Author: Chris Boyd

What the overturn may mean for American society.

On this special episode of The Russell Moore Show, author and professor Stephen Prothero discusses the overturn of Roe v. Wade and what it may mean for the United States.

Moore and Prothero talk about potential implications for other legislation like Obergefell. They consider the potential effects of the Roe v. Wade overturn on America’s culture wars. Listeners may appreciate their conversation on talking about abortion with someone who holds a different opinion, and what it may look like to have a reasoned, productive dialogue on the subject.

“The Russell Moore Show” is a production of Christianity Today
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Executive Producer and Host: Russell Moore
Director of Podcasts: Mike Cosper
Production Assistance: CoreMedia
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Associate Producer: Abby Perry
Theme Song: “Dusty Delta Day” by Lennon Hutton

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Abortion has been a national institution for nearly 50 years. Where should Christians spend their pro-life dollars now?

During the past 49 years of abortion debates under Roe v. Wade, some have lost track of how profits and poverty drive the issue—and why pro-life Christians must continue to innovate as we put our money where our mouths are.

A common argument for a pro-choice ethic is that abortion access is good for the economy. Many like US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argue that limiting abortion access will only make things worse financially for vulnerable women. And if resources for pregnant mothers do not continue to improve, this is an understandable argument.

Seventy-five percent of abortions occur in households living on less than twice the federal poverty level, and nearly half are below the poverty line, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Sixty percent of women who choose abortion already have children, and 55 percent are single. Presently, there is little economic incentive for single women already struggling to feed their children to have another child.

Yellen and others also suggest the economy at large will suffer if abortion access is restricted. Already harrowing workforce dropout rates will only increase and having more mouths to feed in already disadvantaged homes will result in more poverty.

If you follow this line of fiscal logic, one could argue abortion access can lead our 401(k)s to expect pregnant workers will forgo maternity leave and maintain uninterrupted productivity. It can lead our tax bills to expect fewer households will enroll in government assistance after an unplanned pregnancy. If this is the case, then perhaps we have all blindly yet complicitly profited from the economy of abortion.

However, this by no means suggests abortion access is good for …

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Faithful responses to the Supreme Court decision should involve new care practices.

One of the best parts of attending Perimeter Church in north Atlanta was seeing the parking lot for young families. Industrial-sized vans pulled in each Sunday and poured forth children. These were not shuttles that gathered youngsters from local neighborhoods but single-family vans filled with children who had been adopted domestically and internationally, many with special needs.

Perimeter families have adopted over 100 children in the past 13 years, due in large measure to a ministry incubated in the church. Named for the declaration in Psalm 68:6 that God “sets the lonely in families,” Promise686 has supported nearly 500 adoptions through grants and other assistance. The ministry supported the adoption of my daughter, whose congenital heart defect probably would have been fatal if she had been left in China’s state orphanage system.

Ministries such as Promise686 will be critical now that the US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. We celebrate the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson. The sanctity and dignity of all human life remains the preeminent moral issue of our time, and five decades of calling evil good has distorted the moral vision of our culture. Overturning Roe is a testament to a long faithfulness, passed down from parents to children to grandchildren, to fight for the lives and dignity of people in all stages of development. It could be the most significant moral achievement of a generation.

But what will a faithful response to success look like? Overturning Roe sends abortion policy decisions back to the states, and many will prohibit or have prohibited abortion. In the words of Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, “Many children will be born that would have been …

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The PCA takes up the case of a church leader who responded to sexual harassment claims with a defamation lawsuit against his accusers.

As the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) discusses its response to abuse at its annual General Assembly this week, a case involving a pastor suing former congregants over allegations against him is making its way through civil court and the denomination’s own system.

Dan Herron, a PCA pastor—or teaching elder—accused of sexual harassment, says the women making claims against him are lying and has sued them for defamation. Several presbyteries have passed measures requesting the PCA intervene.

“For an accused teaching elder to sue his accusers in a civil court—it is ugly,” said Steve Marusich, a pastor in the Central Indiana Presbytery who has been closely involved in the presbytery’s investigation.

The country got a glimpse of defamation cases around abuse allegations with the recent Johnny Depp–Amber Heard trial, where the actor accused his former spouse of defamation over an op-ed that implied he had abused her.

