Breakpoint

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith discuss the welcome decision by the United Methodists at their special session to uphold biblical teaching and discipline on human sexuality. The principled stand taken by delegates from around the world sent a clear message: The narrative of “cultural inevitability” concerning LGBT theology is a false narrative.

Also on this episode: Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress; the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the so-called Peace Cross case; new rules by the Trump Administration deny certain funds to Planned Parenthood (once again showing that elections do matter); and Lesbian tennis superstar Martina Navratilova catches flak for insisting that it’s insanity for biological men who claim to be women to compete in sporting events with biological women.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/bp-this-week-the-methodists-take-a-stand/

Resources

The Peace Cross and the Supreme Court

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, BreakPoint, March 1, 2019

Divided Methodists

John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris, BreakPoint, February 28, 2019

African United Methodists Won't Trade Bible for Dollars

Mark Tooley, Juicy Ecumenism, February 23, 2019

First Liberty

Navratilova, Identity Politics, and Intersectionality

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, BreakPoint, February 27, 2019

Last September on BreakPoint, we told you about the constitutional challenge to a World War I memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland, known as the “Peace Cross.” The Cross was erected on private land in 1925 by the American Legion. It was to be a memorial to 49 men from that area who died in the Great War. Their names are listed on the plaque at the base of the monument.

In 1961, the state assumed control of the land, and therefore responsibility for the memorial’s maintenance. For more than fifty years, no one protested the Cross’s presence on public land or the state paying for its maintenance.

But in 2014,  the American Humanist Association challenged the constitutionality of the Peace Cross in federal court. They lost the initial case in Federal District Court, but they prevailed at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and this past Wednesday heard the oral arguments.

There was a lot at stake. If the American Humanist Association prevails, the implications would reach far beyond this memorial in Maryland to any and all memorials on public land everywhere in the country. Any of them with anything resembling a cross or religious symbol of any kind would be fair game.

The justices, or at least most of them, seemed aware of the stakes and a bit skeptical that after all this time the Peace Cross suddenly presented an immediate threat to our republic. Still, some of the justices’ comments were less than a ringing endorsement of the place of religion in the public square. Most notably Justice Elena Kagan, who as Solicitor General defended the presence of a cross in the Mojave National Monument, emphasized the historical context. At the time of its erection in 1925, she pointed out, crosses were common in war memorials and were not intended to convey a specific religious message. As she put it, “All the words on the memorial are words about military valor and so forth. So why in a case like that can we not say essentially the religious content has been stripped of this monument?”

For Kagan, crosses were “the preeminent symbol for how to memorialize the war dead at that time.”

In a somewhat ironic twist, it was the lawyer for the American Humanist Association who then insisted that “a large Latin cross can’t be stripped of its religious meaning. I don’t think it needs special words to . . . announce that this is . . . a religious symbol,” he said.

We should be sincerely grateful that, as The New York Times and the Washington Post both agreed,  a solid majority of the justices seem to be for allowing the Peace Cross to remain on this public land. If the case were to go the other way, we could be looking at a scenario raised by Justice Breyer: wholesale demolition of suspiciously-religious historical monuments across the country, possibly starting with Arlington Cemetery across the Potomac and its hundreds of thousands of crosses.

But the argument, like the case itself, underscores the allergy to religion that permeates Establishment Clause jurisprudence, especially from the left. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, apparently the only kind of godliness  that’s “acceptable” these days is one that denies the power thereof. So religious symbols must be, as Justice Kagan put it, “stripped” of “their religious content” if it’s to pass constitutional muster. That would mean that the image of Moses found on the walls of the Supreme Court, must be nothing more than equivalent to the images of Augustus, Hammurabi, John Marshall, and Napoleon — a grouping that would surprise many rabbis, not to mention Moses himself.

So I pray that the New York Times and the Washington Post are correct in their reading of the justice. But we shouldn’t break out into our best end-zone celebrations just yet. Even a victory in this case could still leave the public square a little more naked.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-the-peace-cross-and-the-supreme-court/

Resources

Supreme Court seems to seek narrow way to uphold cross that memorializes war dead

Robert Barnes | Washington Post | February 27, 2019

Supreme Court appears inclined to let 40-foot ‘Peace Cross’ stand on public land

Bill Mears | Fox News | February 27, 2019

First Liberty website

For generations, U.S. churches sent missionaries around the world, preaching the Gospel and planting churches in places such as Africa, South America, and Asia. Today, many of the millions of Christians and churches that resulted from those missionary efforts are more biblically faithful than their American forebears. This is especially true of certain denominations and certain issues.

