So, Barack Obama urged the men of America – he called them “gentlemen,” specifically – to “go big” on Valentine’s Day. He said he speaks from experience that it is unwise to forget.

Good counsel. Yet why did this man whose views on marriage are “evolving” (read that, becoming ever more sympathetic to homosexual unions) not include “ladies” in his exhortation?

Perhaps because it is only normal for a man to think of traditional marriage when he talks about Valentine’s Day. The husband and the wife, the boy and the girl: Heterosexual romance is what comes to mind when one thinks heart-shaped candy boxes or red roses sent with a private note.

As a man married for three decades, I appreciated the President’s charge. Yet in it was a subtle reminder of what we all know, intuitively: Love is something to be shared by a man and a woman.

Mr. Obama’s call to remember that gallantry, affection, and initiative are qualities a man should possess, and direct toward the female love of his life, likely was unintentional. Still, it was welcome.

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Proposition Eight, the California ballot initiative that declared marriage exists solely between one man and one woman, has been struck down by a federal court. President Obama is planning to compel religious institutions to pay for abortifacients and other contraceptives as part of their health insurance programs. New York City is about to prohibit churches from meeting in public schools.

Is the sky falling? Are the nation’s moral foundations so eroded that they are on the verge of collapse?

For two reasons, I will answer no. In the past year, in states across the country, there have been wonderful wins for the cause of life and family. Ultra-sound bills and abortion clinic regulations have been enacted and polls show that Americans are more troubled than ever by abortion-on-demand. There have even been some Supreme Court judicial rulings (e.g., Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC and Spencer v. World Vision) favorable to religious liberty.

These things should inspire us to keep working for faith, family, and freedom in the public square. Although the assaults on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, the very nature of the family, and the religious and economic liberty we cherish are manifold, not to fight them would be to surrender our biblical obligation to work for justice and stand for the oppressed (Proverbs 31:8-9). For the sake of the Just One Himself, this we must never do.

Second, Jesus Christ is Lord of time and eternity. He is Lord when we rejoice and when we weep. He is the sovereign before Whom every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:9-11). Who sustains all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:2). And according to the Psalmist, God is unthreatened by the machinations of political man: “(Though) the kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed … He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them” (2:2-4).

In other words, God is accomplishing His will in ways our limited human understanding might find puzzling but which are fully commensurate with His character and plan for humanity.

“The Most High rules in the realm of mankind,” we read in Daniel’s prophecy (4:2). He has called us to stand for righteousness and human dignity in every sphere of life. Whatever external wins or losses we might experience in the moment, these truths should sustain us in our efforts at all times.

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The persecution of Christians globally is finally getting some notice in the mainstream press.  The cover story in Newsweek is titled, “The War on Christians,” and is authored by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Ali is a former Muslim who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

You read that right.  Newsweek – the repository of condescending liberalism, the magazine of record of the self-annointed Center-Left elite – has published a compelling piece by a bona fide “person of the Right.”

Why?  Because even the Left has to acknowledge that Christians are under the gun – quite literally – throughout the developing world.  To read about the latest, and ever-expanding, attacks on Christians in nations where they are a minority (and that would be all of Asia and the Middle East and most of Africa), go to the International Christian Concern’s www.persecution.org and Voice of the Martyrs’ www.persecution.com.  From Nigeria to Pakistan to China, the attacks on those who profess the Name of Christ are numerous and brutal.  As summarized by Dr. John Eibner, president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide,

A student beaten to death for wearing a cross necklace.  A pastor sentenced to death for the “crime” of leaving Islam.  Peaceful Christian protestors run over by tanks.  This is the reality for Christians in North Africa and the Middle East today.  Christians are under attack from radical Islamist groups and, in some cases, their own governments.

Yet as the distinguished scholar and diplomat Dr. Tom Farr, who was the first director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and who has spoken here at FRC, said recently, “The administration has invested far more energy and resources in the international advancement of LGBT rights than it has the advancement of religious freedom.”

The Obama Administration is willing to abrogate religious liberty here at home for the sake of an extreme political and social agenda (for example, visit our website to learn how President Obama is willing to violate historic conscience rights to bolster his political base and advance abortion-on-demand).  After all, who really needs the First Amendment, right?

