The ERLC’s Andrew Walker and Daniel Patterson discuss proposed California legislation SB-1146 and its implications for religious higher education.

SB1146 is scheduled for committee vote August 11 and a vote in the full California Assembly August 19.

* Read, join, and share the statement in opposition to SB 1146.

* Christianity Today: Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Leaders: California, Please Protect Religious Liberty

* View existing signatories via ERLC.com

* Canon & Culture: In Higher Education, California is Becoming Anti-Choice

Other resources

* SB1146Discriminates.org

* Religious liberty trouble in California: An interview with the President of Biola Univerity – ERLC

* Biola, conscience and the culture war – Mere Orthodoxy

Andrew T. Walker serves as the Director of Policy Studies. In his role, he researches and writes about human dignity, family stability, religious liberty, public theology, and the moral principles that support civil society. He also helps direct the ERLC’s Research Institute. Andrew is currently a Ph.D. student in Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His most recent book is Marriage is: How Marriage Transforms Society and Cultivates Human Flourishing. He is married to Christian, and they have two daughters. @andrewtwalk

Daniel Patterson serves as Chief of Staff at the ERLC. In this role, he directs the executive office of the president and helps lead strategic initiatives across the organization. He completed an MDiv and PhD in systematic theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Molly have been married since 2010, and together they have two daughters, Emma and Claire. @dlpatterson

Travis Wussow serves as the ERLC’s Director of International Justice and Religious Freedom. Travis taps in via the interwebs to visit with Canon & Culture to answer the following questions and many more: What’s what’s it like move your family from Texas to the Middle East? What reflections does Travis have from his travels to Morocco, Taiwan, and Oxford?

* VIDEO: Why go international with the ERLC?

* ERLC resources by Travis

* Reflections on the Marrakesh Declaration

* AUDIO: Jenny Yang on refugee resettlement

* AUDIO: Making disciples in Syria

* Asian-Pacific Religious Freedom Forum

* Religious Liberty Partnership

Travis Wussow,@traviswussow, serves as Director of International Justice & Religious Liberty and General Counsel for the ERLC. Travis leads ERLC’s first international office located in the Middle East. He received a B.B.A. in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law. He and his wife, Katie, have two daughters.

 

Canon & Culture is invaded by Aggies when Phillip Bethancourt, Ph.D. (ERLC Executive VP) joins us to talk about the ERLC’s collaboration with Southern Baptist seminaries. We also get a glimpse into the many events the ERLC has planned for 2016 and learn how Phillip instills Aggie values in his 4 boys while living in Tennessee. (Ok, not really. Maybe.)

Our conversation includes answers to the following questions, among many others:

* What does an executive vice president do, exactly?

* Is seminary only for pastors?

* What unique contributions does the ERLC provide a seminary curriculum?

* What events does the ERLC have planned for 2016?

Follow Phillip at PhillipBethancourt.com and @pbethancourt.

Education initiatives

* Big picture: ERLC Academy

* ERLC expands academic opportunities with Southern Baptist seminaries

* Google this.

* Baptist Press

* Louisville – Southern

* Ph.d. in christian ethics, emphasis in public policy

* Wake Forest – Southeastern

* Ph.D in public theology

* Kansas City – Midwestern

* Midwestern Seminary announces Doctoral Partnership with ERLC

* All SBC seminaries, including in

* New Orleans

* Fort Worth

* West Coast

* Training partnership with Ministry Grid

ERLC 2016 events

* All events

* National Conference: August, Nashville

* Annual Meeting of the SBC – June, St. Louis

* ERLC / 9Marks

Phillip Bethancourt is Executive Vice President of the ERLC. He leads the ERLC team to develop innovative strategies to equip churches to address the key moral and ethical issues of the day. He completed an MDiv and PhD in Systematic Theology at Southern after attending Texas A&M University. Phillip and his wife, Cami, have been married since 2005, and have four boys.

Following oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell (aka Zubik v. Burwell), our ADF friends Kristen Waggoner and Greg Baylor stop by Leland House to explain the case and share what they witnessed in the courtroom.

* Articles about the HHS mandate at Canon & Culture.

* Case overview via Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

* Visual explanation via TheLittleSistersOfThePoor.com

* HHS Central via Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

* Case details via SCOTUSBlog.