These daughter-churches overseas, traditional as they are, remain in communion with their now-liberal mother-churches. Which poses a serious challenge. Actually, it would be accurate to say that the central concern of many in these mother churches today is advancing sexual heresy—especially LGBT theology. And it would be accurate to say that the churches they helped to plant, praise God, aren’t budging.

Many mainline denominations stateside have exerted tremendous pressure on churches overseas to give up the 2,000-year-old understanding of the Bible and morality for thae new sexual heresy. In doing so, they’ve been guilty co-conspirators with progressive governmental activists of a kind of ideological colonialism. And then, they act surprised when their actions create serious tensions and even splits in their denominations.

The tensions in one of the largest Protestant communions in the world, the United Methodist Church, has taken center stage this past week. So far, over 12 million Methodists—almost half of whom live outside the U.S.—have managed to hold together through years of often heated deliberation over sexuality and other issues. That may now change.

This week, over 800 delegates of the UMC General Conference convened in St. Louis to decide—among other things—whether to reaffirm the denomination’s historical stance on sexuality or to split over the issue. In the end, the Conference rejected two plans that would have accommodated sexual heresy at various levels and instead approved what is called “The Traditional Plan.” By doing so, the UMC chose to uphold marriage as between one man and one woman, and to strengthen disciplinary measures against churches that have departed from historic, biblical teaching on sexuality. Before the convention, many liberal churches threatened to leave the denomination if it took this path. We shall now see whether the Methodists are facing an Atlantic-sized split.

Thanks mostly to African Methodists, the UMC’s Book of Discipline already defines homosexual behavior as “incompatible with Christian teaching” and forbids openly gay clergy and same-sex “marriages.” That hasn’t stopped many American Methodists from pursuing and blessing LGBT relationships and activity, anyway.

Despite what you might hear, there is no question about who left who in this situation. Methodism’s biblically-minded founder, John Wesley, called Christians to holiness, but his liberal heirs fly rainbow flags, elect openly lesbian bishops, and  bless abortion clinics.

And,despite what you might hear, there is no question about where the future of Methodism lies. As NPR reports, membership in U.S. Methodist churches fell by 300,000 between 2014 and 2016. By contrast, the denomination is growing globally. Whether or not Methodism stays united, the future clearly belongs to the traditionalists.

Still, if liberal churches leave the denomination, it will cost the faithful churches abroad a great deal of financial support. Even so, don’t expect the international churches to cave to the promise of money.

Speaking at a breakfast on Saturday, Dr. Jerry Kulah, Dean of theology at the United Methodist University in Liberia, responded to this sort of threat in no uncertain terms:

“Africans are not children in need of western enlightenment when it comes to the church’s sexual ethics,” he said. “We do not need to hear a progressive U.S. bishop lecture us about our need to ‘grow up.’”

He concluded: “…the vast majority of African United Methodists will never, ever trade Jesus and the truth of the Bible for money.”

We need to pray for Christians like Dr. Kulah and the faithful members in all denominations who are feeling the pressure of sexual colonialism. Because as important as church unity is, the truth matters far more.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/breakpoint-divided-methodists/

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, Dr. Angela Franks joins John Stonestreet to discuss the disturbing, intertwined history of abortion, eugenics, racism, and the war against female fertility.

Angela Franks is a theologian, speaker, writer, and mother of six. She serves as Professor of Theology at the Theological Institute for the New Evangelization at St. John's Seminary in Boston.

Martina Navratilova is one of the greatest woman tennis players of all time. During her career, she won an astounding 59 Grand Slam titles. She’s in the Hall of Fame, but if there were a tennis Mt. Rushmore, she’d be on it.

And if there were a gay Mount Rushmore, she’d be on that one too. She was one of the first world-class athletes to come out as gay, all the way back in 1981, long before it was common, much less fashionable, to do so.

Despite that resume, Athlete Ally, an LGBT athletic group, removed her from their advisory board and have publicly disassociated from her.

Why? Because though she has long represented the “L” in the LGBT acronym, she offended the “T.”

In a recent column in the Times of London, Navratilova wrote that allowing male athletes who identify as transgender to compete against biological women is “insane.”

This was not the first time she had expressed such an opinion. Last December, she found herself in hot water when she tweeted that “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women . . . There must be some standards and having [male genitalia] and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”

The backlash was swift and harsh. In response, Navratilova said that she would take some time to research and rethink the issue. Her views were, in her words, “only strengthened.”