It is little wonder federal efforts to defend religious liberty abroad are so tepid.  We cannot defend abroad what we are diminishing here at home.

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Persecution of self-identified Christians has become a pandemic in the developing world.  For Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Copts and others, making the simple assertion that they follow Jesus Christ can lead to abuse, eviction, disfigurement, and – far too often – death.

Today at FRC, we heard a remarkable and very probing lecture by Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, a profound theologian and himself a former Muslim, about the way the church is responding to the threat of radical Islam both abroad and here in the United States.

Dr. Sookhdeo drew a striking parallel between the church in Germany during the rise of Nazism and the way Christians should be responding to the Islamists who would undermine the very foundations of representative self-government and religious liberty.

Christians are called to love and minister to Muslims and also stand against an agenda which is inherently oppressive and even violent.  Dr. Sookhdeo offered wise counsel about how we can do both.  You can watch his lecture here.

In addition, there are excellent summaries of anti-Christian persecution worldwide in The Catholic Thing and the Voice of the Martyrs “newsroom.”

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Yesterday, my pastor and friend Rev. Tom Joyce preached one of the finest messages on the biblical and scientific basis of the sanctity of life I’ve ever heard.  On this Sanctity of Life day, It is well worth taking 30 minutes to listen to Tom’s compelling sermon.  You can watch it here.

FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE from IBC on Vimeo.

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A judge’s decision to order the abortion of “a mentally ill woman’s unborn baby and sterilize her — if it meant she had to be ‘coaxed, bribed, or even enticed … by ruse’ into the procedure” has drawn appropriate fire from officials in the Bay State.

Judge Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last week, not only wanted to compel the woman known only as “Mary Moe” to have an abortion – a procedure the serious Catholic Ms. Moe said, explicitly, she did not want – but also to sterilize her. Thankfully, State Appellate Court Associate Justice Andrew R. Grainger has reversed Judge Harms’ ruling, stating that ‘No party requested this measure … and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.” Justice Grainger has now given the case to another judge.

The forced sterilization of roughly 30,000 Americans occurred in our own country in the years leading up to World War II. According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, “Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. Advocates of sterilization policies in both Germany and the United States were influenced by eugenics. This sociobiological theory took Charles Darwin’s principle of natural selection and applied it to society. Eugenicists believed the human race could be improved by controlled breeding.”

The inherent injustice and cruelty of the practice was not only odious to most of our fellow citizens, but its barbarity was cast into horrible relief with the rise of Nazism in German. Hitler’s “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” (July 14, 1933) compelled “the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, such as mental illness (schizophrenia and manic depression), retardation (‘congenital feeble-mindedness’), physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.” In addition to the estimated 400,000 persons sterilized, by 1945 up to 250,000 people had been murdered for their real or perceived physical or mental problems.

Sadly, although mass murder in the name of “racial purity” did not occur in out country, as late as 1970, “The Nixon administration dramatically increase(d) Medicaid-funded sterilization of low-income Americans, primarily Americans of color. While these sterilizations (were) voluntary as a matter of policy, anecdotal evidence later suggest(ed) that they (were) often involuntary as a matter of practice as patients (were) often misinformed, or left uninformed, regarding the nature of the procedures that they … agreed to undergo.” (Source)

All of this poses a troubling question: Our society’s outrage over Judge Harms’ decision, while admirable, is much too muted when it comes to the ongoing death of more than 3,000 unborn children daily in the U.S., as is our culture’s compassion for their mothers, who often are “left uninformed” of the other, non-abortion related options they have.

At FRC, we work with dedicated people across the country to provide those better options. That’s why, on Monday, January 23, FRC will launch the second edition of our “A Passion to Serve: How Pregnancy Resource Centers Empower Women, Help Families, and Strengthen Communities.” Make sure to visit our website, A Passion to Serve, where you will be able to download your own free copy on January 23.

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January has been declared National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. It’s timely that the seriousness of this issue is being recognized, as it is not only a global crisis but a growing problem here at home.

