Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

On January 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist and Bryon White rightly identified in their dissents that Roe v. Wade was a bad (to put it mildly) decision:

“The decision here … partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted [more than a century]. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter [prohibiting abortion].”

Among the numerous and grievous consequences of the unlawful decision in Roe, and in combination with improved medical technology, is the fact that the medical profession has overwhelmingly persuaded parents that the death of their unborn children known to have Down syndrome is preferable to the life they would otherwise lead, despite God’s command and overwhelming evidence to the contrary [1].

On April 2, 2019, to prevent this selective abortion from eradicating its population with Down syndrome [2], Arkansas enacted the Down Syndrome Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act.

On April 9, 2021, in perhaps the most persuasive case against Roe to date, the Arkansas Attorney General officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court (after defeat in the lower courts) to affirm this law. The case, known as Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 13, 2021, the Illinois Family Institute joined a friend of the court brief in support of the prohibition [3], along with numerous other patriotic Americans, including the American Center for Law & Justice, the Jerome Lejeune Foundation (a Down syndrome advocacy group), Americans United for Life, 82 United States Senators and Representatives, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the State of Missouri and 21 other states.

IFI’s joining the brief is very important for three key reasons.

First, the name “Illinois Family Institute” prominently displayed in official proceedings, on the morally right side of the issue in this potentially landmark case, makes a very strong statement that the People of Illinois are not the extremist, Marxist, “blue state” ideologues most are led to believe by virtue of the lopsided Chicago control of our electoral votes and our state government.

Second, focusing precisely on the particular result of genocide of a particular group gives a tangible, rational, and emotionally-charged illustration of the truth of the tyranny resulting from Roe.

Roe v. Wade is a 54-page opinion which uses euphemisms and grand language to hide the fact that it writes entirely new law, which deprives a small and defenseless minority of unborn persons of their most important Constitutional right: life itself (known non-euphemistically as murder).

“Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.” – Leviticus 24:17

American values protect minorities of human beings from tyranny of the majority and, even more, genocide, as is rapidly becoming the case with Down syndrome children.

These uncomfortable truths have been glossed over by the Court and the culture in addressing the euphemisms of “abortion” and “terminating her pregnancy,” rather than the truth of the matter of murdering [4] innocent persons in America according to the desire of others.

Rutledge begins to destroy these dishonest euphemisms by focusing on the almost complete genocide of a precise group of persons, those with Down syndrome, who are valuable and would otherwise lead happy and productive lives.

Selective abortion of babies with Down syndrome is the very sort of tyranny of the majority that led our founders to despise Democracy (rule by a majority) as a form of government, and rather create a Republic (rule by law) based only upon securing those inalienable rights given to us by our Creator. Rutledge presents this in a way that both the Court and common Americans can see and feel clearly.

Finally, this particular Court has the sound jurisprudence necessary to finally recognize and overturn the great injustice of Roe, redeeming the moral authority of the court from the judicial tyranny of its last five decades [5].

For approximately 34 of the years following Roe, either Rehnquist himself, or his former clerk and current Chief Justice John Roberts, have led the High Court.

Six of the current justices have expressed judicial understanding consistent with Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett chose not to kill her unborn son (now 8) pre-diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Pray for all members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For those who are believers and to whom God has given judicial wisdom, that they will be strong and courageous, leading the Court and the Nation from error into the path of righteousness and able to withstand Principalities and Powers, as well as the flesh and blood of the leftist culture that will attack them mercilessly.

For those who espouse foolish and unlawful judicial philosophies, that God would turn their hearts (the King’s heart is in the hand of the LORD) to righteousness and destroy their efforts to usurp His authority by promoting unrighteousness and tyranny.

Pray for God’s favor upon this case, that the Court would choose to hear it (grant “certiorari”), and seeing this illustration of judicial tyranny against a few (depriving these small, disabled, and helpless persons, within the jurisdiction of the United States of America, of their rights to life and liberty without ANY process of law or ANY protection of the laws), rule authoritatively that Roe was wrongly decided and must be overturned.