After the ruling awarding Depp $10 million in damages, some legal experts worried that more abusers would use defamation as a strategy to silence victims. The threat of such lawsuits could discourage victims from coming forward.

While church disputes don’t usually turn into legal fights, Herron is among several pastors and ministry leaders who have filed defamation suits in recent years. These kinds of cases are costly and often drag out for years, grinding down victims and denominations trying to separately enforce church discipline. Civil proceedings during a church trial mean that witnesses in the church trial might be afraid of testifying for fear of being sued, or of other consequences in the civil trial. Civil cases also require extensive evidence gathering …

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Escaping Russian missiles, some exiled believers found a new sense of purpose helping refugees.

It was 2:30 in the morning on February 24 when Maksym Maliuta finally fell asleep. That night, he had been arguing with his college classmates, who dismissed warnings of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as “Western media panic.” No, Maksym insisted, the signs were all there: Vladimir Putin was building up to a massive military operation.

Maksym had been asleep two hours when his phone rang. Russian airstrikes were raining on cities across Ukraine, his cousin called to tell him. Maksym went online and found a video of missiles exploding in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Then he went into his parents’ room and woke them with the news: Putin was attacking their country.

When Maksym walked to the bathroom to wash up, the shock finally splashed him full in the face, and he began shaking. The possibility of a Russian invasion had been looming in his consciousness since he was 10, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. And yet, it seemed unreal when it actually happened, “like a nightmare that finally came true.”

It should have been a relief that the Maliutas were, in fact, half a continent away from their home in Kyiv.

Maksym’s father, Ruslan, works with international evangelical ministries, and whenever people outside of Ukraine asked for his thoughts, Ruslan had answered, “War is possible, but unlikely.” But in mid-January, while on a prayer walk, Ruslan began wondering if, as a father of five children, he ought to prepare an evacuation plan, just in case. He reached out to a friend who owns a chalet in the Swiss mountains. That friend offered the chalet as a temporary safe place to his family but advised, “If I were you, I’d think about coming soon.”

Until …

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Update: Justices say that exempting religious schools amounts to discrimination.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a Maine policy covering tuition for private schools but not religious schools violates the First Amendment.

Maine offers the tuition assistance in rural districts that do not have public schools. The challenge involved two private Christian schools, Bangor Christian Schools and Temple Academy, which didn’t meet the state’s “nonsectarian” requirement for families to qualify.

The court said such a requirement infringes on free exercise protections and that there was “nothing neutral” about the program.

“The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools— so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion,” the court ruled in a 6–3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. “A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”

The Carson v. Makin decision upholds the court’s 2020 ruling against a Montana scholarship program that also barred religious schools from receiving the funding.

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Original post (December 6, 2021): The latest Supreme Court case over public funding for religious schooling examines a policy in Maine, a state dotted with small towns too tiny to run their own public schools. Over half of the state’s school districts (officially called “school administrative units” or SAUs for short) contract with and pay tuition costs to another nearby school of the parents’ choice—public or private.

And that’s where the hangup lies. By law, Maine mandates that partnering …

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Exploring the historical, cultural, and theological significance of Juneteenth.

On June 19, 1865, the Union Army arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved Black Americans that the Civil War was over and slavery had been abolished. They were free. President Abraham Lincoln had actually announced his Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, on January 1, 1863. But for a variety of reasons, the more than 250,000 enslaved people in Texas did not receive the news of their freedom until this June day. Their initial shock soon turned to celebration.

Juneteenth—also known as Emancipation Day—commemorates this important moment in American history. (The name is a mashup of the words “June” and “nineteenth.”) Last year, Juneteenth was officially declared a federal holiday. But it’s much more than another festive date on the calendar. For American Christians, it’s an opportunity to give thanks for our nation’s progress while also meditating on the change still necessary for us to truly act justly, love mercy, and reflect the unity and diversity of God’s heavenly kingdom.

On June 15, Our Daily Bread’s Rasool Berry, CT’s Russell Moore, and other Christian thought leaders assembled for a virtual roundtable on the enduring significance of Juneteenth and how this pivotal event in American history points to the biblical visions of freedom, restoration, and hope. Watch their thoughtful discussion above.

This webinar was co-hosted by Christianity Today and Our Daily Bread Ministries.