Thankfully, the mainstream media are picking up on the crisis of human trafficking in the U.S., which FRC highlighted in two events last year. In a gripping new report, Fox News states that “with increasing technology and the Internet, human trafficking has become more accessible and more anonymous.” Even the normally business-focused Forbes Magazine is informing its readers about “How To End Sex Trafficking and Human Slavery.”

As Fox reporter Elizabeth Prann notes, “Experts say, across the globe, millions of people are trafficked each year. Hundreds of thousands of the victims are women and girls. But what surprises many — is the rate it is happening in affluent neighborhoods where minors are being turned into sex slaves.”

According to Rob McKenna, Attorney General of Washington State and current president of the National Association of Attorneys General, “Human trafficking is a $32 billion global industry, the fastest growing and second largest criminal activity in the world, tied with arms and after drug dealing … I urge all Americans to educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking. Together, we will combat this crime within our borders and join with our partners around the world to end it.”

The problem is grave and the harm it inflicts so painful it is difficult to describe. However, there is good news – the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability lists 31 Evangelical ministries that seek to help girls and women enmeshed in the sex trade, and Catholic Charities has launched a major project to restore the victims of this horrible practice to well-being. You can link to both sites by visiting FRC’s RealCompassion.org web site.

Continue reading »

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It is human nature to want to avoid hard choices, and to get angry with those who would compel us to make them.

In a new piece in Forbes, Bill Frezza wisely observes that the era of what he calls “both/and” is drawing to a crashing close: “The era of both/and was a magical time when the elected representatives running city, state, and national governments never had to make hard choices. To be sure, partisanship wasn’t eliminated, but political compromise could always be found. This allowed incumbent politicians from both parties to deliver enough goodies to their constituents to assure themselves reelection.”

Whenever a politician suggests that people be allowed to invest some of their “Social Security Trust Fund” money into private accounts, or that private sector solutions to health care might be preferable to federally-directed ones (which solve nothing, ultimately, except the unemployment of eager bureaucrats), or that Washington’s menagerie of departments, programs, agencies, and line items be streamlined into some form of reasonable coherence, he is vilified as heartless, a tool of big business, a mendacious and reactionary primitive.

Re-election is a politician’s stock in trade. To be a statesman, one must have an ample quantity of moral courage and the wisdom to know when to act boldly. Thus, given that few politicians have the strength and insight to behave in a statesmanlike way, we can anticipate that desirable change will be at best incremental. And, despite our protestations, we want it that way.

We want government’s benefits without its costs. We want its protections without its intrusions. We want its presence in our need and its exclusion in our perceived abundance. We are kidding ourselves, which is to say we are human.

As Frezza argues, we are now at the beginning of an era in which refusing to make hard choices is no longer possible:

… in bad economic times tax revenue craters, leaving massive shortfalls as government spending not only fails to decline alongside revenues, but goes up to pay for “safety net” expenses, which more people tap into as they are left out of work. This has happened both in California and at the federal level. Even more threatening than these oscillations is the fact that the underlying trend line in federal revenue has gone flat as federal spending entered an unprecedented period of exponential growth. To top it off, the Baby Boomer generation has started its massive wave of retirements, calling in the chits on those unfunded entitlement liabilities. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, GDP growth hit its deepest and broadest rut since the 1930s, where it remains mired for the foreseeable future.

We resent it when policymakers, speaking to us like adults, offer necessary and painful choices about policy priorities. That’s why we have long lived in an era of self-delusion and rewarded those who have given it to us.

We cannot abort our progeny and anticipate economic growth. We cannot experience liberty, in its fullness, if we disavow a willingness to fail. We cannot corrode the family unit through divorce, cohabitation, promiscuity, and homosexual “unions” and say we care about our children’s future. We cannot secularize our society without destroying the unspoken Judeo-Christian moral consensus that always has been the firm foundation of our republic.

“It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to understand that borrowing from the future will increasingly become not just inadvisable but outright impossible. The future has arrived, and it isn’t pretty,” Frezza says. He is right.