Pray that God would bring shame upon any Americans who would continue to promote this evil.

[1]   Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Leslie Rutledge, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the State of Arkansas, et al., v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, pp. 2-9.

[2]    Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. & Ky., Inc., 9139 S. Ct. 1780, 1791 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“In Iceland, the abortion rate for children diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero approaches 100%.”).

[3]    Brief Amici Curiae, Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services.

[4]   Historically, “anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.”  According to the Indiana Code, 35-42-1-1, a person who knowingly or intentionally kills another human being commits murder, a felony.  States since Roe have added vague words to accommodate their legalization of murder, for example, Illinois Code 720 ILCS 5/9-1 specifies that a person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits first degree murder.

[5]    The three theories of constitutional interpretation taught in contemporary law schools: Natural Law (e.g., Clarence Thomas): there is an objective higher law (of the Creator in our case, though they don’t typically mention that source) which man can never supersede, and upon which the Constitution is based; Strict Construction (e.g., Scalia, Rehnquist): the Constitution can only be understood as what the document itself was understood to mean when passed; and Living Constitution (e.g., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor): the Constitution means what Justices believe it means based upon their own current understanding (a subterfuge to enable Judges to ignore the text of the Constitution and substitute their own opinions).  Holmes is the author of Buck v. Bell, saying that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” while upholding forced sterilization of the intellectually disabled.)

Written by Frederick W. (Rick) Claybrook, Jr.

“Hard cases make bad law,” and national emergencies make hard cases. A notorious example of this maxim is the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to vindicate the claims of West Coast Americans who were put in “assignment” or “assembly centers” en masse during World War II solely because they were of Japanese descent and, thus, inherently had a greater potential for treason and espionage. The Court’s reasoning:

(a) it was a time of national emergency;

(b) judges had to defer to military judgments of danger;

(c) everybody experiences hardships during emergencies; and

(d) the relocation centers weren’t as bad as concentration camps.  Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 219-24 (1944).

The parallel is striking between the rationale of the Court’s decision in Korematsu and the current U.S. Supreme Court justices and lower-court judges who have voted to deny requests by churches and synagogues for relief from COVID-19 restrictions. Those judges reason:

(a) it is a time of a national emergency;

(b) judges have to defer to the judgments of politicians and scientists during this health crisis;

(c) other organizations are experiencing hardships due to shutdowns and are being regulated by restrictions just as great or greater; and

(d) religious adherents really don’t have it so bad, because they can use the internet and TV for their worship.

These parallels are foreboding, but it is encouraging to see a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices most recently in R.C. Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (No. 20A87, Nov. 25, 2020) granting relief to Catholic and Orthodox Jewish congregations from caps on worship imposed in New York. In particular, the majority lanced several underlying assumptions of those unsympathetic to the prior pleas of religious organizations:

• First, constitutional freedoms, including the free exercise of religion, do not take a breather during times of national emergency; as Korematsu teaches by bad example, judges must be just as vigilant in protecting them during such times.

• Second, it is not enough that the state can point to some organizations (e.g., movie houses) on which it has imposed even greater restrictions on meeting than religious houses when it has granted lesser restrictions to many other entities that have no specific constitutional protection (e.g., grocery stores, casinos, wine shops).

• Third, religious worship cannot be minimized as either “unessential” or “individualistic.”

While courts may, and must, scrutinize rationales offered by politicians and scientists when they support restrictions of basic constitutional rights, judges may not define religion in their own image, but, rather, must accept the sincere beliefs of religious adherents that in-person, communal worship is essential to free exercise.

For this reason, the Illinois Family Institute has joined a group of other organizations, including the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal in Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker. In Elim, the Seventh Circuit, reciting the Korematsu-type reasoning outlined above, upheld a 10-person cap for worship services in a 700-seat auditorium that had no such cap when used for other purposes. (See the legal brief HERE.)