* Little Sisters, Big Case – by Russell Moore via The Hill (@thehill)

* Baptists are plaintiffs too:

* Ten things that might surprise you about GuideStone’s Supreme Court case – OS Hawkins

* Standing Together, the 2013 multi-faith open letter in opposition to the HHS mandate

Gregory S. Baylor, Esq.,serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, where he is the director of the Religious Schools Team. He litigates cases to protect the rights of Christian educational institutions across the nation. Since joining ADF in 2009, Baylor has focused his litigation efforts on protecting the religious freedom of Christ-centered educational institutions. He serves as religious liberty consultant to the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He also works to protect the First Amendment freedoms of students, faculty, and staff at public colleges and universities.

Kristen K. Waggoner, Esq., serves as senior counsel and senior vice president of legal advocacy with Alliance Defending Freedom, where she leads the organization’s legal and media efforts. Waggoner joined ADF in 2013 to support thousands of allied attorneys in their efforts to preserve religious freedom. She has trained allied attorneys and organizations on religious liberty issues and rights of conscience. She has also provided allies with legal support on cases pertaining to life, marriage, and family.

Canon & Culture welcomes a Lebanese missionary to Syria and a Syrian missionary to the United States to talk about the Gospel, the church in Syria, and the refugee crisis.

For more information about our guests, Micheline and Mouna, and their ministries please email me (Matt) via mhawkins (at) erlc.com.

To support them financially, visit my friends at The IRD:

* Go here.

* On the “Designate your gift” menu, choose “Other.”

* Then, write “Syria Project” in the blank that says “Tell us where your gift should go:”

One of our Capitol Hill neighbors, Aaron Mercer–VP of Government Relations for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB)–stops by ERLC’s Leland House to talk Internet freedom, viewpoint censorship, net neutrality, and his former life as a Senate staffer.

* NRB.org

* Annual Conference: Proclaim 16, Feb 23-26 – Nashville, TN

* John Milton Project

* NRB Government Relations

* Follow Aaron’s work at @NRBAdvocate

* The ERLC is delivering content to NRB TV. Friday nights at 8:00pm.

* How to view NRB TV?

Sidebars, as mentioned

* What happened in Houston?

* CCCU’s American Studies Program

Aaron Mercer is the Vice President of Government Relations for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). Overseeing NRB’s Capitol Hill office, Aaron is an advocate for NRB members as he communicates with officials of the White House, the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and other government institutions. Aaron spearheads NRB’s efforts to protect and promote our cherished First Amendment rights – particularly religious liberty and the freedom of speech.  Prior to coming to NRB, Aaron worked for a decade in government and non-profit sectors in Washington, DC. While in the office of U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (KS), Aaron served as the chief organizer of the Senate Values Action Team. He became a leading voice among Congressional staff for finding creative avenues to honor the sanctity of human life, to promote healthy families, and to ensure respect for religious freedom and our nation’s faith-filled heritage. Aaron is a graduate of Cedarville University in Ohio, he and his family are active members of South Run Baptist Church in Springfield, VA.

My friend Stanley Carlson-Thies, Ph.D. joins me to talk about religious freedom for institutions, the exciting world of government regulations, and how religious institutions are navigating–or failing to navigate–new challenges to freedoms we once took for granted.

* Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance

* Stanley Carlson-Thies – Biography

* Book: Free to Serve by authors  Stanley Carlson-Thies and Steven Monsma

* “This book speaks precisely to the most pressing crisis in American domestic politics.  The gay marriage controversy has put religious liberty on a collision course with the sensibilities of the modern social orthodoxy in a way that presents immediate dangers to Christian institutions. Monsma and Carlson-Thies employ their expertise and their convening power to address the problem in a way that is well-calibrated. Religious liberty needs to be defended on many levels, but one of the most important is as a public policy matter. This book makes a substantial contribution to our public thinking about religious freedom.” —Hunter Baker, university fellow at Union University, author of The End of Secularism, and Research Fellow on the ERLC’s Research Institute

* Christianity Today 2016 book awards

* CT Interview: How Christian Institutions Can Stay Christian Amid Secular Pressure

Stanley W. Carlson-Thies (PhD, University of Toronto) is director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, a division of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), in Washington, DC. He is a senior fellow at CPJ and at the Canadian think tank Cardus. He convenes the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom, a multi-faith alliance that advocates for the religious freedom of faith-based organizations to Congress and the federal government. Carlson-Thies served with George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and served on a task force of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Christianity Today. He has coauthored several books including The Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations to Staff on a Religious Basis.

