BreakPoint

Protecting religious expression is vital, not just for Christians, but for everyone. Conscience rights are pre-political rights and provide the foundation on which every other liberty is built. Protecting that foundation on college campuses requires, at minimum, allowing religious student groups to meet on campus, to use allocated student funding like every other group, to choose leaders who adhere to the stated beliefs and values that define the group, and to think and speak as freely as other students.

Apparently, the U.K. has decided to shift its loyalties from courageously defying tyranny in the 20th century to embracing it in the 21st. Last week, a “conservative”-led British Parliament made George Orwell’s fictional accounts of “thought crime” a reality. After establishing censorship zones around abortion clinics in England and Wales, the MPs voted 299-116 to continue criminalizing even silent prayer in the vicinity of such clinics.

Among the many hymns with deep roots in the history of the Church, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” is based on a 900-year-old poem written by theologian and mystic Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was a towering figure in the political, intellectual, and religious life of 12th-century Europe.

Certain ideas just won’t die, no matter how often and thoroughly they are debunked. Most of us have heard some scientist, journalist, teacher, or entertainer claim that “human beings and chimpanzees share 98-99% of our DNA.” That statistic is an example of what molecular biologist Jonathan Wells calls an “icon of evolution,” or Zombie Science. The often unstated implication of this undead statistic is that humans and chimps obviously evolved from a common ancestor, and that we are still, on a biological level, mostly the same.

In 1935, Portuguese neuroscientist Dr. Egas Moniz pioneered a new procedure to treat symptoms of psychiatric illness. Using a thin instrument, a surgeon could sever the delicate neural connections between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain. The procedure resulted in significant changes to the patient’s behavior. Despite a mixed reception by the medical community, Moniz received a Nobel Prize in 1949.

A denominational leader asserted that the best thing the Church could do to handle the challenges of this cultural moment would be to "stay in its lane." That the so-called "culture wars" have been grueling, and the Church is primarily called to spread the Gospel.

On Wednesday, the recently announced Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics at The Gospel Coalition published a book excerpt authored by Pastor Josh Butler. The article described a sacred vision of the physical union of a husband and wife, arguing that not only marriage but that physical intimacy within marriage is a type (or picture) of Christ and the Church. In the process, he used terms and imagery that, without additional context, seemed shockingly graphic. The article set off a Twitter maelstrom.

As squeamish as we are about identifying which calamities, diseases, and disasters are God’s judgments for which sin, throughout the Bible, prophets, apostles, and even Christ Himself speak of judgment owed and paid out for national sins. Sometimes His judgment is portrayed as an act; other times it is portrayed as turning us over to the natural consequences of bad ideas and behavior. Either way, biblically speaking, if there is no place for divine judgment in our theology, there is something unchristian about our worldview.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said that “Beauty will save the world.” Reflecting on those words in his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn asked, “What sort of a statement is that? … How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything?”

Millions of girls with instant access to our culture’s most viral (and dangerous) behaviors and beliefs are currently manifesting the results. Their sicknesses are a clear sign that our society is sick. In order to treat them and us, we’ll have to admit how the disease spreads, admit the connection between mental illness and gender confusion, and keep them away from clinics and smartphone apps where the disease is celebrated.