Well, welcome to Breakpoint This Week. I'm John Stone Street. Today, joined by the one and only Katie McCoy, we're going to be talking about Chip and Joanna Gaines, as well as the death of a remarkable preacher, John MacArthur. And also, we're going to have a conversation with the one and only Oz Guinness about what it means to be in a civilizational moment. Thanks for joining us.
Stay tuned. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. I'm John Stone Street, president of the Colson Center, along today, not with Maria Baer, my normal co-host. She's not normal co-host, my typical cohort. She's going to kill me for that.
But Katie McCoy, thanks so much for being back on the program. Great to have you, as always. You know, since the first time we had you on the program, You've changed jobs, I think. I have. Yeah.
Yeah. How should we introduce you? Oh, gosh, that's a good, that's a good point. Thought leader, author. Hey, I like that.
You like that?
Okay. That's good. You can just ascribe that title to me. Celebrity influencer. Hooray.
That's great. No, not a celebrity influencer at all.
So, yeah, have changed jobs. I'm based in Atlanta now, and it's really fun getting to do a lot more in the cultural engagement space.
Well, good.
Well, good.
Great to have you on. Let's jump into some stories of the week. The biggest story of the week, at least on social media and especially on Christian social media, Chip and Joanna Gaines announce a new Television program, which is really interesting because it does kind of reflect what a lot of people are moving towards: get off the grid, get off of social media, all these things we can agree with. Live like Little House on the Prairie, I think. I didn't look at it very closely.
Yeah, kind of disconnect from all technology. And it's a shame for this whole thing to be a controversy because it's like, what a great idea. This would have been kind of a refreshing.
So there's multiple possible. Is it a competition? Is it like survivor? Oh, that's a good question. Survivor as a family or alone.
You ever watched Alone? No. You haven't watched Alone where they drop people off in the wilderness and then it just awful. An introvert's dream. My wife and I are sitting there going, you know, I can't believe they like we would have any idea out of Survivor.
I can't believe the goodness.
Okay, so the controversy was that one of the couples is a same-sex couple. Mm-hmm. with children, which of course brings up the question I yeah, it's clear. How these children were acquired. Has to be surrogacy IVF, is what I've heard.
So yes, obviously. Maybe they're related to one or both of these men. I'm not sure, but it's two sons. Right. Two sons.
So immediate backlash and loud backlash. And then Chip Gaines this week responds on social media. Really, and that was interesting in and of itself because There was an attempt that sounded of self-justification, and it sounded. Like something you maybe would have heard more five or ten years ago, which was an appeal to.
Well, Christians don't love enough. We're not tolerant enough and that sort of thing. Don't judge. It did not land well. No, it did not.
Not at all. There's been, we talk about vibe shifts a lot in our culture. This is definitely one among believers. I think one of those vibe shifts is we are a little more comfortable being on the outskirts of public opinion and what is considered acceptable. And we're doing that based on what scripture says.
And I think a little more comfortable with what our brothers and sisters around the world throughout all of human history in the church have had to live with is recognizing that if we are going to follow God, we are going to displease men. We have to please God rather than men. And that's something that I think in this cultural issue. And if it seems like Christians talk a lot about issues of sex and gender, it's in part because this is the defining cultural issue of our times. There are a lot of other ones, but this one I would say is the central one of debate, in part because there are no shortage of false teachers out there to say, we've got a new hermeneutic, we've got a new way of understanding it, and all of these Christians are just wrong.
See that point? This is kind of one of those kind of gaslight moments, right? I think, because I did hear that a little bit as well. Why do you Christians continue to care so much about this? Like, we didn't invent this.
That's right. We didn't put this on a reality show and then tell everyone you have to accept this. You know, in other words, it's like this was nowhere to be found 20, 25, 35 years ago. And then all of a sudden, you know, here it is, and now you have to accept it. If you don't accept it, why do you talk about?
Sex so much. Yeah, there's something wrong with you. And the other side of that perspective is: here is a couple that has really built an empire off of that kind of wholesome family, go back to what is really kind of all-American values. And uh I would say their primary constituents were conservative Christians who supported them. and at one point even came to their defense.
When there was some kind of controversy related to people were asking, how come you don't have like same-sex couples on your shows?
Well, now it looks like they folded. And have they changed? Have they always believed this? I don't really know. But now it is, to your point, gaslighting.
that they built this whole empire off of Believers and then do something that is offending not only believers, but scripture itself. And then all of a sudden, it's all of the believers that have the problem. They're the ones that need to mature and change and adapt to what the gains are saying.
So, but to the vid ship point, like that's a strategy that was so common. Ten years ago. And I just, it just isn't compelling anymore. No. Right.
I mean, it kind of feels like a Bud Light sort of moment. I think it is. Where it's like. Suddenly Bud Light's gonna Forget who drinks Bud Light. Exactly.
And then, and essentially, you know, try to sell kind of a way of doing things, or a John Deere or Harley Davidson or Tractor Supply, where, you know, these folks. Brought in these kind of ideas, and then, oh, we'll kind of shame our own customers into acceptance. Yeah. It just doesn't seem to work. Here's the other thing, though, that I think is interesting about this story.
In terms of when it has happened, you know, offline you mentioned and reminded me of these kind of polls that. Whatever support and growing support there is for same-sex marriage in the years leading up to a Bergerfell and afterwards, it has absolutely peaked, seems to be in decline. And I think at some level, that has to do with the bait and switch on children. Absolutely. And this show portrays children, right?
So we were told leading up, this. This is about love, not about children. Marriage isn't even really about children anymore because of birth control. We actually had judicial opinions being written about that. The arguments for a Bergefeld didn't have anything to do with children.
