Regular listeners to the weekly Breakpoint This Week podcast know that my co-host Maria and I are fans of the reality competition show Alone . Ten wilderness experts are dropped in the middle of nowhere, usually a place that is cold and full of bears, forced to fend for themselves. Whoever stays the longest wins. In the latest season, a military veteran with strong survival skills and extensive experience overseas seemed poised to win. Instead, he called it quits just a few weeks in. In an inter...
Aug 24, 2022•4 min
President Biden called the recent killings of Muslim men in New Mexico " hateful attacks, " implying they were hate crimes against the Muslim community. Less subtly, the mayor of Albuquerque commented: " violence against members of our community based on race or religion will not be tolerated. " Then the police arrested a Muslim man who, according to NPR, frequented the same mosque as his victims (though he was Sunni and three of his victims were Shia) . This is what happens in a culture infecte...
Aug 23, 2022•59 sec
The last few years have felt like a real-life version of the popular board game "Pandemic," in which players cooperate to contain the spread of infectious, often imaginary diseases. The latest disease to grab real-world headlines sports a name that sounds like it came straight out of this board game: monkeypox. Our nation's response to this new outbreak has been far from a winning strategy, mainly because some public health officials have been more focused on sexual politics than protecting publ...
Aug 23, 2022•5 min
This month in The Atlantic , writer Kaitlyn Tiffany described a conflict with a friend over which Lorde album was best. A slammed door signaled the end of the relationship, and a text to Tiffany's boyfriend described her as "toxic." "I had rarely heard [the word] used offline, and then only semi-ironically, or in regard to people who were objectively terrible," she wrote. "I had never had to consider whether it was a word that could be applied to me." The story epitomizes the relational crises t...
Aug 22, 2022•1 min
Perhaps the strongest antidote for optimism or for misplaced faith in our fellow man is watching the news. Of course, much of the media we consume is voyeuristic, so in a sort of supply-and-demand scenario, bad news makes headlines more than good news. At the same time, this is more than a problem of clickbait filling our newsfeeds. A series of events in recent years suggests that our cultural center cannot hold much longer. Not decades but just a few days ago, prominent novelist Salman Rushdie ...
Aug 22, 2022•4 min
In this special episode of Breakpoint This Week, John talks with theologian and professor Carl Trueman about the challenges that affect us in this cultural moment. They discuss how technological advances have placed a "burden of self-creation" on us, influencing transgenderism, transhumanism, and artificial intelligence but also the loss of meaning and cultural institutions like the family.
Aug 19, 2022•30 min
Christians are often accused of "forcing our faith on others." But the idea that we shouldn't do that comes from the Church. Early Christians were persecuted because they refused to cater their faith to imperial power. Across Rome, people could worship whatever god(s) they wished, as long as their worship did not preclude the empire, the emperor, and the Roman gods. When Constantine the Great granted toleration with the Edict of Milan in 313, a new level of freedom extended not only to Christian...
Aug 19, 2022•1 min
In June, a Google employee who claimed the company had created a sentient artificial intelligence bot was placed on administrative leave. Blake Lemoine, part of Google's Responsible AI ("artificial intelligence") program, had been interacting with a language AI known as "Language Model for Dialogue Applications," or LaMDA. When the algorithm began talking about rights and personhood, Lemoine decided his superiors and eventually the public needed to know. To him, it was clear the program had beco...
Aug 19, 2022•5 min
The cultural crisis of loneliness is more acute than ever, partly due to factors like technology, and COVID-related protocols. And one researcher has identified another factor that should not be overlooked: isolation by choice. Time spent talking to other people, Dr. Jeffrey A. Hall has argued, has declined steadily for nearly 30 years. What's behind this trend? "Self-care regimes focus on cultivation of a mindful, inwardly focused life," he wrote. "There are increasing efforts to cut out other ...
Aug 18, 2022•1 min
Though we tend to think that Europe is less "Christian" than the United States, in some ways, that's not true. Certainly, p er capita, church attendance is lower throughout most of Europe than it is here, and religious Americans enjoy certain political freedoms that Europeans do not. However, on at least two major social issues, America has, for a while now, been more extreme than Europe. In the case of abortion , the Supreme Court's recent decision in Dobbs reversed nearly 50 years in which Roe...