As she wrote, “To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.”

Obviously, that wasn’t the sort of “rethinking” her critics expected. But then again, they weren’t really hoping she’d think. They were demanding ideological conformity.

At a deeper level, this story reveals our society’s embrace of a particularly unworkable variety of identity politics. There are many definitions of “identity politics,” but they all boil down to the idea that the only thing that matters, especially in politics, is the experience of oppression shared by all those who share some identifying marker—like race, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, etc.

In the identity politics way of keeping score of cultural grievances, everyone’s experience of “oppression” is deemed equally valid and horrific, even if it isn’t.

Now, add to identity politics the idea of “intersectionality.” Intersectionality attempts to pile identities and their oppressive experiences on top of one another. Someone with multiple identity markers can claim degrees of intersectionality and therefore their own special kinds of oppression: For instance, a person might be an Afro-Latina lesbian female. Or a Filipino trans.

The fuzzy math at work here makes the possibility of conflict almost unlimited, an especially acute possibility in the growing acronym of LGBT. The only thing members of this coalition have in common is that they are not heterosexual.

A core tactic of transgender ideology has been to blur and deny any differences between the various letters in that acronym, all while hijacking the narrative of oppression. In the process, they deny all differences between women and men—from strength to traits to the very existence of sex and gender altogether.

Well, Martina Navratilova knows better. She understands the difference between the female body and the male body. She knows that there’s more to being a woman than simply identifying as one. But, saying it out loud makes her persona non grata.

To be precise, she’s now known as a TERF, a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” a name that is every bit as insane and unfair as allowing men to compete in women’s sports.

But this is where a hyper post-modern, feelings-and identity-driven worldview leads us: not to fairness. Not to overcoming oppression. Only to insanity.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/breakpoint-navratilova-identity-politics-and-intersectionality/

I still find it hard to shake that image of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York legislators ghoulishly celebrating the signing of a bill that could allow the killing of babies right up to the point of birth for any reason.

Then, just days later, a Virginia legislator introduced a similar bill. And now-disgraced Governor Ralph Northam defended it on live radio, implying that babies with disabilities could be left to die after birth if the mother so chose. Thank God the Virginia assembly shelved that idea.

What you may not have heard is that legislators in Rhode Island, Vermont, New Mexico, and Illinois are preparing similar no-restriction abortion laws.

Let’s be clear. Something is happening here. This is a crucial moment. In addition to demonic activity, it’s clear that radical abortion advocates are motivated by fear—that the Supreme Court may soon overturn Roe v. Wade. They want to ensure their states will allow abortion at any time for any reason.

Christians, who believe that human life is sacred from the moment of conception until natural death, need to answer this new flurry of threats to life. We must put our prayers, skills, resources, and time to work on behalf of the most vulnerable victims in our society.

Which is why I want to tell you about a new campaign just launched by my friends at Focus on the Family. It’s called “See Life Clearly.” The very first thing to do is to sign their statement “A Declaration for Life.”

As Focus on the Family President Jim Daly announced recently, the See Life Clearly Campaign will culminate on May 4 in New York City. On that date, Lord willing, Focus on the Family “will broadcast live 4-D ultrasound images on a massive digital marquee in Times Square in the heart of New York City.” The event will also be simulcast worldwide. They’re calling it “Alive from New York”—you might catch the reference.

In other words, in the heart of Manhattan, where the nation’s most radical and cruel abortion law is now in effect, people will see with their own eyes that what the abortion movement so often hides as “a choice” or a “clump of cells” is indeed a precious life.

One way you can support this effort is to put your name to “A Declaration for Life.” You will be affirming that you believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, that science and Scripture affirm that life in the womb should be protected at every stage and is “wonderfully and fearfully made,” that with these new laws our states have reached “a tragic new low point,” and finally, that abortion is incompatible with “the virtues of compassion, freedom, and equality” that characterize a just society.

Now, it’s a good and vital thing to sign your name—to make a public declaration—that you support human life in the womb. In fact, it’s a great thing. But the Declaration for Life asks us to make an additional commitment: to WORK to defend life in the womb.

All of us who sign the Declaration are committing:

1) to advocate for pro-life legislation at the state level, including a ban on late-term abortions and those targeting babies on the basis of disability, sex or race; 2) to promote the end of government funding of the abortion industry; 3) to vote for candidates who respect the sanctity of life; 4) to urge the appointment of constitutionalist judges who will protect the fundamental right to life; 5) to support both women in  unplanned pregnancies and their babies through the good work of Pregnancy Resource Centers; 6) to encourage and promote the beauty of adoption; and 7) to pray fervently for a nationwide reawakening to the value and sanctity of every human life.

