Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. While much of the South was under deadly conditions last week and frigid temps and snow, the KFC Yum Center in Louisville. Quite a hub for sports and concerts, thought the most important thing was to warn against regretful pregnancies, posting this on X, quote. Nine months from now, you could be at a concert or changing a diaper.
Make good decisions this snowstorm. And that's only more evidence that the Heritage Foundation's recent report, Saving America by Saving the Family, a Foundation for the Next 250 Years. could not have come at a better time. As far back as Aristotle, the family has been understood as the most natural of all human associations and an essential pillar of civilization. Chuck Coulson described it this way in How Now Shall We Live, quote, nearly every civilization has protected the family, both legally and socially, for it is the institution that propagates the human race and civilizes children.
The contemporary systematic deconstruction of the oldest, most basic social institution is a prime cause of the social chaos in America in recent decades, end quote. And that description has certainly aged well. The deconstruction of the family was not accidental. Many progressive voices have called for transgressing traditional family structures and gender norms. Academic and author Gloria Watkins, for example, argued the family is not a safe space.
Ideas like hers have permeated schools and institutions and therefore the world views of many. In a press release that announced this new report, authors Roger Severino, Jay Richards, Emma Waters, Delano Squires, Rachel Sheffield and Robert Rector declared this, quote, The state of the American family is in crisis, with a low marriage rate, a low fertility rate, and an epidemic of broken homes. Without the formation and stability of families, America will not survive. The report then offered three policy proposals to bolster the family unit. First, a family and marriage tax credit for married couples who are the biological parents of at least one child.
Second, a home child care equalization credit for married couples with only one income due to a parent opting to stay at home with their children. Third, newlywed early starters trust accounts that are seeded with $2,500 at a child's birth. accessible upon the beneficiary's marriage or at age thirty. Though critics might dismiss using policies to support traditional marriage and family, the approach echoes yet another teaching from Aristotle that laws teach and thus can shape culture. Though of course culture influences politics, the law also powerfully molds societal views of right and wrong.
For example, legal scholar Hadley Arkis observed that many Southerners opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other things prohibited racial discrimination in private businesses open to transactions with the public. Many Northerners supported it, but by 1966, three-quarters of Americans in both the North and the South came to support it. The law taught the public moral truth.
However, while the law is often necessary in that task, it's not sufficient in and of itself. Topic discussed in the new report, but not framed as a policy recommendation, that would have an even greater cultural impact on restoring the family, is that the state should also encourage religiosity, especially Christianity. The law cannot make anyone a Christian, of course, but it can and should promote religious involvement and should never penalize it. In particular, the state should foster church participation. After all, as the report demonstrates, religious people are far more likely to marry and marry earlier, have more children, positively influence their children's social development, and less likely to divorce.
Religion is critically important given trends shared in the report, especially the fertility rate, which hit a record low of 1.6 births per woman in 2023, a number well below the 2.1 replacement level. Civilizations that marry less bear fewer children and eventually die off. As mentioned in a recent breakpoint, early Christianity's explosive growth in the Greco-Roman world is partly due to young men who attended church to find spouses and to have children. Church communities facilitated marriage, family formation, and new life. In light of the impending holiday, just consider the life and work and witness of Saint Valentine.
Appropriate public policies and laws will protect sacred spaces and the rights of citizens to attend church freely and exercise their faith in the public square. At the very least, the state should not demonstrate hostility to faith, like Colorado has done repeatedly, or tolerate the disruption of services, like what's happened recently in Minnesota. And the state must ensure justice for religious communities that experience violence and hostility, like the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pennsylvania, Mother Emmanuel Church in South Carolina, Covenant Christian School in Nashville, among others. The return of Sabbath Blue Laws, by the way, wouldn't be the worst thing either. If the family is indeed the pillar of civilization, then the institutions that nurture and reinforce it also deserve defense and support.
The policy suggestions in this new report are promising and should be also supplemented by efforts to protect and encourage the one institution that can most effectively point men and women to marry and to be fruitful. There's no greater hope for the family than the church. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carrico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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