And the meme: love is love. That's it. It's about the sincerity of the affection of the adults, not about any potential. Children. And then you get to the other side and you have.
The increase of demand on surrogacy and vitro fertilization from same-sex couples. You have laws like. Universal parentage laws out of Seattle, New York, other places around the world. You have the surrogacy industry in some other countries. And then all of a sudden, the children are portrayed.
I think that's a step too far for people. I think now, yeah, people are looking at the logical consequences of these ideas and saying, well, we don't support that. There was this kind of live and let live. Perspective after a Berga fell, where now one of the things we heard was: this is the law of the land now.
So you can't disagree with it. You can't, now you are the one on the outside.
Well, now we're seeing where it has all gone. And I think in many ways we have the T element of the LGBTQIA plus community to thank for that, because we are seeing the logical consequence of disconnecting the body from the self. Of human sexuality from human personhood. And as a result, people are recognizing not only the excesses, but seeing that these ideas produce these results, these consequences. And you know what?
We're not for that. And so I think in some ways, I don't know if it is people. Waking up to these realities or recognizing that, you know, I've never really been that okay with it. I didn't want to be accused of a bigot, but now people are speaking out. And it'll be fascinating to see if this continues, especially when it comes to legislation.
You know, we often forget, too, John, that the reason that Obergefell went to the Supreme Court. This was the result of a popular vote. To protect traditional marriage in the state of California. And Going through the courts, we had, I think it was five, was a five-four decision, five justices. Who decided for the rest of the country the definition of marriage, effectively overturning a popular vote?
And so, yes. Vibe shift, all of that. I think in some ways it might just be people finally speaking out about what they've always believed but didn't feel safe enough to say. Yeah, yeah.
Well, let's go to one more story here with the time we have left, and that is the death of a beloved pastor, John MacArthur. Learned early on in the week that he was suffering from pneumonia. I announced to the church, announced on social media that this was likely the last days and really a larger-than-life. figure. I didn't grow up on John MacArthur.
A lot of people did. We were in a MacArthurite family. It's interesting when your name becomes like an adjective. That kind of says something about how significant your influence, but somebody who really influenced a lot of people. Yeah, he really did.
And especially in the last years of his life during COVID, you saw that he just dug his heels in the sand on things like church shutdowns and really led the way for a lot of other believers to say, this is what it looks like to not bend to government demanding that, no, you don't get to go to church. He really is a giant. We lost a giant, not only in what he wrote. Absolutely prolific. But then his preaching as well.
Yeah, I remember. An interesting preacher, right? I mean, especially at a time when so many people were growing platforms in terms of preaching style. Great communicator. Not flowery, not a lot of, you know, you know, you, you, you very committed to expository preaching.
This is what preaching is. You get into the text and get deeper into the text and deeper into the text. And it's interesting that his popularity grew as he became less like. A lot of what was popular in terms of Preaching at megachurches and things like that. Yeah, that's a really good point.
It's going to be interesting to see in the next few decades. You know, here we are talking about cultural vibe shifts, if there's a renewed interest in people looking back, especially young people looking back and listening to his preaching. Because I think, especially among Gen Z, they are hungering for the authentic. You know, tell it to them like it is. And it'll be really fascinating to see in the decades to come whether and how.
His ministry continues to have an impact in future generations. Yeah, there's a couple of other observations I had this week on this. I mean, first of all, John MacArthur and Chuck Colson didn't agree on everything. And so, but what I found interesting. is both of these guys were very willing to take public stands for what they believed in.
And it was about what is true, not about what is popular. That's such an interesting contrast with our first story, right? This of what we talked about. But disagreed on some things and sometimes publicly so, and both men were willing to do that. We're at Many people have noted an end of an era where a lot of these giants have moved on to the war, Chuck being one of them, Arcee Sproll being another, Adrian Rogers being another, and a lot of these that dominated a particular Period in evangelical history.
And this goes back to Billy Graham. It even goes back beyond that evangelicals, particularly in America. have always had this comfort level of utilizing culture. Utilizing media and newspapers and television, and of course, in recent days, social media, and cassette tapes, you know, right? C Ds and back in the day, right?
Yeah, newspaper. I mean, you know, really, the story of the first great awakening. Yeah. Part of that story is newspapers, telling conversion stories in newspapers. And that part of this era of evangelical giants really leveraged radio in particular, but also television.
In such a way that suddenly their churches became global. And That's for better or for worse, right? I mean, that has upsides and downsides when you think of the televangelist empires and things like that. Yeah, very much.
Well, yeah, he was one of the few who finished relatively scandal-free. You know, it's not like he had some story of embezzlement or unfaithfulness to his wife. And, you know, Really the critique is that he was too Too committed to his views, right? I mean, he could throw some elbows, right? But yeah, it's.
We would We would be very blessed in the American Church to have more Prominent pastors, as prolific as he was, to have ended their days as he did. And I don't know how long he was ill. It seemed to happen rather quickly, which itself would be just a real mercy that he didn't have to linger and suffer.
So. Yeah, prayers to his family, and what a legacy, what a life. All right, let's take a break. We'll be right back on breakpoint this week. Hi, breakpoint listeners.
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Uh Well, we're back on Breakpoint this week, and I want to go to a special segment. Just recently, I was able to sit down virtually with the great Oz Guinness, social critic, author, and a collaborator on a new project from the Colson Center and Focus on the Family, talking about what Oz calls a civilizational moment, the gravity of the moment that we're in, and what that means in terms of Christian calling. We wanted to share a portion of that interview with you here on Breakpoint this week.
So, here is my conversation with Oz Guinness.
Well, I'm pleased to welcome to Breakpoint this week now the one and only Oz Guinness. Oz, thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure, John. Always. Oz, I've had an absolute blast over the last year, or really maybe even a little bit more working with you on this Truth Rising project.