Americans have long been a brave people. We like to talk about the heroic conduct of our armed forces, and well we should. But just as our men and women in uniform show courage in their sphere, can we show it in ours? It is now time for us to see if we can still summon the personal virtue and political courage without which no economy, or nation, can long endure.

This will mean hard choices. Let us steel ourselves to them, with the concurrent commitment that through the non-governmental institutions of family, church, synagogue, not-for-profit charities, professional associations and small and large corporate enterprise, we will address the needs our sagging Leviathan cannot.

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The unlamented death of “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-Il, the brutal thug who ran an entire nation like a Stalinist mind-experiment, has ushered his son, Kim Jong-Eun, to the helm of the North Korean regime. Calling it a “government” seems too flattering, as governance implies order, justice, and some kind of representation; none of these are characteristic of North Korea.

According to the anti-persecution ministry, Open Doors,

“Of the reported 200,000 North Koreans in prison camps, Open Doors estimates 50,000 to 70,000 are Christians. Both Open Doors and the U.S. State Department report religious adherents are generally treated worse than other prisoners. Extreme forms of torture and execution, as well as forced abortion and infanticide, have been reported in the camps, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.”

North Korea likes to downplay its record of abuse, and even minimize the number of Christians living there (claiming fewer than 13,000 total). Yet a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life argues that of roughly 24 million people living in North Korea, there are more than 490,000 self-identified Christians in “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (that’s Orwell-speak for the dictatorial rule in the North).

From a human standpoint, the outlook in North Korea is not good. According to Christianity Today,

“When Jong-Eun was named Jong-Il’s successor last year, Sam Kim, executive director of the Korean Church Coalition for North Korea Freedom, told CT that Christians in North Korea would likely not see a decrease in persecution. ‘Kim Jong-Eun has not earned the true respect from North Korea’s communist party leaders to effectively govern North Korea. As such, he will be nothing more than a figurehead and his uncle, Chan Sung Taek, will be the person who is really in control,’ Kim said. ‘Unfortunately, Chan Sung Taek is just as ruthless as Kim Jong-Il. As such, Christians can expect to face the same level of persecution’.”

Now is the time for Christians to pray for North Korea: That God would protect and provide for the tens of thousands of believers in the nation’s massive political-prison system; that the new leader, his uncle, and their associates will humble themselves before the Judge of all the earth and transition their country from being a global focal point of oppression into an exemplar of religious and political liberty; and that Christian ministries within North Korea can continue their work and even expand it.

In October, FRC hosted a panel of several distinguished experts in the field of international religious liberty. The event can be viewed here.

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Joseph Bottum argues in a rather grim new piece in The Weekly Standard that the Anglican Church is on the verge of falling apart, irrevocably, due to the serious theological divisions between Western communions (specifically the U.S. and the U.K.) and much of the rest of the Episcopalian world.

He notes that such things as abortion, homosexual “marriage,” and the ordination of practicing homosexuals are the drivers of the Anglican crack-up.  While these are the immediate causes, they are not the only ones.  For example, the theologically notorious John Shelby Spong, former Bishop of Newark, NJ, denies the authority of Scripture and all the essential doctrines of orthodox faith, including the existence of a “theistic” God and the resurrection of Jesus.  He remains an Episcopal priest in good standing.

The presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, Catherine Jefferts Schori, commenting on Jesus’ claim to the only way to God (“I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father, except through Me,” John 14:6), tells us the following:

I certainly don’t disagree with that statement that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. But the way it’s used is as a truth serum, or a touchstone: If you cannot repeat this statement, then you’re not a faithful Christian or person of faith. I think Jesus as way — that’s certainly what it means to be on a spiritual journey. It means to be in search of relationship with God. We understand Jesus as truth in the sense of being the wholeness of human expression. What does it mean to be wholly and fully and completely a human being? Jesus as life, again, an example of abundant life. We understand him as bringer of abundant life but also as exemplar. What does it mean to be both fully human and fully divine? Here we have the evidence in human form. So I’m impatient with the narrow understanding, but certainly welcoming of the broader understanding … in its narrow construction, it tends to eliminate other possibilities. In its broader construction, yes, human beings come to relationship with God largely through their experience of holiness in other human beings. Through seeing God at work in other people’s lives. In that sense, yes, I will affirm that statement. But not in the narrow sense, that people can only come to relationship with God through consciously believing in Jesus.

