Last week, President Biden addressed Congress to stump for his latest proposal: The American Families Plan. If passed as is, the initiative would do the following:

Provide universal preschool for all three and four-year-olds

Offer two years of free community college to young adults

Cover childcare costs for families in poverty.

Set a $15 minimum wage for early childcare workers.

Mandate 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave.

Make a summer food program serving children from low-income families permanent

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to dive deeper into Biden’s proposal. What is it trying to address? Who is it trying to serve? What changes should Christians see as wins for their own families and for their neighbors? And where should they push back or critique?Rachel Anderson is a resident fellow with the Center for Public Justice, leading the Families Valued project, where her work focuses on work and family policy and faith-based civic engagement.

Anderson joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss why paid family leave has not been embraced in America, why so many churches are involved in early childhood education, and why family policy critics often take contrary positions on parents working or not.

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In 2019, 400,000 people around the world died of malaria. But it may never reach that high a number again.

Early trials of a new vaccine have been shown to be 77 percent effective. This is not the first vaccine that has attempted to fight the deadly mosquito-transmitted disease. But it is the only one that has had this level of efficacy.

This news comes when COVID-19 vaccines dominate the international discussion. Some wealthier nations, most notably the United States, have prioritized vaccinating their own people first. This week, however, the Biden administration did announce it would be sharing its enormous stockpile of Astrazenca doses. Other countries, like China and Russia, have been shipping their vaccines around the world, though some have questioned their efficacy.

Many poorer countries have worried that they might wait years for their people to be vaccinated and be left with other countries’ lower-quality leftovers.It also comes as scientists have begun thinking through the ways MRNA technology, which was used to develop the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, might be used to combat other diseases.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss the good news about the malaria vaccine, how this will affect Christian humanitarian work around the world, and what it looks like to be a good neighbor when it comes to vaccine distribution.

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On May 25 of 2020 police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds killing him. On Tuesday, a jury convicted him of all charges.

The jury’s decision comes at a time when national attention is once again being paid to police brutality. On Sunday, a police officer in Minnesota shot and killed 20-year-old Duante Wright after reportedly confusing a taser and gun. Last week, Chicago released body cam footage of a police officer shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo who appeared to have dropped his weapon and raised his hands. A video from December of two police officers pointing guns, pepper spraying, and pushing a black army officer during a traffic stop also circulated this month.

These news stories also come at a time when several high profile mass shootings have devastated the country.In previous shows, we’ve talked about white evangelical attitudes towards police and the changing religious beliefs of many African American protesters leading the Black Lives Matter movement. This week on the show, we wanted to discuss the role that media has played in how we understand these phenomena and if it plays any role in perpetuating them. How has video coverage helped us better understand what is happening? How does it further divide and harden us?

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Last Friday, a bill that would ban transgender athletes from competing in middle, high school, and college sports passed in the West Virginia legislature. At least 20 different state legislatures have introduced transgender athlete bans in 2021. While South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem vetoed a proposed ban, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi have signed these changes into law. 

Arkansas’ governor, Asa Hutchinson, did, however, veto legislation that would have banned gender confirming treatments or sex reassignment surgery for transgender youth under 18. That bill would have been the first in the country to ban this practice. Meanwhile, last Monday, GOP legislators in North Carolina introduced a bill that that would prevent doctors from performing sex reassignment surgery for transgender people under the age of 21. 

This flurry of state bills—a month ago LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign had counted more than 80—has once again provoked impassioned fighting, much of it centered around children. It’s led to questions of fairness in youth sports, if adolescent judgement and diagnosis should be trusted, and what role and what say parents should have in how their children express their gender.

Mark Yarhouse is a pyschology professor at Wheaton College and the director of the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute. His books include Understanding Gender Dysphoria and most recently, Emerging Gender Identities. He joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen on this week’s episode of Quick to Listen.

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This week, the number of Americans who have received their first dose of the vaccine will rise to one third of the population. As numbers continue to climb in the US and around the world, some churches will have to contend with yet another set of pandemic-spurred challenges.

At what point will churches that have been meeting virtually go back to in-person meetings? At what point will in-person churches drop mask mandates or other COVID-19 protocol? As the vaccine opens up to all US adults, will they start requiring attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test before entry? And will white evangelical resistance to the vaccine subside? In February, 45 percent of this population said they would not be taking the vaccine, according to Pew Research Center.

But beyond figuring out the logistics of in-person worship, churches will also have to contend with figuring out the role of their online ministries. Will they attempt to balance both? Or will one cannibalize the other? This week on Quick to Listen, we’ll be talking about the challenges pastors and church leaders face at this point in the pandemic, with Jay Kim, lead pastor of teaching at WestGate Church in California’s Silicon Valley and teacher-in-residence at Vintage Faith. He’s also the author of Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age.

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This week, Protestants and Catholics around the world will celebrate Easter, once again in the midst of a global pandemic. At least 2.8 million people have died from COVID-19 and while many affluent countries have begun to vaccinate their people in earnest, this illness still defines most of public life.

Because of Lent, many Christians have already been grappling with death in the context of their faith. But this week, the church will be once again sitting with the reality of Jesus’ death and his astonishing resurrection. Of course, for us believers, this astounding turn of events has life-changing ramifications for what comes after our physical deaths. But what does it mean for physical bodies as we inhabit them today? Does the Cross have any meaning for our physical health in this life?

Stephen Ko is senior pastor at New York Chinese Alliance Church and formerly a professor of global health and pediatrics at Boston University and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. He is the co-author of the forthcoming All Creation Groans (Wipf & Stock) and the author of the also forthcoming Incarnational Health .