And you've, I think, crystallized so much of my thinking. I'm kind of an armchair sociologist looking back through history and particularly the kind of the rise and fall of civilizations. And we've used the phrase cultural moment for a long time. And you've also recently introduced this idea of a civilizational moment.
So this idea that we've been called to a civilizational moment to me is so loaded and really is at the crux of so much that's happening in truth rising. But talk about. that idea of a civilizational moment. What do you mean when you say that?
Well back of the idea is the sort of biblical sense of time, generation, year. day, hour, moment, and the challenge of reading the signs of the times or our Lord's weeping over Jerusalem because, quote, they missed God's moment when they came. You know, I've always had a sense we need to understand the times. No, civilizational moment, some people are misusing it as a fancy word for the present moment. No.
It has a real definition. A Civilizational Moment. Is that period not a day, a period? when a civilization loses touch with what made it great. And when that happens, it really faces three broad choices.
Either it must renew the civilization, or replace it with an equally adequate one, or decline and fall.
Now clearly our Western civilization is a Christian civilization, owes a lot to the Greeks and the Romans, but its principal source is the Gospel rooted in Judaism. The intended replacement was the enlightenment. in other words, many of the same Christian truths, but without God. without the Bible. reason and progress without God.
And that Has failed. And that's why we're at this civilizational moment. Either there's a renewal of the Christian faith, or the West is declining. and will fall. One of the analogies that you've used, which has also, I think, been really helpful for me, is this idea of a cut flower.
Civilization that civilizations are rooted in things that animate them, bring them to life. And when they're cut off, they may they may still shine for a little bit. They may even still have a bloom for a little bit, but but but they're You know, there's no, it's unsustainable. What were specifically the ideological roots from Judeo-Christianity? What were the specific ideas?
that animated the West.
Well, many of them are pretty obvious if you think of them. The sanctity of life. the dignity of the human person made in the image of God, the finality of truth understood before the Lord, the sense of ordered freedom, so different from freedom as license. And if you go on down the line, justice and so on, covenant, all the way down to notions like peace, which is not the absence of strife, but a rightly ordered harmony based on God's way of doing things, and so on. Many of these are very simple things, but they are so foundational, and without them we're in trouble.
I boil it down. There's a lot of discussion today about the indispensability of faith. And you think of Neil Ferguson. That was his road to faith, as he's said publicly this week, as well as his wife, Ayan. Yeah.
And so you can see faith. Or, if you were talking broadly religion, has three essential things: roots, Restraints? and the source of renewal. And without the Christian faith, we're in trouble, because we need those three things. Yeah, I'm really excited about the role that both Neil and Ian play in the Truth Rising film.
It's really remarkable to hear both their observations and even a bit of Ayanne's story, which has captivated so many, myself included. But when you were listening. Those ideas, those concepts from a Judeo-Christian framework. I mean, those ideas exist in a secular framework as well. I mean, but they're completely, they mean completely different things.
It's striking that you said truth and justice and dignity. I mean, these are all things that have been intentionally redefined, right? In recent decades.
Well, I would say they're parasitic. No, they took the muscle. But they don't have a basis for them.
So take, say, human dignity or the famous line in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident. You finish it. You finish it. Oh, that yeah, that all men are created equal. Yeah, Plato would have thought that's nonsense.
Hindus would think that's nonsense. The difference in the Brahmins and the Dalits. You know, great leaders like Napoleon would have thought that nonsense. It only is self evident to readers. of the Bible.
and so on. You can see without the biblical view of creation, Genesis one twenty seven, there is no grounds for why we're more than animals. Or or take freedom. Have you ever noticed that every major atheist believes in determinism. Marx Economic Freud, psychological.
Dawkins, genetic. Why, if you look for freedom by reason alone, or nature alone, or science alone, you simply can't find it. Where does it come from? The Bible. In other words, they took these things over, but they don't have a basis for them.
You know, there's been folks talking this kind of way for a long time. You know, we talked about this project, Truth Rising, kind of being, you know, in some degree in the tradition of, you know, Schaefer's How Then Shall We Live or the Truth Project. Certainly our partners in this focus on the family have really wanted to see something to follow up on the Truth Project, which was such a wonderful resource that equipped so many people. How do you understand this civilizational moment in light of Schaefer walking around Western civilization with that cool beard and those knickers and talking about existentialism and hedonism and nihilism and all the other isms and where that? I mean, do you feel like this is kind of what he predicted?
Or you think about Frederick Nietzsche talking about in The Madman, you know, basically losing our tethering and therefore losing our orientation to reality. Are these the is the civilizational moment the inevitable result of the sort of things that they warned about? Absolutely. You can go back to incredible predictions like Heinrich Heine in the 1830s of the berserker rage that would break out. And 100 years later, it did in his own country, Germany.
Or Nietzsche, the madman's cry in the gay science, we've murdered God and so on. And Francis Schaffer, you know, I was intrigued by him when I first came across him in the 1960s because I was at university then. and I'd come to faith. But there was no sense that people who were teaching us had any clue what was going on in culture. This is the sixties, the counterculture.
Drug sex, rock and roll, you name it, Ingmar Bergman films. And then came this. Rather unusual little Swiss man in knickers. Connected all the dots. Because he realized how it was all linked up.
So Schaefer was a a door opener to an entire generation. But I think the difference now is, there's a widespread sense, it's not just Europe, it's not just America. The whole world is now entangled, embroiled in this civilizational moment as the West declines.
So the rise of authoritarianism, the Eurasian landmass, Putin in the West, Xi Jinping in the East. These things are incredible for the future of mankind, because we need an alternative to authoritarianism. If we're in a fight for a human friendly future, the way I put it. And so this is an extraordinary moment which calls out the deepest understanding that all of us can bring. And there's nothing deeper.
than the gospel. than the scriptures. And that's why this is such an exciting moment for Christians.
