Dotting many U.S. main streets are the steeples and towers of beautiful and historic buildings, originally built as houses of worship. From its founding, mainline denominations gave America a kind of Protestant consensus, embracing much of our nation's charity, many of its most prestigious schools, and a significant number of congressional leaders and even presidents. Today, many of these buildings, especially those draped with rainbow flags, lie empty. On Sundays, only a small number of worship...
Aug 09, 2021•5 min
This week on BreakPoint This Week John and Maria discuss a recent report that verified the sexual harassment claims surrounding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Then, Maria shares a recent podcast by Bari Weiss regarding Central Park Karen and how we respond to media outrage. To close Maria asks John for a worldview perspective of the new calls for masking in public places as the Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to spread across America.
Aug 07, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Two features of our modern society are distrust and fear. First, we distrust the institutions that have long been the pillars of our society, and we distrust them for a reason. Many of them are broken. Many of them have fallen into disrepute. Many of them are simply untrustworthy. We are also fearful. Who knows what the next cultural land mine will be. We hesitate to align ourselves with any person, any leader, any church, any business, anything that might prove to fall apart under our feet. The...
Aug 06, 2021•4 min
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a critical theorist everything looks like oppression. But what if that's not a big enough answer? I often paraphrase one of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesterton. He observed that there are a lot of ways to fall down but only one way to stand up straight. It's a lesson that many of us who want to better understand the world and to have a better world should learn. One of the commonest defenses of critical race theory (CRT) from its advocates is...
Aug 05, 2021•5 min
John and Shane field a question from a listener who is looking at the state of affairs in the world and wonders how she can give a tithe to the church when the world might need her money more. They also discuss a finer point on the idea of the theology of being fired.
Aug 04, 2021•20 min
Leaders of the early Church, the Apostles, and their disciples wrote letters to churches facing difficult challenges. It was to help them overcome internal conflicts, or to deal with heresies creeping in, or, most likely, to help handle the persecution the churches were facing or would face soon. The letters served to encourage, and to instruct. I thought of these letters a few weeks ago. I was actually thinking about my friends, Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman, two private business leader...
Aug 04, 2021•5 min
Earlier this year, a prestigious Manhattan prep school fired its longtime director of health and wellness, Justine Fonte for teaching at another institution. It wasn't that she taught somewhere else. It's what she taught: "porn literacy." To high schoolers. Even more revealing than the course itself has been the ensuing debate about how best to help teenagers navigate the adult content found everywhere in online life. In a sympathetic writeup , the New York Times defended Fonte's class for "teac...
Aug 03, 2021•5 min
Recently, a denominational leader said to me that the best thing that the Church could do to handle the challenges of this cultural moment would be to "stay in its lane." That the so-called "culture wars" have been grueling, and the Church is primarily called to spread the Gospel. That when it comes to the most controversial issues, the best strategy is non-confrontation and to focus on what is most important. I think I know what he meant. There's certainly truth to the idea that Christians over...
Aug 02, 2021•5 min
John and Shane discuss the place of the Olympics in framing our national identity and how we often objectify athletes as patriotic symbols akin to soldiers. This in the light of a recent situation where star gymnast Simone Biles took a mental health break from the Olympics, giving up her spot to other teammates to compete. Shane also asks John to expand upon recent BreakPoint commentaries, specifically one piece about a new sexual identity called "Demisexual." John then considers another that lo...
Jul 30, 2021•1 hr 8 min
We are inundated with stories proclaiming, and often celebrating, the decline of Christianity and Christian morality. Headlines announce the rise of the "nones," the redefinition (and reimagination) of marriage and family, the cultural triumph of the LGBTQ+ movement, and a million other ways Christianity is losing its cultural privilege and influence. On and on it goes. An important factor to remember is that although America has been the leader of the Christian world for much of the last centur...