Until that day comes, the Declaration concludes, “we will push back against the culture of death. This is the moment we unite with one voice and proclaim, ‘No more.’”

Amen. I’ve already signed on. I hope you will do so as well.  And while you’re at it, consider joining us for the Alive from New York event May 4 in Times Square.

Come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and I will link you to A Declaration for Life.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/breakpoint-sign-a-declaration-for-life/

How is it that the so-called “New Green Deal” isn’t just about global warming, it’s also about radically altering the economy, health care, government, and capitalism itself? Dr. Jay Richards of Catholic University and the Discovery Institute joins John Stonestreet to discuss the pernicious political ideology and economic theory behind the New Green Deal.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/the-ideology-behind-the-new-green-deal/

Is Christianity STILL good for the world? That’s the theme of our Wilberforce Weekend this year. We have an incredible lineup of speakers who will seek to answer that question from a variety of angles. But the most definitive answer may very well come from the 2019 winner of the William Wilberforce Award, a Coptic Christian known around the world as Mama Maggie.

Thirty years ago, Mama Maggie was a well-to-do Egyptian woman who loved traveling from Cairo to Europe with her husband for parties and shopping. But in her mid-thirties, she and a group of friends from church decided to visit one of Cairo’s garbage slums. Some 60,000 people live there, most of them Christians who gather and sort garbage in the most appalling conditions for just a few coins a day—barely enough to live on.

As she spoke with the parents and hugged the children in the garbage dumps, Maggie’s life was transformed. As Ellen Vaughn wrote in her biography of Mama Maggie, “Maggie fell in love with the privilege of being a part of their lives.” She began visiting the slums every day, and founded a ministry called Stephen’s Children, named for the first Christian martyr. Three decades later, Stephen’s Children now helps 33,000 children through home visits, camps, vocational training, schools, and medical care.

The stories that arise from this woman’s work are amazing. For example, a few years ago, Mama Maggie hugged a little boy named Karim. As she placed her hand over his heart, she knew at once something was wrong. Mama Maggie asked a Stephen’s Children leader to take Karim to her brother, who is a cardiologist. He discovered Karim had a hole in his heart.  He needed surgery to correct the problem, but his desperately poor family couldn’t possibly afford to pay for it.

That’s where Stephen’s Children stepped in; they paid for the entire cost of the operation. And once Karim recovered, ministry volunteers visited him regularly, brought the family food, and invited Karim to take part in a Stephen’s Children camp.

Then there’s the story of Sharif, another boy who attended a Stephen’s Children camp. Just before Mother’s Day one year, Stephen’s Children volunteers visited his home to give him a little money so that he could buy his mother a gift. But nobody was home. The leaders went back several times, although they normally didn’t do this. On their fifth visit, they saw Sharif arriving with a baby girl in his arms. The baby was sick, but her father had no money to pay for the medicine she needed.

Stephen’s Children volunteers gave Sharif the money, who immediately handed it over to his father. “Buy Baby Sarah whatever she needs,” he told him.

When Sharif’s father discovered how many times the leaders had come back to his house, he began to cry.

“For ten years,” he said, “I have never set foot in a church. I believed that God had forgotten me. But because of what happened today, I will go back to church.”

There are thousands upon thousands of other stories like this. In fact, I want you to know seven of them. Back in 2015, the world was shocked when 21 Coptic Christians were beheaded by ISIS terrorist. Each refused to renounce their faith. At least seven of those martyrs had attended Mama Maggie’s schools.

For her thirty years of serving others in the Cairo slums, the Colson Center is awarding the 2019 Wilberforce Award to Mama Maggie. Each year we seek to honor someone whose life and work echo that of the great British parliamentarian William Wilberforce, who labored for 40 years to banish the slave trade in Britain and reform a broken society.

Mama Maggie will be honored at our Wilberforce Weekend, May 17 through May 19, near Washington D. C. It’s the annual “family reunion” of the Colson Center. It will be a packed house of over 800 people. I hope you will be one of them. For more information about the weekend and the incredible work of Mama Maggie, visit www.wilberforceweekend.com.