So, one of the key goals of the Truth Rising Project is to call Christians into this moment and to call them into this moment with faith, with hope, grounded in truth, with a sense of who they are, made in the image of God, restored in Christ, and called to this particular moment. And I'd love for you to just speak to that because, again, I do think one of the ways we've absorbed secular ideas is just this idea that history is bigger than us. And it is, but that we're just kind of being tossed to and fro and that there's no bigger story than kind of the secular, aimless, as Henry Ford put it, one darn thing after another. But we're talking about redemptive history and understanding this critical, incredible moment in light of. Jesus Christ, in light of the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, how do you understand the Christian's calling?
to such an unbelievable moment in history.
Well, the way I put it, John, is you look at the ancient world, it was ruled by fate. you take heed of us, and so on. Fate, nothing you can do about it. The modern world, intriguingly, while people talk about freedom, they actually rule by determinism. All the great atheists are determinists, so whether it's fate or determinism, when nations decline, they fall.
That's it. But that's not biblical. And the Gospel and the Bible is stubbornly and delightfully different. And so the Secular view decline and fall is replaced in the Bible by the biblical view of exile and return. No, as if we leave the way of the Lord, we'll be in exile.
Moral chaos, social dislocation, you name it. But If we return to Him, He returns to us.
Now, intriguingly, a lot of people quote Second Chronicles, if my people. And that's actually not the one to quote, because that was Solomon. And he didn't do it. He caused even greater problems. And I challenge Christians to go back to Moses.
Deuteronomy. If my people return to me, says the Lord, I will return to them and restore their land. And of course, that's what Nehemiah did. You think ten of the twelve tribes were lost. Totally.
Still are. Nehemiah and Ezra saved Judaism by bringing it back. And that, of course, is the history of the church. And I love the famous line from G.K. Chesterton: you know, five times.
The church has gone to the dogs. Mm-hmm. But in each case, it was the dog that died. In other words, the possibility of revival. And that's why we believe this is not hopeless.
As we play our part and we look to the Lord who does his far greater part in revival, things can be turned around. Yeah. You know, I uh a figure that wounds large in your life and in the film as well is is and and for Chuck Coulson was William Wilberforce, you know, who also uh on a on a another scale and another time and another place found himself at a you know, critical cultural moment where decline seemed inevitable and the harm that was being done to so many was palpable. And yet he believed in the gospel. He believed in what was true about the human person and he acted accordingly, but he didn't do it alone.
How do you understand that Wilberforce moment? And is that proper inspiration for ours? Oh, most certainly. Although we've got to see the differences too. I mean, there was no serious revival arrival to the Christian faith in civilization, and the West in his time was infinitely above and superior to others.
whereas to day you think our leading rival, China, is animated by a Western ideology, and using Western science, Western capitalism, Western technology, To rival us, we're facing are greater threats, but Wilberforce's precedent is terrific. In what way? Wh wh what are the what are the specifics there that you see?
Well, calling. The notion that each of us following the Lord in our spheres can make a difference and together we can make a huge difference. You know, Wilberforce showed that a man can change his world, but he can't do it alone. And he was described at one time as the prime minister of a cabinet of philanthropists. And in his time, that didn't mean people giving out money, meant people doing good for humanity in various ways.
So they work together. You know, I often say here in DC, Never as a great nation had so many believers at such a high level. You think even now Speaker of the House, the majority leader in the Senate, numerous congressmen, numerous sen if we can't make a difference now, shame on us. And while we've lost ground in the country in the last generation, Christians allied with the Jewish people, we are by far the largest community in the country.
So if we're not faithful to the Lord and positive, shame on us. You know, I meet people going around the country who say, Well, I keep my head down. I want to be like the early Christians. That's totally dead wrong. The early church was under an imperial dictatorship.
No room to move at all. But they were faithful. We're living in a republic. Based on the Hebrew Republic, Exodus Deuteronomy. And one of the features was the reciprocal responsibility of everyone for everyone.
Every Jew, Responsible for every Jew. In other words, every American citizen. is responsible for the American Republic. And when de Tocqueville came here in the eighteen thirties he said the churches were not only centers of discipleship, they were quote schools of citizenship.
So evangelicals who drop out of voting, shame on them. That's a failure of discipleship and a serious failure of citizenship. Citizenship is one of the key issues today. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I can't think of a better kind of summary for the Truth Rising Project than how you described Wilberforce: that, you know, one Christian can change the world, but can't do it alone.
Or any Christian or every Christian can change the world, but they can't do it alone. And that's really what we believe: that we're called to this moment in history, not just to a particular task, not just to be holy, not just to follow the Lord, not just to share Christ. Yes, all of those things are true, but called to do that in the context of this critical moment that we're in. The film takes viewers on an incredible journey. It starts with these big civilizational ideas, with thought leaders.
You mentioned Neil Ferguson and Ian Hersey Ali. Obviously, there are many others as well that are featured in the film. And takes viewers all the way through to people who are leaning into this moment with courage, whether it's Being willing to get their own lives back on track from being confused, like Chloe Cole, or just small acts of courage like Jack Phillips, and unexpected results that God brings from folks like Seth Dillon. And then just the courage to correct one's thinking, the courage to submit. And one of the most amazing stories of our lifetime, I think, is the journey through worldviews that we see in the life of Ayan Hirsi Ali.
Just really an amazing thing. But where we want to end. Is calling that Christians are called to this moment and that we have hope because of what's true about all of reality. Your voice has been critical in this, Oz, and I want to thank you for it. You bring such clarity to helping us understand the moment, but also helping us understand our place in the moment.