One of the judges granting relief in R.C. Diocese specifically cited Elim with disapproval, and for that reason and others it seems likely that the full Court will agree to hear the case. It is hoped that the full Court, in a precedential opinion, will repudiate the Korematsu line of reasoning and will affirm that religious organizations and their exercise of the faith have special, constitutional protection that recognizes that their faith is communal, not just individualistic; that no greater restrictions can be placed on worship services than on gatherings of any other type, even in a national emergency; and that any such restrictions must be the least restrictive possible in the circumstances.

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. 

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed new rules that would end regulations put in place by the Obama Administration that prohibited faith-based child welfare providers from receiving federal funding without abandoning their beliefs.

The current regulations were put in place just after President Obama’s election. They prohibit faith-based institutions that receive federal funds from refusing to place children in homes with unmarried partners, same-sex partners, and same-sex married couples. Illinois also passed such a law in 2011.

Zach Pruitt is senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a non-profit legal organization that advocates for religious freedom. Pruitt submitted comments supporting the proposed new rules Dec. 19.

“Every child deserves a chance to be raised in a loving home. That’s why ADF supports HHS’s revision of its regulations to allow both secular and faith-based providers to compete for federal grants on an equal footing. Tragically, there are currently over 430,000 children in the foster care system and 125,000 eligible for adoption, and faith-based adoption and foster care providers play an integral role in serving these vulnerable kids.”

Priutt commended HHS for seeking to “protect a diversity of providers to ensure the greatest number of children find a permanent, loving family.” A 2014 study by Barna Research found practicing Christians (5%) are more than twice as likely to adopt than the general (2%) population. Catholics are three times as likely and evangelicals five times as likely to adopt than the average adult.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently wrote a Wall St. Journal op-ed in support of the rule change. “The foster-care system is burdened, with children who need parents enduring tragically long waits for placement,” Moore wrote. “Genuine civic pluralism means everyone—secularists, atheists and agnostics, along with religious people of all sorts—should care about these children.”

According to HHS, which made the announcement Nov. 1, the new rule would be in accordance with “nondiscrimination provisions passed by Congress and signed into law.” It also puts the agency in compliance with U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the administration of grant funding.

Progressive groups immediately attacked the announcement. The Human Rights Campaign tweeted Nov. 3rd:

“The Trump-Pence White House has proposed a horrific federal regulation that would permit discrimination across the entire spectrum of @HHSGov programs receiving federal funding.” – @HRC President @AlphonsoDavid https://t.co/I0ik3S4KMo

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) November 3, 2019

The time for submitting comments closed Dec. 19 and will now undergo a review period before going into effect. There’s no word on whether any opponents will seek legal action.

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-and, please-

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention just released a document titled “Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage,”  signed by scores of religious leaders. It is largely an excellent document that embodies an unequivocal, courageous commitment to truth.

That said, it also makes the troubling claim that Christians ought not be angry: “Outrage and panic are not the responses of those confident in the promises of a reigning Christ Jesus.”

My concern about this may seem an unnecessary quibble, but the notion that Christians ought not feel angry is integral to the serious problem of Christian silence on matters related to homosexuality.

This statement echoes what Trinity Evangelical Divinity School New Testament professor D.A. Carson said in a recent interview with Desiring God: “This is no time for panic, or resentment, and it is certainly no time for hate.”

Clearly, it is no time for panic, and it’s no time for hate if by hate Dr. Carson is referring to hatred of persons.

I think, however, that resentment of injustice and hatred of wickedness are warranted. A fuller, more nuanced discussion would have been helpful in freeing Christians from bondage to a neutered, passionless complaisance regarding a pernicious Court decision that embodies pernicious ideas about marriage and homoeroticism.

The claims about anger expressed in the declaration and articulated by Dr. Carson seem to contradict the views of Leon Podles in an article titled “Unhappy Fault” published in Touchstone Magazine:

[M]any Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.

In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege.

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Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century….In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.

Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:

A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.

Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: “Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,” wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: “One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.”

Aquinas, too, says that “lack of the passion of anger is also a vice” because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil “lacking or weak.” He quotes John Chrysostom: “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.”