So how does this refugee thing work, exactly? In light of the worst refugee crisis since WWII, Canon & Culture welcomes Jenny Yang of World Relief to find out. From her vantage point at the historic humanitarian relief agency, Jenny provides a thorough view of the refugee process from the point of original displacement to several months beyond initial resettlement.

* World Relief

* Bio, @JennyYangWR

* How you can help Syrian refugees – ERLC.com

* WeWelcomeRefugees.com, @WelcomeRefugees

* Helping resettle a refugee family in Georgia – by Bryant Wright

* Marietta Baptist Church helping Syrian refugees resettle in Georgia – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Coverage of ERLC Capitol Conversation

* Christian response to refugees & Muslims discussed – Baptist Press

* ERLC panel denounces anti-Muslim policies – WORLD Mag

Related resources

* Stop pitting security and compassion against each other in the Syrian refugee crisis – Russell Moore

* Why Christians must speak out against Donald Trump’s Muslim remarks – Russell  Moore

* The Way that Religious Liberty Ends – Bart Barber

* Evangelical leaders call for compassion for refugees

* Explainer: What you should know about the Syrian refugee controversy – ERLC.com

Jenny Yang is the Vice President of Advocacy and Policy, providing oversight for all advocacy initiatives and policy positions at World Relief. She has worked in the Resettle­ment section of World Relief as the Senior Case Manager and East Asia Program Officer where she focused on advocacy for refugees in the East Asia region and managed the entire refugee caseload for World Relief before their arrival to the United States. Prior to World Relief, she worked at one of the largest political fundraising firms in Maryland managing fundraising and campaigning for local politicians. She is co-author of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compas­sion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, is Chair of the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) Africa Work Group which brings NGOs and government partners together on the protection of African refugees, and was recently named as “50 Women to Watch” by Christianity Today.

In advance of China President Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. (Sept. 24-25), Kody Kness, vice president of China Aid, helps us think through the predicament of our fellow Christians in China and prisoners of conscience around the globe.

* ChinaAid.org

* Washington Post editorial, “China’s anti-Christian crusade.”

* 2 Christian pastors detained

* Letter to President Obama

* Kody Kness, biography

* @KodyKness

* Book: God’s Double Agent: The True Story of a Chinese Christian’s Fight for Freedom

* by Bob Fu, President of China Aid

Related news items

* WSJ – Xi Jinping’s Visit and Human Rights

* WSJ – China’s Ailing Prisoners

* Kody’s visit to Chinese prison

* WSJ – Behind China’s Prison Walls

* Washington Post Chinese prison officials thwart Virginia doctor’s effort to visit ailing dissident

* Washington Times U.S. doctor denied visit to sick Chinese democracy activist

Other resources

* China 18

* U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)

* What you need to know about USCIRF via ERLC.com

* State Department: Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom

* Defending Freedoms Project

 

Kody Kness is currently Vice President of China Aid, previously serving as Deputy Executive Director for Sudan Sunrise; Advocacy Manager for the Better World Campaign at the United Nations Foundation; International Human Rights Advisor for U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, advising on foreign policy issues such as religious freedom, Internet freedom, human trafficking, conflict commodities, and rule of law; Associate Director for Government Relations and Outreach at the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he worked closely with non-governmental organizations, the U.S. Congress, and both the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations to promote religious freedom and related human rights abroad.

Mark Tooley stops by the ERLC’s Leland House on Capitol Hill to talk Methodism and politics, as well as give us a preview of his new book, released this summer by Harper Collins, The Peace that Almost Was, about the final attempt to avert the American Civil War.

Mark serves as president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD).

* Book: Methodism & Politics in the Twentieth Century (Amazon)

* Book: The Peace that Almost Was

* IRD

* IRD blog: Juicy Ecumenism

* Bio

Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. A lifelong United Methodist, he has been active in United Methodist renewal since 1988, when he wrote a study about denominational funding of pro-Marxist groups for his local congregation. He attends a United Methodist church in Alexandria, Virginia.