And that is a real gift, I think, right now to the church.
So I just want to say thank you. It's been an absolute blast to work with you on this project. I'm thrilled to where the Lord might take it. It's needed at such a time as this.
So, thank you for your investment and your wisdom.
Well, a great privilege, John, and uh and real fun to work with you. And as you say, where it ends up in calling is the absolute key, and I'm glad you've been in charge of that part of the application. It's when everyone everywhere in everything follows the way of the Lord, then we really are salty and like bearing. And to that, I just say amen. Thanks so much, Oz.
Thank you. Hey, breakpoint listeners, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. I want to invite you to join me for an important live stream event, Truth, Love, and Humor, Faith Without Fear. It's July 24th. I'll be joined by Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, the one and only Christian satire publication, as well as Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family.
We're living in times where to speak the truth can get you canceled, and nobody knows that better than Seth Dillon. And yet, our responsibility to speak the truth doesn't change. Just a few years ago, USA Today named Admiral Rachel Levine a biological man who identifies and presents as a woman as their so-called woman of the year. In response, the Babylon Bee named Levine the man of the year, and that led to being canceled on Twitter. But as Seth Dillon says, truth is not hate speech.
and their faithfulness to say the truth, even in a humorous way, Has an incredible ending. You'll not want to miss this story, as well as an exhortation of what it means to speak the truth. In this cultural moment, this event is absolutely free. You can either join us in person if you're in the Bay Harbor, Michigan area, or online via live stream. To register, go to colsoncenter.org slash truth.
That's colsoncenter.org slash truth. Again, the date is July 24th, and the event is Truth, Love, and Humor, Faith Without Fear.
Well, welcome back to Breakpoint this week. Joined this week by the one and only Katie McCoy. Katie, I want to go to an article that I saw this week in public discourse. I just last week, speaking to a group of students on marriage and family. Oftentimes I will get the question about, well, what does research tell us about same-sex?
Parenting and how it compares to moms and dads. And it takes a while to unlock this. It takes a while to unlock this because the history is there are really. Two sets of studies that have gone a completely different direction. According to one set of studies, same-sex parenting is the best.
It's not only equal to opposite-sex parenting, but if we really love kids, we would take. kids away and give them all lesbian couples because that's the best thing ever. And, but then talking about some of the limitations of that study, not representative samples, typically not control groups, surveys of adults in gay clubs and gay health clubs and gay reading groups and things like that. Asking the adults, how good of a parent are you? Not actually talking to kids, very small group.
Right. And you remember, I mean, there was this time period, especially in the years leading up to a Bergafeld and right after, where we would. See a headline in USA Today, or Fox, even Fox News carried these, unfortunately, CNN and some others, which is like new study proclaims how great gay parents are. And then there was, you know, the, what is it called? The fly in the ointment.
Is that the old phrase? Or the skunk in the rose dark. That's way better. If you're from the South, you should have some of these things. Mark Regnorus.
Mark at the University of Texas at Austin. You know Publishes a piece where he looked at an incredibly large data set. pulled out the same-sex couples that that that that had identified as such. and measured the outcomes for children. And not only did you not get all the positive things that the first set of data studies Suggest.
It was the opposite. The kids were much more likely to be harmed in these environments, physically abused, mentally abused, much more likely to be filled by social outcasts in schools, imprisonment, graduation rates. You know, literacy, long-term relational stability, risky sexual behavior. I mean, basically, if you can think of it, the outcomes were bad, or at least. Far worse.
And He ignited a fine. Firestorm. That was in 2012. You know, at the time. I think he had tenure at the University of Texas.
And he could have to survive that. Yeah, exactly. But that's it. And he almost lost it in that. I mean, there were calls for his.
resignation, the calls for the university to fire him. Called, I think, for him to be executed at dawn by firing squad. I mean, it was really amazing. And it was so quick to point out the limitations of the study. that he p put out Although he admitted those limitations, for example, that from this data set, even though it was much larger, you couldn't measure certain things like relational security and things like that.
And he didn't properly deal with things like poverty or whatever.
Well, the article, a headline in public discourse, and this is what caught my eye. What year is it? 2025? Yeah. He put that out in 2012.
So 13 years later. 13 years ago, yeah. New vindication for the regnora same-sex parenting study.
Now this is a long article. It is a An article that gets into the weeds a bit in terms of statistics and data analysis. But it has to do with how now, particularly using AI, you can uncover ways in which the reading the data. You go into kind of what you could consider multiple worlds, right?
So, in other words, once you make this turn, now you're over here. Once you make this turn, and how you know, you kind of have this implicit bias that goes into some of these studies, which, of course, is what Mark was immediately accused of, and so on.
Well, according to To this work that was done on Mark's study, and by the way, a bunch of others, kind of stress testing, as the article put it, these other, this methodology. It didn't matter how you looked at Marx data. Mark stated was legit. His conclusions were legit. If you take different turns than he took in terms of asking questions and reading data and so on.
It's fascinating now, 13 years later, to say, yeah, he got this right. His critics were wrong. You know, I wonder how he feels. I know Mark. We've had him at our Colson Center conference.
Really good guy, you know, classic academic. You know, he can just talk statistics. Yeah. He's on the Identity Project, too. He is on the Identity Project, right?
The project from the Colson Center, in which he, you know, was willing to stick to his guns. And, you know, I. He took a lot of shots. As far as collegiality goes, he was not the most welcome guy on campus there for a while. I can imagine.
But yeah, I was just fascinated that this is. What are the lessons here of being vindicated 13 years later? Oh, my word. Patience wins the day, obviously, for a scholar. Like Dr.