Aug 18, 2022•5 min
Pleas for tolerance and inclusion are often pretext for intolerance and exclusion. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is the Point. "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one." Remember that one? These days it ought to say, "If you don't like gay marriage, kiss your job goodbye." At least that's what happened to U.K. mayoral candidate Maureen Martin last month. Martin published a campaign leaflet describing her views, including that "natural marriage between a man and a woman"...
Aug 17, 2022•1 min
Far from being an otherworldly religion, Christianity teaches both the importance and goodness of life in this world. In fact, from Jesus' healing ministry to the work of modern missionary doctors, a consistent feature of the work of the Church in the world has been to care for the sick and needy, and not just point them to the life to come. The early Church understood Jesus' ministry to be a paradigm for their own work. So, just as Jesus set believers free from their bondage to sin, early Chris...
Aug 17, 2022•5 min
A recent article in Fatherly summed up the risk of divorce by married years. Years 1 to 2 are "high risk." Years 9 to 15 go down to "low." By years 15 to 20, the risk rises again to "average." "Newlyweds and old married couples," concluded the article, "can never get too comfortable." The numbers don't lie, but the danger of studies like this is portraying divorce as something that just happens because of "falling out of love" or something like that. The truth about marriage is, thankfully, more...
Aug 16, 2022•1 min
Canceling a speaker is run-of-the-mill these days. So, when a university " cancels the cancellation," it's worth noting. Dr. Kristin Collier is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan and director of the school's Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion. She was a natural choice to give the keynote address at the school's white coat ceremony for incoming students. The Gold Humanism Honor Society selects speakers "who are exemplars of compassionate patient care and who ...
Aug 16, 2022•4 min
The second most important commandment, Jesus said, was to "love your neighbor as yourself." Why our neighbor ? Decades ago, G.K. Chesterton offered an explanation: "The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. "We make our friends; we make our enemies, but God makes our next door neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors o...
Aug 15, 2022•1 min
Recently, the Colson Center announced an upcoming Breakpoint course entitled, The Essential Church: Why Christians (and the World) Still Need the Church. The responses we have received just to the title reveal a lot about where people are in regard to the Church. "Dear John, 'What is the Church for?' It used to be the Body of Christ. And the Bride of Christ. Being conformed into His Image. They were to 'love one another.' Despise is closer. 'What is the Church for?' Well . . . I have no clue any...
Aug 15, 2022•5 min
John and Maria discuss the Tavistock centre (a gender clinic) in north London being forced to close due to multiple lawsuits. They also muse over Serena Williams' recent announcement to quit tennis so that she can focus on her family, particularly examining the way it's culturally framed as being a burden. Concluding by reflecting on a recent commentary, they talk about the ways that "chosen families" can never replace the responsibility and foundational importance of biological families.
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr 13 min
A new California bill would require that youth receive so-called "gender affirming care" … even if it means removing them from the custody of their parents to do so. If passed, SB 107 would, according to the California Family Council , "empower California courts to take 'temporary emergency jurisdiction' of children if they come to California for trans-drugs, surgery, or mental healthcare." This would not only apply to parents and children who are California residents, but to children who travel...
Aug 12, 2022•1 min
What would it be like to live only—and exclusively—in the present? Clive Wearing , a former musician for the BBC, is now the most famous amnesia patient in the world. In 1985, Clive suffered a severe fever that gave him both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. That means he can neither form new memories, nor recall most of his previous life. Instead, he lives his life thirty seconds at a time. Clive's struggle has been well chronicled in two documentaries, the first produced in 1986 and the seco...
Aug 12, 2022•4 min
According to new research, the link between depression and "chemical imbalances" in the brain could be less settled than previously thought. A leading theory as psychiatrists Mark Horowitz and Joanna Moncrieff write, "Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence." Related studies show, for example, that when people believe their depression is the result of mere brain chemistry, their self-confidence and ability to change plummet. Ironically, they also tend to feel more ...