Got that?  Jesus didn’t mean what He said, and what He apparently meant is so intrinsically meaningless that He might as well not have said it.

Many in the global Anglican communion have retained an orthodox theology, but the combination of theological heterodoxy and sexual libertinism has doomed its Western branch to ecclesiastical oblivion.

So, if Bottum is correct, one of the world’s great Christian traditions is about to founder on Western insistence that biblical morality be cast off as worn, bigoted and archaic.  And it is those in the non-Western Anglican community who are most stoutly defending both orthodox theology and orthodox practice (e.g., marriage really is between one man and one woman–imagine that).

In his telling conclusion, Bottum writes: “Freed from their African anchor, the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America will move even further in a pro-Muslim, anti-Israel direction, providing yet more cover for fashionable liberal anti-Semitism. Let loose from their allegiance to Canterbury, the African churches will quickly move toward forming pan-African denominations that will feel entirely distanced from Europe and America—and will help build the belief the global South owes nothing to the West.”

What the “global South owes … to the West” is debatable and secondary, even tertiary.  What Christians owe to their professed Lord is allegiance to His Word.  It is the latter debt that Western Anglicanism seems intent on not repaying.

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FRC’s friend Daniel Dreisbach holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University and a law degree from one of America’s most prestigious law schools (the University of Virginia). He is also a full professor in the Department of Law, Justice, and Society at American University. When Dr. Dreisbach speaks, the academic world listens.

His latest article is titled, “The Bible in the Political Rhetoric of the American Founding,”¹ and is published as the lead article in the current edition of the American Political Science Association’s Politics and Religion Journal. Dr. Dreisbach reviews in thorough detail in what ways and how often America’s Founding Fathers used the Bible in their political discourse. Putting it simply, they used it constantly. As he writes in his article, “The Bible and biblical precepts penetrated the core beliefs of many founders and the ubiquitous manifestations of those beliefs in public and private utterances.” In another section of the paper, he observes that the Bible “was also a source of normative standards and transcendent rules to order and judge public life.”

Of course, as Dr. Dreisbach also notes, sometimes the Founders quoted Scripture simply because the broad cultural familiarity with the King James Version. “The nature of political rhetoric,” as he notes, means that sometimes they used biblical phrasing “for literary, rhetorical, or political purposes.”

Yet with that said, there can be no doubt that the teachings of the Word of God had a profound effect on the beliefs and actions of those who created our Republic. “Both influential and ordinary citizens drew on biblical language, ideas, and themes in thinking and talking about the political challenges that confronted them,” Dr. Dreisbach concludes.

Biblical illiteracy is widespread in our time. Still, an acquaintance with the Bible is essential to understanding the foundations of our country and culture. Even more, biblical principles are eternal. They were critical at the nation’s beginning, and remain so today.

To listen to Dr. Dreisbach’s FRC lecture on the Christian roots of America’s founding, click here.

1 “The Bible in the Political Rhetoric of the American Founding,” Politics and Religion Journal, December 2011.

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Bill McGurn’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal describes how a wonderful ministry to the poor – the Morristown, New Jersey Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Center – has now been declared a “retail” establishment by a local bureaucrat. As a result, the ministry could be hit with up to $150,000 in new annual costs. According to McGurn, this ministry “has grown into a network that links restaurants, corporate sponsors and community groups with volunteers from nearly three dozen church congregations, including this reporter’s. The result is a hot meal to anyone who comes to the door each noon, no questions asked.”  In other words, it works – no wonder local government feels threatened by it.

A significant part of the new costs will come from the city’s ban on home-cooked meals being served at the Center; as McGurn asks, “Do you feel safer and better off now that we’ve protected you from home-baked apple pie?”