Ragnaris, but one that comes to mind: facts vindicate God's design. And uh we heard Headline after headline, whether it was same-sex marriage. And then it reminds me of all the headlines about so-called gender-affirming care for teens. Oh, right. Same thing.
Much more recent, yeah. Where you dig into the studies and realize that the way that the findings are presented, there's something wrong with them, that there's a bias with the authors. It's all the same. It's kind of all the same narrative. And so.
Uh it also reminds me, have to tell you. Kenneth Zucker. In Canada, I believe that was his first name, Kenneth Zucker. He was the Toronto psychologist that wrote. The entry In the DSM.
For dealing with child gender dysphoria or dealing with gender dysphoria in general. And he. Is also the one who said, I don't think we should transition children. And for that, he lost his clinic. He lost his practice.
It's the same thing at work. It's just, you know, back in 2012. what we were all talking about was same-sex marriage. And he dared, Dr. Regneris dared to say something that was outside.
the the cultural acceptable narrative. And so the only way to deal with that was to try to fire him, shame him, discredit his research. And then it turns out all of the research that tried to discredit his research was overwhelmingly biased. And what the the people who studied this According to this public discourse report, they found that his thesis was not only true using the model that he used to present it, but they said it was true in every analytic model possible. This is getting down into the weeds of analysis, research, that kind of quantitative.
Field that sociologists are in. But it was just fascinating when they said: you know, really, it isn't just that his study holds up, it's that it proves all the other ones wrong. Right. Yeah. But you know, but this goes to also This should have been obvious back then.
Right. I mean, this article from Public Discourse came out this week. It was last week that I was speaking to this group of students, and they always ask this, and I'm like, look, here's the data we have. The data we have is one set of studies that are not representative, not very large. In fact, here's, for example, of the 47 studies of gay parenting before 2010, only four used a random sample, and most sample sizes of gay parented children were fewer than 50.
And study after study, absence of evidence was presented as evidence of absence, which is a great line. This is, by the way, a very well-written article, even though it does get into the weeds. Compare that with Mark's work, which was the new family structures Study, that's what it was called. 15,000 young adults age 18 to 39.
So, not looking at parents, looking at the kids, collected at random to collect enough who had been raised by same-sex parents. The result was just under 3,000 individuals, 248 raised by same-sex parents, by far the largest set of primary statistical representative data. As I would tell the students, You know, before this, I've got now new things to tell them. But basically, Uh you have Two sets of studies that come up with completely opposite conclusions, and both of them have limitations in terms of this. This is in terms of what they're able to actually prove.
Mark acknowledged all those limitations, and here's what he suggested. And then here's this. But here's what all the data we did have, even at the time, we knew. Number one. that kids From intact to parent biological homes, far outperform anybody else.
It is the single most reliable indicator of a child's long-term success is that a child is raised in a home with married biological mom and dad. And every time you reduce one of those adjectives, married, biological, mom, or dad, then those outcomes go down.
Now, Just to be clear, these are statistics. Statistics are not destiny for individuals, right? There's a lot of incredible people that overcame really terrible home situations. There's a lot of people that have great home situations and are idiots.
So, you know, it's, but, but these, this is what the data, and it was overwhelming at the time. And it was interesting, too, that there was this growing set of studies looking specifically at the contributions. Of dads and how it differs from the contributions of moms. It's really cool, right? I mean, I interviewed years ago a secular humanist, science writer, Paul Rayburn.
Who wrote on this called Do Dads Matter? And he, when I had him on, I asked him why he wrote it. And he goes, Well, because I got five kids and I want to know if I matter. It was great. But Dads and moms bring unique things to the lives of their kids.
So, even before this study, even before the disagreement between these two sets and the different limitations and the different conclusions, what we did know. And the evidence was overwhelming. Is that married biological mom and dad makes an incredible difference, and moms don't dad, and dads don't mom. That's right. Mom's mom and dad's dad, and that gender distinction or sexual distinction matters in parenting.
Well, if those two things are true and you have these two options of studies to look at, one that's super limited in methodology, one that's barely limited in methodology, but comes up with two, who would you believe? I mean, you know what I mean? There was no reason. Even from the data we had, to just immediately dismiss one side as being biased and not the other. I'm excited that Mark has been vindicated here, but man, he has been through it.
And it says a lot about Kind of courage where God has called and placed you as well. Yes, very much. And what a testimony of looking at.
Someone who has an academic expertise. He's exercising it with a degree of excellence that is respected by his peers. And as a Christian, he is, I don't wanna say he's using it to vindicate the Bible, but because the Bible. Doesn't need to be vindicated. Essentially, he's showing how all of this evidence just manifests and proves and demonstrates everything that God has told us of how He designed us to work.
So it is wonderful that He is being vindicated. When you talk about the differences between Moms and dads, and how they parent. I think that's another thing that, in a macro-cultural way, we're seeing the effects of that. I think about. like a Scott Galloway, a uh a secular Atheist researcher talking about the effects of fatherlessness.
Well, He can't be saying something that is True, and all of these studies on same sex parenting be uh true as well. And this is just uh this isn't with a religious bias or a religious angle either. He's just speaking of looking at where are we in the world and and how do we connect it to This breakdown of the family.
So, this goes back to some of the things we were talking about earlier, too: just where do children fit? And I think about our friend Katie Faust, and she's been beating this drum for a long time. For a long time, yeah. Yeah. Well, and it also goes to the point: like, look, look.
there are people that have recognized that, as you put it earlier, the T and the acronym took everything too far. The other L's and G's aren't okay with it. Yeah. But that means in the political space, there are people that are saying the same thing about a Bergefeld that was said about Roe, that Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion or Berkelefell settled the issue of same-sex marriage.