Jul 30, 2021•5 min
Last week, A friend forwarded me a letter circulating in his community. It called for him to apologize for his race and placed on him the burden of hundreds of years of institutional racism and past injustices. There was no room for dissent, no room for disagreement. Agree in every way or stand condemned. That's not uncommon in this cultural moment. There's an incredible intensity, as my friend put it, an incredible absolutism for each and every issue, not just the race issue. It seems that the ...
Jul 29, 2021•6 min
John and Shane field a number of questions from listeners. One listener who struggles with same-sex attraction asks if Christians should stop using the LGBTQ acronym. Shane asks John a series of other questions from listeners. They include if Christians need to stop passing judgement on politicians who are out of step with moral principals and if Christians should offer reparations, noting the Canadian church arsons.
Jul 28, 2021•51 min
Last Thursday, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear what could be the most significant challenge to Roe v. Wade to date, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch submitted a brief clarifying how this case could impact the abortion debate. "Under the Constitution," she wrote, "may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion." This case goes back to 2018, when ...
Jul 28, 2021•5 min
Earlier this month, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced that she now identifies as "demisexual." As she described in the interview, her journey has gone from identifying as straight to identifying as bisexual to identifying as pansexual to now, finally, demisexual. This latest identification refers to someone who is sexually attracted only to people with whom one has formed an emotional attachment. This kind of "I want it to be special" approach to sexua...
Jul 27, 2021•6 min
The Journal of Medical Ethics recently released a formal paper in which they argued that parents should lose their rights to care for their children. The paper referenced an article by Dr. Lauren Notini showing a supposed benefit in treating minors with so-called gender-affirming surgeries. To be clear, "gender-affirming surgeries" is a nomenclature for surgery that actually is gender-denying, in which a surgery performed changes the body in a mutilating and permanent way. To cut through the ter...
Jul 26, 2021•4 min
John and Maria discuss a new reality that over other the past 2 months at least 48 churches have been burned by arsonists in Canada. While some charge the fires are backlash from First Nations members, who have discovered that many in their culture were mistreated by the Catholic church, some are saying the facts don't add up. John and Maria question if there is a growing distrust and violence against the church in Canada. John and Maria also revisit a BreakPoint from James Ackerman, who told hi...
Jul 23, 2021•57 min
The most common refrain in Genesis about God's creation of the world is that it was good . Down through the centuries, many people both inside and outside the Church have tried to say that the material world is less valuable or important than intangible inner truths. This has been one of the main talking points for the new sexual orthodoxy: telling hurting souls that their bodies are somehow wrong. Kathy Koch has worked for years to undermine this demeaning perception. In her talk at our recent ...
Jul 23, 2021•5 min
John and Shane field a listener question who has left the faith and didn't consider how that would impact his parents. He writes into John to inquire about a middle ground, seeking to follow his thoughts and convictions in religion while also honoring his parents. After answering that question, a listener writes in asking how to honor her convictions while building a relationship with a new person attending her church. John gives reasoning to help the listener make strong steps in friendship and...
Jul 23, 2021•56 min
A heart is available, the clock is ticking, and doctors are forced to choose between three viable candidates for a transplant: A woman who could live for several more years with a new heart but doesn't want it; a beloved middle-aged father who's chronically overweight; and a young rich kid who might have just overdosed on cocaine but whose dad is dangling a $25 million donation to the hospital if his son gets the heart. All of this is in the plot of the new movie, "The God Committee." The team o...
Jul 22, 2021•4 min
Recently I talked to my friend James Ackerman who's the CEO of prison fellowship ministries. And he told me a story about when he was younger and how God used him in a special way. What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation I had with James Ackerman: When I was 18 years old, I got my girlfriend pregnant. She had an abortion. I was not in favor of it, but I didn't try to stop it either. Four years later, I gave my life to Jesus at an altar call at Calvary Baptist Church in New York Ci...
Jul 21, 2021•6 min
Movies such as "The Truman Show," "The Matrix," "Inception," are all based on the premise of humans who were, unwittingly, living in a computer simulation. More recently, quite a few influential and brilliant minds are proposing this so-called "simulation hypothesis" as more than fiction . In some cases, the bizarre theory is morphing into something that looks suspiciously like a materialist spirituality. Back in 2016, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and Space-X, speculated to a tech gathering in Ca...