Continue reading »

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According to today’s Wall Street Journal, a homosexual activist named John Becker owes Marcus Bachmann’s counseling practice $150 for failing to cancel two counseling appointments. Becker disputes this, asserting that he canceled the appointments on time and therefore owes nothing. As a result, Bachmann has told the gay rights organization “Truth Wins Out,” under whose auspices Becker secretly filmed an interview session with a Bachmann counselor in an effort to get anti-homosexual comments on tape (Becker failed; the counselor was tasteful and helpful throughout) that he will turn the bill over to a collection agency unless it is paid forthwith.

Bachmann, whose wife is running for the presidency and is therefore a target of activists who oppose his views on traditional marriage, argues that “it’s not the amount of money. For us, it’s the principle.” Imagine that: a business owner standing up for his staff and himself, using legal means to do so, and insisting that since Becker “signed a contract that stated he would pay for no-shows,” that Becker be held to account.

All I know of the case is what the Journal reports. If Becker is telling the truth – that he canceled his meetings in an appropriate time-frame – let him prove it. If he’s not, let him pay what he owes.

This is not a “petty and vindictive campaign of harassment and threats” against “Truth Wins Out,” as the group’s director, Wayne Besen, asserts. It’s about responsibility, keeping one’s word, and paying what is owed. “A promise made,” wrote the poet Robert Service, “is a debt unpaid.” Enough said.

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Rich Lowry, editor of National Review and one of the clearest thinkers writing today, has written an excellent comment about President Obama’s disparaging remarks about the American people and their “laziness” and “softness.’ More offensive than Mr. Obama’s patronization is the accusation itself: That Americans are unwilling to work, to try, to take risks. What bunk – to use the Latin phrase, “circumspice:” look around. What one sees is a nation that, in roughly 235 years, has created an economic engine unlike anything previously known in world history.

Ironically, as Lowry points out, extreme environmental activists are deterring our capacity to build and grow. These folk are essential to the very coalition upon which Mr. Obama depends for his political viability. Odd, since had the EPA existed in 1783, the restrictions it would have imposed would probably have made Connecticut the farthest reach of our continental expansion.

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During the Second World War, the great American film director Frank Capra was tasked by General George C. Marshall with developing a series of documentary films that, as he later wrote in his autobiography, would “explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.”

Capra’s films captured beautifully the reasons America was fighting Nazism and Japanese imperialism.  They remain classics of honest and compelling documentary film-making.  They explained to young men about to go to war, and to their families, the essential issues at stake in the great conflict.  They explain them well to all of us still today.

Mark Salter, John McCain’s former senior aide, has written a gripping article on how college sports can become an obsession so great that both personal and professional ethics – not to mention common decency - can be thrown-out.  As he observes about the firing of legendary football coach Joe Paterno at Penn State, “Penn State fans rioted in support of Joe Paterno, who could have ensured that justice was done but didn’t. They are only concerned with the football program and their loyalty to a legendary football coach. Their outrage over the forced departure of an old man who made a damnable moral choice is greater than their outrage on behalf of the children who were allegedly raped by another once-beloved icon of Penn State football.”

To do nothing in the face of great evil is not a morally neutral action.  It is simply a passive way of allowing that evil to continue.  That’s why FRC continues to battle for the unborn, for orphans, for the traditional family, and for religious liberty.  Not to do so would be to accede to the steady extension of monstrous conduct in the home, society, and public policy.  And that we will not do.  That’s why we fight.

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November is National Adoption Month, which is why FRC today was proud to host Ryan Bomberger for his lecture, “Adoption: Be the Hope.” Ryan was himself adopted and, with his wife, has adopted two children. You can watch his moving presentation here. To learn about the pro-life, pro-adoption ministry of Ryan’s Radiance Foundation, go to www.theradiancefoundation.org.

One of the most daunting obstacles to adoption is its up-front cost, which can be as much as $40,000 per child. Although the federal adoption tax credit is very helpful, it does not cover what can be, for families of ordinary means, a great financial challenge.

It’s for that reason that the adoption ministry Lifesong (a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) has set-up a program to help churches develop adoption funds. An adoption fund is a designated line-item in a church’s budget that helps church members pay for their adoption costs, either through a direct financial gift or low-or no-interest loan. As the beneficiaries of one such fund, my wife and I are eternally grateful for the generosity and selflessness of God’s people in helping us adopt our three children.