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Last week, a gunman shot up three spas in Atlanta, taking the lives of eight people, six of them Asian American. Their names were Soon Chung Park, age 74; Hyun Jung Grant, age 51; Suncha Kim, age 69; Yong Yue, age 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33; Paul Andre Michels, age 54; and Xiaojie Tan, age 49.These attacks, coming just weeks after several reports were released calling attention to racial violence and harassment against Asian Americans.

One report from a group called Stop AAPI Hate listed nearly 3,8000 incidents from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021 which included verbal harassment, physical assault, shunning, civil rights violations, and online harassment.

While the community currently only makes up about six percent of the population, according to Pew Research Center, by 2055, this may be the largest minority group.It’s also a community with enormous amounts of diversity. The largest communities are ethnically Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to learn more about the influence of Christian faith of Asian American, the US’ fasting growing immigrant group and the obligations of the church at large to welcome and love them.

Our guest this week is Jane Hong, associate professor of history at Occidental College and the author of Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion. Her next book book from Oxford University Press is tentatively titled Model Christians, Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Politics in the Transformation of U.S. Evangelicalism. She is currently co-hosting Centering: The Asian American Christian Podcast.

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Last month, the House of Representatives voted to approve the Equality Act. If passed, the bill would amend the Civil Rights Act to add sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity to its list of protected classes. The bill has broad implications on the rules for employment, housing, education, nonprofit groups that receive federal funds, and other areas.

Many Christian leaders have opposed the bill but say they support expanding federal protections against discrimination. One example is Shirley Hoogstra, the president of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities. She told The Washington Post this week “I have come to see that LGBTQ people should have the same ease of movement about their lives. They shouldn’t run into unexpected, dignity-dismissing episodes.”

But Hoogstra and others are concerned that the Equality Act offers few protections for religious organizations and institutions that hold to traditional views of marriage and oppose things like gender reassignment surgeries

.In fact, the Equality Act specifically says that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, a federal law written to directly protect religious freedom, can’t be used to challenge the Equality Act’s rules on sexuality.

This week, as the bill went before the Senate Judiciary Committee, dozens of black Christian leaders published an open letter concerned that the bill would allow “LGBT rights to be used as a sword against faith institutions rather than a shield to protect the vulnerable.” Among the signers of that letter are the international religious freedom ambassador under the Obama administration, Suzan Johnson Cook and CT board member Claude Alexander.

Shirley Mullen is president of Houghton College and serves on the board of several Christian institutions, including the National Association of Evangelicals and the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities. For many years she was provost at Westmont College, and is a historian of philosophical thought, with doctorates in both history and philosophy.

Mullen joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss the specifics of the Equality Act and outline what comes next for religious institutions holding to a traditional sexual ethic and loving their neighbor in a pluralistic democracy.

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Listen to Quick to Listen’s Episode on Fairness for Fall: If Religious Liberty and LGBT Activists Want to Move Forward, the Courts Won’t Help

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On Sunday, millions watched Oprah interview Prince Harry and Megan, the Duchess of Sussex. Over the course of the conversation, the couple made several dramatic revelations, the majority about family members.

Meghan disclosed that there had been “concerns and conversations” between her husband and his family, the Royal family, about how dark their son’s skin might be.

Both Meghan and Harry talked about the challenges of convincing their relatives of the severity of the bad press they received and specifically of the toxicity of the racism leveled at their family. “If a member of his family would comfortably say ‘We’ve all had to deal with things that are rude’ — rude and racist are not the same,” said Meghan.

Meghan also added she dealt with suicidal thoughts and after seeking out the professional health at the palace’s HR department and, “I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”-Harry said after leaving the monarchy behind, he realized. “I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped,” he said. “My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave.”

He also said that his relationship with his father had suffered greatly over the years. At one point his father had stopped taking his calls. “I will always love him. But there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship.”

With this conversation dominating the week’s news cycle, this week on Quick to Listen we wanted to talk about families, specifically adult children’s relationship with their parents. How does one honor their parents and live out the fifth commandment in 2021?

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In 2019, prime minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee noted that he had given amnesty to thousands of political prisoners, discontinued media censorship, fought against corruption, and legalized previously outlawed opposition groups. Ahmed also received attention for his religious reconciliation work which included mending a split in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and bringing together Christians and Muslims. The son of a Muslim father and Orthodox mother, Abiy is a Protestant Pentecostal, or “Pentay,” like many Ethiopian politicians.

But, as of late, things have been tense. CNN recently reported that scores of people were murdered last November by whom survivors believe are soldiers from nearby Eritrea, whose presence they blame on the Ethiopian government. The massacre occurred in the Tigray region, the northern part of the country and one which shares a border with Eritrea. It came just weeks after the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front attacked Ethiopian military forces and the central government responded violently in return.

Ethiopia has a long and extensive Christian history. The second country in the world to officially adopt Christianity, for 15 centuries, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has survived estrangement from Rome, the spread of Islam, and repeated colonialization attempts. There’s also millions of people, like Abiy, who identify as Protestant.

Desta Heliso was born and raised in Ethiopia and has served as lecturer and director of the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. He currently resides in London but continues to coordinate the Centre for Ancient Christianity and Ethiopian Studies at EGST in Addis Ababa. He is also a fellow of the Center for Early African Christianity and a visiting lecturer at the London School of Theology.

Heliso joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen this week to discuss this tragic and fraught conflict and to offer a robust picture of what Christianity looks like where more than 40 percent of the country identifies as Ethiopian Orthodox and nearly 25 percent as Protestant.

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