Mentioned in the video: Our Daily Bread also invites you to take part in Juneteenth: Our Story of Freedom, a 10-day devotional reading plan. Sign up here to access the digital plan. There’s no cost or obligation.

PANELISTS

Rasool Berry

Rasool serves as teaching …

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Observing Juneteenth as a national holiday affirms what we believe about our faith and our freedoms.

I was never taught about Juneteenth growing up.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia, the “cradle of liberty,” in Pennsylvania—which was the first state to end slavery with the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780. Philly was one of the major stops on the Underground Railroad, thanks to the abolitionism of the Quakers, and the home of Richard Allen’s Free African Society.

And while slavery was abolished in Pennsylvania more than 80 years before the Civil War began, I always thought of the Emancipation Proclamation as the document that ended slavery in America.

It wasn’t until years later when I heard of a woman named Ms. Opal Lee, who walked halfway across the country at 89 years old to advocate for Juneteenth to become a national holiday, that I discovered a history I had never learned in school.

Over two and a half years passed between President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and when the first of those enslaved in Texas tasted freedom: 900 more days of being separated from family and forced to work under the threat of violence and death.

But the question remains, why does Juneteenth matter to the church?

The times set aside to celebrate and reflect reveal what matters to society then, now, and in the future. For instance, Pilgrims in early America set apart “days of thanksgiving” to express gratitude to God for his providential grace—a tradition that was formalized into the national calendar in 1863 with Abraham Lincoln’s official proclamation of Thanksgiving Day “to heal the wounds of the nation” divided by war.

But an even earlier civically inspired sacred tradition was inadvertently established less than a year prior on December 31, 1862—when …

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To verbally dismember women is denigration, not inclusion.

When the Supreme Court’s draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked in early May, a tweeted response from the American Civil Liberties Union had a curious omission: It listed groups the ACLU said would be disproportionately harmed by the end of Roe v. Wade (1973), but it didn’t mention women.

And this wasn’t the ACLU’s first foray into treating women as the-sex-who-must-not-be-named. The organization likewise marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by tweeting out a pro-choice quote painstakingly—and painfully—edited to erase all mention of women.

Nor is the ACLU alone in this new verbal habit. As a comprehensive New York Times report detailed this month, “women” has fallen into deliberate disuse by other activist groups, like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America; by medical organizations, like the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the Cleveland Clinic, and The Lancet (a medical journal); and by government agencies, like municipal and state health departments, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Instead, these institutions and others, including many media outlets, are using phrases like “birthing persons,” “pregnant people,” “breastfeeding people” (or even “chestfeeding people” who make “human milk”), “cervix owners,” “people with eggs,” “uterus havers,” “those without a prostate,” “menstruators,” and “bodies with vaginas.”

If you’ve not heard those phrases before, …

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Survivors sensed a godly shift as messengers approved plans and their new president put sexual predators “on notice.”

Southern Baptists sang slow and low, “Lord, have mercy on me,” in the cavernous meeting hall where they apologized for their failure to care for survivors and approved long-awaited measures designed to keep predatory pastors and irresponsible churches out of the convention.

Tiffany Thigpen attended the annual meeting in Anaheim, California, with fellow abuse survivors Jules Woodson and Debbie Vasquez­—their names familiar to many Southern Baptist pastors from news coverage, social media, and last month’s abuse report.

After her 20 years of fighting and advocating, Thigpen finally saw a shift. She described “God on the move” in the denomination where survivors had been disbelieved, vilified, and ignored over and over.

This time, Southern Baptist leaders named them from the stage of the 12,000-person gathering to applause. The hall included a special room for survivors, staffed by a team of trauma-informed counselors.

Attendees spoke to them, thanked them from coming, and tucked teal ribbons in their nametags as a sign of support. And, most importantly, the majority voted in favor of abuse reform and in solidarity with survivors every chance they got.

Thigpen said when the messengers—delegates from Southern Baptist churches—raised their ballots in the air to approve recommendations resulting from last month’s abuse investigation, it felt like those seated in the rows of chairs around them were looking to them as if to say, “This vote is for you.”

“It’s a victory in so many ways, because people’s hearts changed, and that’s something only God can do,” said Thigpen, who was groomed and attacked by her pastor over 30 years ago only to …

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