Aug 11, 2022•1 min
Particularly "in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, it's not uncommon to find a substitute family, colloquially known as a chosen family," Dani Blum recently wrote in an article in The New York Times . According to Blum, a "chosen family" refers to the "intense, intimate relationships … people form apart from their biological relatives; it is the kinship you create outside of a traditional family structure." Chosen families are not a new phenomenon, nor are they exclusive to LGBTQ people. But in an age q...
Aug 11, 2022•5 min
In the face of record crime , Starbucks has announced the closure of 16 stores in five cities: Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The reason, according to CEO Howard Schultz , is these cities have "abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental health," leading retail partners to repeated concerns over "their own personal safety." "Starbucks is a window into America," he continued. "And we are facing things which the stores were not built f...
Aug 10, 2022•1 min
This year, the familiar back-to-school windup includes a growing sense of trepidation for many parents. A host of faddish ideologies, and the ham-fisted ways of imposing them, adds to their worries (or at least should). Revised historicism, sex and gender ideologies, even the seemingly harmless Social and Emotional Learning are all expressions of Critical Theory in some form or fashion. Of course, many ideas out of accord with Christian teaching have been taught by schools, but these reject core...
Aug 10, 2022•5 min
According to the BBC , the U.K.'s "only dedicated gender identity clinic" for youth has been ordered to shut down. The reason is not a lack of demand. In fact, referrals for "treatment" are 20 times higher than 10 years ago. Rather, the clinic has received wide criticism from an independent report of their practices. Former patient Kiera Bell, now 25, was prescribed puberty blockers at age 16. She underwent a double mastectomy at age 20. She has now changed her mind about the procedures and says...
Aug 09, 2022•1 min
Throughout Church history, church attendance and overall religiosity have been higher among women than among men. That seems to be changing, especially for younger generations. According to new data, the long-existent church gender gap, which shows up in both religious affiliation and church attendance, has now flipped. However, the headline is not that more men are connecting with the Church. The story is that more women are disconnecting from the Church. A number of factors have contributed to...
Aug 09, 2022•6 min
Recently, two separate crisis pregnancy centers in Worcester, Massachusetts, were vandalized on the same night. Next to broken glass and spilled paint were the words "Jane's Revenge," the name of a group behind a number of similar attacks in recent months. Earlier that same week, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey warned the public of a group using "deceptive and coercive tactics," but she wasn't referring to the pro-abortion extremists threatening violence. She was warning of the crisi...
Aug 08, 2022•1 min
Back in May, 20 Nigerian Christians were brutally martyred by the Islamic militant group ISIS. In June, 40 more Christians died in Owo, Nigeria, in a terrorist attack against a church. Though it is not clear who is responsible for that attack, what is clear is that Christians continue to be severely persecuted in this West African nation. The persecution, which has been ongoing for years, is part of a long history of conflict with Islam. In 1953, Christians made up only 21.4% of the population i...
Aug 08, 2022•5 min
John and Shane, standing in for Maria, examine the Biden's administration executive order that Medicaid patients can travel across state lines for abortion. They also explain how the killing of an Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan reminds us of not just the danger of extremist Islam in other nations such as Nigeria but also the threat of secularist states toward religious freedom. Musing on two recent commentaries, they discuss the cracks in Neo-Darwinism and the Gnostic basis of the topic of canni...
Aug 06, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Recently, p olice in Hampshire, England, arrested a man for an unusual crime. Not vandalism, theft, or murder but, according to the arresting officer because "someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post." Setting aside the dubious and dangerous logic of involving the state in social media spats, appealing to emotion as a matter of justice is astonishing. So, I no longer have to prove wrong has been done, only that I feel a wrong has been done? All that's left once a culture h...
Aug 05, 2022•1 min
As America adjusts to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade , including by enacting more laws in some states to protect unborn children, a higher number of women will likely bring their babies safely to birth. This is good news, including for those in unexpected and crisis pregnancies. Not only will more at-risk babies be saved, more women will be spared the violence and false promises of abortion. This will also mean that the efforts of pregnancy centers, adoption services, foste...
Aug 05, 2022•5 min