Her loving work demonstrates, like only a life lived in service to Christ can, that Christianity indeed is still good for the world.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/breakpoint-mama-maggie-and-christianity-are-good-for-the-world/

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith cover a lot of ground from the news of the week: The debate between “Christian abortionist” Willie Parker and pro-life educator Mike Adams; Focus on the Family’s new pro-life initiative that will culminate with a Times Square live broadcast of  4-D ultrasounds; how to sign “A Declaration for Life;” the odd case of Jussie Smollett; the underwhelming movies up for the Academy Awards; and finally, the anniversary of the execution of Sophie and Hans Scholl for their resistance to the Nazis

Resources

A Debate to Watch

John Stonestreet and G. Shane Morris, BreakPoint, February 18, 2019

Sign "A Declaration for Life"

A silhouette of a man

Warren Cole Smith, WORLD Magazine, February 12, 2019

The Academy Awards and the Lost Art of Storytelling

Warren Cole Smith and Megan Basham, BreakPoint Podcast, February 20, 2019

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose

Margie Burns, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

Video of Abortion Debate Between Willie Parker and Mike Adams

As soon as the video becomes available, we will provide the link. We apologize for the delay.

The steadily deteriorating state of religious freedom in China has been a frequent topic of late, both here on BreakPoint and other media outlets. The picture is bleak. An estimated one million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in what are essentially re-education camps, as part of an attempt to erase their religious and cultural identity.

There’s also been a strong assault on Chinese Christianity. What little freedom Chinese Christians had is now being taken away: Provincial officials have demolished crosses, cracked down on house churches, arrested pastors, and put officially-recognized churches under tighter control.

Thus, the recent report out of Liaoning province, a region near the border with North Korea, shouldn’t surprise us. It should trouble and appall us, but not surprise us.

According to the Australian website MercatorNet, the Education Bureau of Lishan district” in Liaoning “issued a plan for the campaign to resist religious beliefs in kindergartens.”

The plan prohibits schools from “hiring [new] teachers who hold religious beliefs.” With regard to existing teachers, it calls for increased supervision, including “comprehensive inspections of teachers’ preparation for lessons in order to root out any and all religious content.”

But the plan doesn’t stop with teachers. Students, as well as teachers, are now required to “sign a commitment statement promising they won’t browse religious websites or participate in religious forums.” The statement reads in part, “I will adhere to the correct political direction, advocate science, promote atheism, and oppose theism.”

These are kindergartners!

It’s not only in that province. Students in other parts of China have also been coerced into signing anti-religious pledges. And there are reports of students who, because they refused to sign, have been beaten.

Unfortunately, short of divine intervention, it may be that things will get significantly worse. As I’ve told you before on BreakPoint, Xi Jinping has become the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. Like Mao, Xi has fostered a cult of personality. He calls himself lingxiu, a reverential term for “leader” not heard since the days of Mao. It’s very similar to what Fuehrer means in German. Fawning coverage of Xi in official media borders on self-parody.

Christians have been in the crosshairs of the Xi Jinping cult. Believers in south China have been forced to take down pictures of Jesus from their walls and replace them with pictures Xi Jinping.

Not only is he a jealous would-be god, he’s also an insecure one. To understand why, you need to understand that the source of the Communist Party’s legitimacy has been economic growth. For the past forty years, the Chinese people have been asked to trade certain freedoms that we take for granted, such as freedom of speech and religion, for increasing prosperity. That trade has preserved a measure of social order.

But now, many economists see signs that the good times are coming to an end in China. In fact, that may be an understatement. It could be something even worse. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “China’s consumers and businesses are losing confidence. Car sales have plunged. The housing market is stumbling. Some factories are letting workers off for the big Lunar New Year holiday two months early.”

In other words, the Communist Party may not be able to keep up its end of the bargain. If they fail, ordinary Chinese people could remember everything they've had to put up with and get angry. Very angry.

So how will Xi respond to this? We already know the answer to that question. He will crack down even harder. Cult leaders don’t admit mistakes, much less give up their power voluntarily. They look for scapegoats and hunt for heretics.

In China, Christians qualify as both. As adherents to what many Chinese regard as a “Western” religion, their loyalties can be called into question. And they’ll likely not join Xi’s cult of personality, so they will be ideal targets.

All of this is why our brothers and sisters there need our prayers. And our voice. We must urge our government and U. S. corporations that do business in China to use their influence on behalf of persecuted Chinese Christians.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/02/breakpoint-persecution-rising-in-china/

Resources

Students in China are forced to sign away their religious commitments

Piao Junying | Mercatornet.com | February 13, 2019

China Tells Christians to Replace Images of Jesus with Communist President

Kate Shellnutt | Christianity Today | November 17, 2017