Indian constitution. Any conversion that results from “force, allurement or fraudulent means” is illegal. Given the vagueness of these terms, Indian law empowers ideologically-driven local officials to view all conversions as guilty until proven innocent.

For all these reasons and more, India currently ranks tenth on Open Doors World Watch List—which is eleven spots higher than when the BJP first assumed power.

All of this may come as a surprise given what we often hear or read about India in mainstream media outlets. For example, a recent discussion of the Indian election on a New York Times podcast explained the threat to Indian Muslims, but made no mention of the persecution of Indian Christians.

To be fair, India does have the second-largest Muslim population in the world, and the most visible religious conflict there falls along Hindu-Muslim lines. Still, there are more than 30 million Christians in India, and there’s some reason to believe that this number may be significantly understated. Muslims aren’t the only targets of Hindu extremism. Indian Christians are rightly concerned about what Modi’s triumph means for them.

We should be concerned as well. After all, contrary to Hindutva ideology, Christianity is no European import. It existed in India before Paul reached Rome. Some churches in southern India even worship in an offshoot of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.

We must pray for our Indian brethren, asking God to preserve the faith in a subcontinent where it is every bit as native as that which seeks to drive it out.

On the second Sunday in June, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Hong Kong to protest a proposed law that would allow people to be extradited from the former British colony to mainland China.

Yet, as the New York Times reported and subsequent media interviews have made clear, these protests are about more than one law. They’re about preserving the freedoms that were promised when Britain returned control over Hong Kong to China in 1997, something that’s been increasingly at risk given the increasingly dictatorial nature of China’s Communist Party.

To understand this story, you need to know a bit of the backdrop of when Great Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997. The agreement clearly stated a governing principle, dubbed “One Country, Two Systems” that would govern relations between Hong Kong and mainland China for 50 years.

According to the agreement, Hong Kong’s domestic affairs would be governed by systems it inherited from Britain, which included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and eventually, free elections.

Under this arrangement, Hong Kong became freer and more prosperous than the rest of China. This made the rest of China look bad. So less than 20 years into the agreed-upon 50 years, China began undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy by attempting to “pre-screen” candidates in their 2014 elections.

The response from Hong Kong became known as the “Umbrella Movement,” and included nine days of protest against Beijing’s violation of the agreement. In 2014, as now, the protests were more than an objection to a singular law or political change.

As the Wall Street Journal reported back then, the protests contained “an undercurrent of another, much older tension: Between Christianity and Communist China.” At least three of the founders of the Umbrella Movement were Christians, including the face of the movement, Joshua Wong.

In fact, there was a strong Christian presence felt throughout the protests: “prayer groups, crosses, and protesters reading Bibles in the street.” Churches played a “quiet but important role in the city’s protests, by offering food and shelter to demonstrators.”

Oh, and one more thing to know (again from the Wall Street Journal): “Hong Kong churches have long tried to spread Christianity in China. Protestant pastors based in Hong Kong have helped propagate the evangelical brands of Christianity that have alarmed the Chinese leadership in Beijing with their fast growth.”

In recent years, Beijing has gone from being alarmed about the growth of Christianity to declaring war on it.

The people of Hong Kong realize that things have gotten a lot worse in China since 2014. They want nothing to do with Xi’s “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” And because (unlike their mainland cousins) their internet isn’t censored, they know what is happening to the Uighurs and to the Christians today on the mainland.

It shouldn’t surprise us that, as Christianity Today reported, there’s a significant Christian dimension to this year’s protests as well, just like there was in 2014. In fact, back in April, several Christians, including Joshua Wong, were arrested and imprisoned for taking part in pro-democracy protests.

Christians in Hong Kong aren’t buying the government’s spin that the proposed new law would “ensure that [Hong Kong does] not become a haven for fugitives and that existing legal protections and human rights would remain in force.” They realize that subverting Hong Kong’s autonomy is yet another way for Communist officials to suppress Christianity and its influence. They realize that, as the Times points out, laws like these are intended to “extend China’s reach into Hong Kong and strip its residents of the protection of the law.”

And we can be certain, the first protections to be stripped will be those of Hong Kong’s Christians.