This is more evidence that that can't be the case. Exactly. That there's going to be downstream things, and it's always worth settling and unsettling settled issues, particularly if it didn't really settle them in the first place. Yes, very true. I think we have enough time for one more segment here on Breakpoint this week.
And, Katie, we were talking about something offline that I thought was super interesting. And let's bring it online.
So, I'm going to let you. Introduce a topic here. Yes, people have a very selective relationship with Leviticus. Here's what I mean by that. Depends on your political persuasion in how you are interpreting these ancient laws written to ancient Israel.
for modern day political issues. And the one that caught my eye was people quoting verses in Leviticus to talk about specifically immigration policy.
Now, when we're talking about public policy laws We all should be advocating for laws. That are reflecting truth, righteousness, the character of God, the dignity of every human being made in his image. But what's fascinating is, depending on which side of the political aisle you are on, you use these particular verses out of Leviticus as sort of this trump card to say, well, here's why my perspective on this political issue should be agreed upon by all believers. But then what's fascinating, John, is the same book, just a few chapters over, Leviticus or Deuteronomy. There are laws about sexual purity, about morality.
Well, you don't hear that same. Crowd. Quoting those verses for, let's say, how we should handle divorce in our culture or how we should handle infidelity in our culture. And so it ends up becoming, in some sense, it becomes lazy, but in other ways, it's just disingenuous to say that I have the market on how we should think about immigration policy because I have this verse and I know how it should be applied. And so it really.
Kinda It just it's I get it's getting a little irritating. I gotta tell you. I was about to say, you use you use the word interesting and I'm like, I think that's annoying. But anyway. Because it's so annoying.
Yeah. Yeah. All right.
So so what's at the root of this in my mind is is that A couple things. Number one is the hyper-politization of everything. Culture hits a particular point where everything gets seen in political terms. You know, it's all in Jacqui Lul. You can go back to the political illusion where basically you see things as.
all problems as political, all solutions as as being political. And so therefore, then that political lens gets read into it. One of the things you mentioned offline, too, is that if someone on the other side's throws out a a Bible verse or a biblical claim or this is what God wants, then it's Christian nationalism. And then they turn around and and use Leviticus as a kind of a proof text on immigration, but that's not Christian nationalism. Exactly.
Exactly. Whether or not it's Christian nationalism or it is compassion and mercy, it seems to depend on which side of the political aisle you're on and then which issue you are advocating. We saw this again, though, too. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, when he was doing his enormous, it's technically not a filibuster. I forget what it's called, but he spoke for, I don't even know how many hours.
It was like seven hours or something. It was anything like that. Yeah, it was like through, I think through the night or something, but he was talking about a verse in Matthew. To support his view on a particular policy and where Jesus says, you know, when I was hungry, you fed me, when I was naked, you clothed me, and saying, essentially holding this up as a guide for public policy.
Well, the same Bible would have a lot to say about abortion, about same-sex marriage, about all kinds of social issues, but it's just so cherry-picked, but it's cherry-picked in a way to say, here is why my particular policy. political view. Is right and should be right for everyone. And it's ironic in this post-Christian. Postmodern culture that says, you know, you can't really make a claim to objective truth.
And yet that's exactly what people do. It ends up being just arrogant, really, to say, you know, I don't know about all these other perspectives and Bible verses, but I can tell you my interpretation of this Bible verse is that you should support my opinion. Right. Now, it ends up that way. And I think, you know, to be fair, that happens on the left and on the right.
There has been heights and heights and tons of times. And I think you could find as many examples. From either side, in addition to, I think, reflecting being in a hyper-political moment like we are. And that's not healthy, by the way. I mean, when people talked about.
America being kind of an exceptional, remarkable place in the 19th century, like to Tocqueville and others. One of the things they pointed to is how much of life wasn't political. They pointed to how much of life was outside of the political purview, that people solved their own problems. They didn't look to the big state for it. They took care of each other.
And so now we've kind of retreated to this point of kind of a radical individualism or a big state. And really, the answer is strong communities. It's the non-political institutions of life that pull us together and make us responsible for each other and for our lives. And the biggest presence of that has been churches and communities. I mean, you know, we talked about the little house on the prairie lifestyle earlier.
If you remember that show, the building that was at the center of life was other than the home. The church. That's where they did school. That's where they know that's where they... protected themselves from the blizzard.
That's where they beat up the bullies. That's where they, you know, had town hall meetings. That's where everything took place. And Obviously, it would be hard to go to any town in America and say the church is the center here anymore.
So, you know, I think that that's a big. Indicator When The Bible gets used as kind of a political weapon. That's not just saying something about how we read the Bible. It's saying something about the kind of people we are. Together and the kind of nation we've become.
But it is also saying something about how we read the Bible. Yeah, very much.
And we do have an incredible tendency to proof text scripture. to see, as Schaefer put it, truth in bits and pieces and so we we treat The scripture, I think Philip Biancy called it moral McNuggets, which I've always loved that phrase. You know, you kind of take these little things and have morals and pretend they're, you know, and I had that conversation uh earlier with Oz and part of our project together with Truth Rising. which will the documentary film will premiere in September, and then our study that goes along with that. One of the big points there is that the Bible tells the true story of the world, the big picture of the world from creation to new creation.
And The point is not so much To Find a bobble verse that I can apply to my life or my situation or can proof text my political view. It's to apply myself to it. Where do we fit in the biblical story? What's our you are here moment in redemptive history? It sounds rhetorical, but it's huge.
It's absolutely huge whether we live in a world that is centered around me or centered around God. It's absolutely huge whether we live in a world. In which we are fallen in need of a Savior, and I'm part of that explanation of the human story. Or, you know, we're highly evolved animals, or we're gods with a conscience, or we're wherever we want to be. You know, these alternative stories about what it means to be human.