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As Gregory the Great said, “Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side.”

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Sorrow at evil without anger at evil is a fault….

I’m not alone in my concern about the ERLC’s statement about anger. New Testament scholar Robert A. Gagnon is also troubled:

I believe the unnamed author of the document…erred in claiming that Christians should not express outrage at this decision….When I read the document, this statement jumped out at me more than any other. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one for whom this was the case. Christianity Today highlighted that remark above all others (in apparent approval, unfortunately).

Jesus expressed outrage at sin repeatedly in his ministry (the cleansing of the temple is a fairly concrete case in point). So did John the Baptist (his direct criticism of Herod Antipas for taking his brother’s wife is an obvious instance). So did Paul (I would say that outrage was a hallmark of his comments on tolerance for the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5). So did John of Patmos in Revelation (comparing the Roman Empire and its emperors to a harlot and a disgusting 7-headed beast rising from the sea, a puppet of the dragon that symbolizes Satan; likewise symbolizing the provincial imperial cult leaders as a blasphemous beast rising from the earth).

Friends, if this were the Supreme Court attempting to restore the Dred Scott ruling, would it be unchristian to express “outrage”?…Democracy and liberty in America have been struck the greatest body blow in our lifetime. The action of the five lawless Justices will have enormous negative repercussions for the church corporately and Christians individually. And outrage at egregious immorality is not antithetical to love. This action by the Lawless 5 will harm many, especially those who experience same-sex attractions. We should have a godly outrage toward that.

In my view, although the statement polarizes outrage and faith (implicitly also love), the real polarization is between outrage and “niceness.”

It is troubling to have religious leaders advocating a generalized prohibition of anger. There exists evil in the world about which those who know truth should outrage. God does not enjoin followers of Christ never to feel or express anger. We need to guard how we express anger, and we must  temper anger when excessive. But we ought to feel anger about wickedness that harms those we are commanded to love.

Here are just a few evils that warrant Christian outrage:

• We should feel anger that incipient human lives are being daily snuffed out.
• We should feel anger that judges and lawmakers deem the slaughter of the unborn a “right.”
• We should have felt anger when men, women, and children were bought and sold as chattel during the slave era.
• We should have felt anger when black men were lynched.
• We should have felt anger when Plessy v. Ferguson was passed by another group of feckless justices, reinforcing the practice of treating blacks as inferior to whites.
• We should have felt anger over the imprisonment and extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
• We should feel anger when girls and women today are bought or traded for the twisted pleasure of men.
• We should feel anger when children are abused and adults conceal and facilitate their abuse.
• We should feel anger about the existence of child pornography.
• We should feel anger when teachers introduce our little ones to perversion in our taxpayer-funded schools and call it good.
• We should feel anger when teachers in taxpayer-funded schools teach that all family structures are equally valuable.
• We should feel angry when our laws and policies embody the false and destructive idea that children have no inherent right to both a mother and father.
• We should feel angry over parades that celebrate perversion in our streets and when our elected officials join in the corrupt chorus rejoicing in the normalization of sodomy as an “identity” and non-marital sodomitic unions as “marriages.”
• We should be outraged when public high school “educators” teach the egregiously obscene, pro-homosexual play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes to high school students.

And we should feel outrage that parents of an eight-year-old boy permitted him to cross-dress and “vogue” in the recent New York City “pride” parade after which throngs of adults with darkened minds cackled and shrieked at the tragic spectacle of an exploited little boy in a dress sashaying across a stage.

Perhaps the ERLC marriage declaration needed to be more carefully crafted in order to make a clearer distinction between permissible and warranted righteous wrath and impermissible types of  expressions of anger. Perhaps the writer or writers could have distinguished between bitterness and appropriate anger at evil that harms. Perhaps they should have warned against excessive anger.

With all due deference to men far wiser and knowledgeable than me, I think what America needs right now is righteous anger and fearless, impassioned denunciation of a sexuality and marriage ideology that deprives children of their rights and threatens the temporal and eternal lives of men and women.

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