Jul 20, 2021•5 min
In recent days, thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of Havana, Cuba to protest Covid restrictions and demand both help from the government and more freedom. After initially attempting to crack down on protestors, the government changed course late last week and lifted certain of the restrictions that drove the protests, including those on travelers bringing medicine, food, and toiletries. As a nation, Cuba relies heavily on tourism. As individuals, Cubans rely heavily on friends an...
Jul 19, 2021•5 min
John and Maria discuss new data from both the Centers for Disease Control and a report from a number of universities in the UK that reveal problems post-pandemic. Rates of suicide, depression, and a likely increase in pornography addiction are a few problems they unpack from recent BreakPoint commentaries. Maria then provides insightful commentary on the crisis in Cuba. She makes the statement that many will look at the situation and claim the problem with communism is the way it was carried out...
Jul 16, 2021•1 hr
As rescue workers still look for remains in the rubble of the condominium that collapsed in Surfside, Florida last month, the official death toll has topped 95 people, with more missing and presumed dead. While this tragedy will change the lives of those involved forever, it will, as all tragedies do, fade from the news headlines to be replaced by others. This is the awful paradox of life after Eden. For some people, this felt like the very end of the world. For others, this was hard but unremar...
Jul 16, 2021•4 min
National Public Radio's This American Life aired Tina Dupuy's (doo-PWEE) story recently . Tina had a difficult home life and was prone to acting out as a kid. Her parents eventually sent her to a group home. At 13, she went to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. What she heard resonated. People spoke about not being able to control their own bad behavior; about feeling rejected by family and repeatedly getting into legal trouble. By 13, Tina had tried alcohol a few times. But it was in the p...
Jul 15, 2021•5 min
John and Shane discuss listener questions from recent commentaries. Today they answer an important question from a listener after our commentary on how critical race theory is a Christian heresy. Another listener asks for an overview of the landscape of Christian hope. The person references a our recent commentary on the Pandemic of Despair. The listener asks if there is hope on the horizon, because they don't see it. The listener asks if he is looking at the wrong horizon line. John then respon...
Jul 14, 2021•43 min
There are three reasons that every Christian should be able to understand, articulate, and widely share what it means to be human. And to live their life from this deep Christian conviction. The Christian answer to the question "What does it mean to be human?" is different from the answer you get from atheistic naturalism, or from Eastern pantheism, or from the postmodern philosophy currently characterizing life here in the West. The biblical answer to what it means to be human is revolutionary ...
Jul 14, 2021•6 min
A few years ago, a woman spotted her teenage son's laptop on the kitchen counter. She opened the lid and what she saw horrified her — a series of pornographic pictures. She clicked on an image and a sexually explicit video began playing. She checked her son's browser history which revealed this was not the first time her son had accessed pornography. This woman was shocked, but she should not have been. As Sean McDowell once told me, "The question is not if my kids will see pornography, but what...
Jul 13, 2021•7 min
Dr. Kathy Koch joined John Stonestreet for a special recording for the Wilberforce Weekend Online. Dr. Koch was a featured speaker at the Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, TX, and joined John for an encore conversation for the online offering of the Wilberforce Weekend. You can hear the full conversation by registering for the Wilberforce Weekend Online at www.wilberforceweekend.org. Dr. Kathy Koch is the Founder and President of Celebrate Kids, Inc., based in Fort Worth, TX, and a cofounder of...
Jul 12, 2021•20 min
In 416 BC, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Athens decided to attack the neutral island of Melos. When the Melians protested they had done Athens no wrong, the Athenians replied, "The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must." The Melians were starved into surrender, their men were killed, and their women and children were sold into slavery. None of this was unusual in the ancient world. The strong, it was supposed, had every right to dominate the weak. Crue...
Jul 12, 2021•6 min