How we treat the Bible is pretty dreadful. I'm going to put you on the spot here.
Okay. grade the church in teaching people how to read the Bible. Oh Which church?
Okay, good, good answer. Which, yeah, which tradition, which denomination? Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. I I would give us about a B.
Really? I feel like in terms of just like the yeah, I am. I am like living the Christian life where I think we fall short. is and I'm thinking especially kind of like in these women's ministry spaces, is we can talk so much about our personal piety that we fail to apply it to the world outside of our own spiritual growth. And some of that is a reflection of Generally, a lot of things in women's discipleship in general that it's kind of more emotive, it's kind of more my personal walk with Jesus and not.
My mission in the world. Why am I here?
So, in terms of how we read the Bible, I think we have some, you know, generally pretty good hermeneutics going on, especially in among conservative Bible-believing churches. But in terms of the discipleship of how we express it. And how uncomfortable we allow ourselves to be in applying it. I think that's where we fall short. Yeah, that's interesting.
I, uh, yeah, my grade probably wouldn't be quite that high. And I think one of the things, I think one of the things that we've, we, we've missed is that there was a lot of things you could take for granted, you know, just kind of gut-level assumptions about life, the world, you know. created structures like marriage, family, you know, whatever, the identity of Nations and how that fits within the larger scope. And there were just ways in which. Aspects of biblical knowledge were assumed, particularly in the West that you can take for granted, but that's gone.
And So You know, in a context where you can take that stuff for granted, you can do a little bit more moralistic and therapeutic application of the Bible. But in a context where that stuff's swept away, then that's, I think, where Christian Smith found that we became moralistic, therapeutic deists, you know, actually believing. That God's a remote actor in human history, not up close and personal, and that the whole point is to be a nice person and kind to others. Yeah. And you, you know, see, saw that reflected in some of the stories.
But I'll let your optimism have the final word. I hope, yes. I hope. I'll be there. I'll be here to be the balance of all the negative.
That's it. How is that? All right.
We're not going to get to any questions. We've started a segment. You missed this, where we take listener questions and we've had some good ones. But you and I are actually in the same room, which is unusual. And we're at an event at an undisclosed location.
And I did not get the list of questions, but we'll get back to those next week.
So please send them in, particularly if you disagreed with Katie, because then, you know, we can speak on her behalf next week with no problem whatsoever. But let's do recommendations real quick. Anything that you want to tell our audience about that you read, saw, heard, thought was pretty cool.
Okay, so here's what I recommend. And I, full disclosure, I have not finished this, but I am about halfway through it. There is a fascinating and terrifying documentary on Netflix called The Shark Whisperer. Have you heard about this? Oh my gosh.
Okay, just, you know, you may need some like therapeutic lavender scent to smell because it is so stressful. But this young woman who is a conservationist, her name is Ocean Ramsey. Her first name is actually Ocean. I don't know if she tastes it or whatever, but she swims with sharks that the same kind of species of sharks that kill. Kill people, and she has figured out how to interact with them.
And they get to know her. She's like a buddy, she's a shark buddy. And this sounds like the bear story from several years ago when the guy went to live with the grizzlies. Do you remember this? Oh, I don't know that one.
That sounds even better. Yeah, that one did not end well.
Okay, well, for her so far, she's alive. But there are also people, there are, you know, marine biologists like, this is irresponsible. This is a really bad idea. You know, nobody try this. But you just, you got to see how comfortable she is.
It's on Netflix. It's on Netflix. She can also hold her breath for six and a half minutes. It's just kind of, it's really remarkable. I'm like, is it just that, you know, God puts some people in the world that have just kind of a special gift and calling?
And she believes her calling is to change our view of sharks. Hey, listen, years ago, I met South Africans who were put on this earth to take care of sea turtles. That's amazing. I've never seen anybody more passionate about anything than these people in sea turtles.
So it's like God loves sea turtles. Yeah, I think it is like that. This is reminding me of the grizzly story. Yeah, I mean, she's alive. She's alive for now.
But yeah, hurry. Go watch it before it's taken off because of some horrible tragedy.
So there you go. Yeah. I'm going to recommend, I think, the public discourse piece on Mark Regneress's Vindication. I just, it is, it goes into the weeds on statistics. We'll link to it at the show notes.
But It goes into the weeds on statistics and statistical analysis, but it really is fascinating given that this has been a long, long journey. Of a study. And some of us are old enough to remember what that poor guy went through when he had the courage to throw that out. And uh into the world It Ignited a firestorm. And it shouldn't have.
It should have been obvious. It was obvious, actually. And it also tells you a little bit about how Romans 1 kind of gets the human condition right. Things can be obvious. And we can be really good at denying that in our sin.
So I'll recommend that piece about the vindication of Mark Regnerus. Again, it's a public discourse. And please, we're just a week away from our event up in Bay Harbor, Michigan at the Great Lakes Center for the Performing Arts. If you're in that area, come join me, Jim Daly, and the one and only Seth Dillon of the Babylon B as we talk about how sarcasm is a spiritual gift. And that's not true.
We will talk about that because it's Seth Dillon. But if you know about the Babylon B, we'll compare what our favorite headlines are and things like that. But really the topic is truth-telling, truth-telling in love, truth-telling with humor. And what does it mean to be truth tellers and count the cost in a day and age like ours? I think it'll be a fascinating conversation.
If you're not in the area, you can always go and sign up for the live stream and join the several thousand that are gonna be joining us via live stream, at least according to the latest numbers that I saw.
So don't miss it. We've got just a few live seats available. Go to greatlakesymposium.com to sign up. And Katie, thanks so much for being a part of this week's program. Thanks for having me.
And thank you all for joining us. We'll be back next time for Breakpoint this week.