This creative ministry is designed to fulfill one of the greatest elements of the Gospel — to love those in need for the sake of, and in the power of, Jesus Christ. No one better fits that description than orphaned children who need a loving Christian home. Lifesong provides a great way of meeting a great need.

To learn more about adoption and related ministries, go to FRC’s www.RealCompassion.org, through which you can link to many organizations helping children at home and abroad.

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Major media outlets are reporting the remarkable story of a French father’s 29-year quest for his daughter’s killer, a quest that has resulted in the arrest of a man who committed the murder.

For three decades, Andre Bamberski pursued the  rapist and murderer of his then-14 year-old daughter Kalinka, Dieter Krombach.  After offering a reward for his capture, Krombach was abducted from Germany and brought to France, where he had been convicted in absentia of causing a wrongful death in 1995.  Krombach, 76, will spend the next 15 years in jail, should he live that long.

Andre Bamberski is awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping.  Perhaps this is appropriate.  But what father cannot help but admire Andre’s dogged determination to see the man who assaulted and killed his daughter brought to justice?  To refuse to accept anything less than punishment for the monster who took his daughter’s life?

“History is a relentless master,” said John F. Kennedy.  “It has no present, only the past rushing into the future.”  History is relentless, in part, because men like Andre Bamberski refuse to let it elide quietly into memory.  That’s why Dieter Krombach is now in jail.  To borrow a phrase from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, “Here endeth the lesson.”

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Christianity asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person who lived in the space-time continuum.  He had a physical body, felt hunger, had full use of His senses, and worked for years as a skilled laborer.

The New Testament also claims that He was eternal God in the flesh, the Savior of the world Whose atoning death and justifying resurrection are the basis of the redemption of all who will trust in Him for forgiveness.

These propositions are striking enough without the other claims being made about Jesus in the political world, which are many.  Consider some recent headlines:

“Occupy London are true followers of Jesus, even if they despise religion”

“What Would Jesus Drive?”
“Best-selling socialist publication of all time remains the Bible”

“Jesus was a Communist” – new movie by Matthew Modine,

“From Jesus’ Socialism to Capitalist Christianity,”

“Marx, Capitalism, and Jesus”

“What Would Jesus Hack?”

“Was Jesus an Early Applied Economist?”

For the record: Jesus affirmed the right to own property and encouraged honest labor.  Several of the disciples were in a fishing business that included ownership of several boats, indicating that they were appropriately ambitious and hard-working (Luke 5:11).

Also, it is a tribute to Jesus’ enduring, penetrating, and inescapable power that political philosophers, economists, and even entertainers are so eager to nab Him for their agendas.

However, my point is not to get into a discussion about Jesus and His teachings concerning business, taxes, or economics generally.  Rather, it is this: Should we not summon the moral courage to deal with His overt and profound claims before we wander off into asking if He would drive a Prius, or if He would support budget reductions?  At what point do such musings become trivial, even irreverent?

It is wholly honorable to consider the implications of living a Christ-filled life in contemporary times.  Yet the effort to claim Jesus for an ideological agenda or to capture Him as some kind of pre-Marxian redistributionist is ludicrous in itself, and also keeps us from the main issue: Was He the God-Man, the Lord of all, filled with grace and truth, or, as one writer has put it, “just a carpenter gone bad?”

Shouldn’t we be asking the main questions first?  Remember, Jesus never said, “Follow Me, and become a socialist.”  Rather, His question was, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

What’s your answer?

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I went to theological seminary in Portland, Oregon.  That might sound rather ensconced and safe, but I worked at a large commercial bakery in a run-down industrial section of the city.  This exposed me to some things I would rather have not seen, as when, driving along a side-street one evening, I found myself running a narrow gauntlet of hectoring prostitutes; I drove away as fast as I could.

Portland has a justified reputation for urban renewal and natural beauty.  Bisected by the Willamette River and set among lush, fir-laden hills, Portland’s charm is hard to forget.

Yet now, as Katelyn Beaty documents in her moving article about the sex trafficking trade in the City of Roses (that would be Portland; I proposed to my wife in the city’s massive rose-test garden, albeit in the winter when none were in bloom), Portland has become perhaps the single most dominant city in one of the ugliest “industries” ever devised – the trafficking of persons for sexual purposes.  Veteran journalist Dan Rather has called Portland “Pornland,” and according to Joslyn Baker of the Multnomah County (Portland area) unit that specializes in child prostitution,  “most Portlanders accepted the ubiquitous strip clubs as part of their premium on individual freedom—until February 2009, when the FBI swept the Portland-Vancouver area and found seven underage girls, the most in any FBI raid at the time. With the ensuing national media coverage, Portlanders began realizing that their lucrative sex industry is the main ‘gateway’ for pimping children.”

Christians are fighting back, with love and tenacity.  They have now started the Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV), which over the past four years “has … become Oregon’s flagship nonprofit for passing laws that make it harder to sexually exploit children. In the same four years, two Christians in Portland’s leading assault advocacy group and police department have created a unique model for assisting underage victims. Their model earned their county a $500,000 federal grant that created a special committee on CSEC (‘commercial sexual exploitation of children’).”  Additionally, Oregon State Legislator Andy Olson (R-Albany) “has worked with OCCV to try to amend Oregon’s Constitution (whose free speech provisions open the door for prostitution and illicit sexuality among youth). A Christian, he calls trafficking a ‘family values issue.’”

Rep. Olson is dead right, and the noble efforts of committed Christians to change Portland’s culture of prostitution and sex trafficking are animated by the same spirit of sacrifice and compassion that led the early believers to rescue unwanted babies from the Roman ash-heaps.  As Shoshan Tama-Sweet, executive director of the Oregon Center for Christian Voices, told journalist Beaty: “The church has something special: We have the Good News.  We have a vision of the way the world is supposed to be. And it doesn’t include the rape of children on our streets.  When you realize that God loved every victim when they were born, that he’s with them every day they’re traumatized—it’s incumbent on believers to protect them, to help them become whole, and to insist that, in our society, we are not going to tolerate the antithesis of God’s beloved community.”

I believe Mr. Tama-Sweet is among those Jesus is unashamed to call brothers (Hebrews 2:11).  May God bless him and his colleagues in their efforts.

Earlier this year, FRC held two events focusing on human trafficking and what Christians can do to fight it.  You can view them here and here.

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In a characteristically perceptive op-ed titled “Downward Mobility,” Washington Post economics writer Robert Samuelson notes that “for young Americans, the future could be dimmer.”  As he summarizes:

In 1990, there were 32 million Americans 65 and over; by 2040, that’s reckoned at 80 million. Rising costs for Social Security and Medicare have created a new political dynamic: If benefits for the elderly aren’t cut, burdens on the young will go up. Decaying infrastructure poses similar choices. Either pay for repairs or tolerate substandard roads and schools. If today’s weak recovery persists, the outlook darkens. Unemployment will remain high, say 7 percent to 9 percent. Wage increases will remain depressed. Young workers will have trouble finding jobs to develop the skills and contacts that lead to better jobs. Productivity growth might falter.

This is not a scenario anyone wants to contemplate, but contemplate it we must if we want our country to remain the economic engine and beacon of prosperity it for decades has been.

One thing Samuelson did not note, however, is that our economic crisis is significantly augmented by a lack of future employees.  As my colleagues Drs. Pat Fagan and Henry Potrykus have demonstrated in their important study, “Decline of Economic Growth: Human Capital and Population Change,” ”The slowdown of GDP growth is explained by the concentration of both population and human capital in the baby boom, which is now being replaced by lower human capital cohorts.”  In sum, they argue, “the historical balance of population growth, human capital development, and physical capital investment is the optimum national path to economic growth. Growing our human capital is critical to our future economic growth.”

We cannot have a growing economy with a shrinking labor pool.  Yet that is the grim demographic reality we are facing.  Even the most extraordinary gains in productivity cannot compensate for a lack of one indispensable resource: people.  Given that we are losing roughly 3,000 unborn children through abortion every day, is it any wonder that our economic future looks bleaker than ever?

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