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. 

If anyone wonders why the calls for cameras in government school classrooms are increasing, read on, and as you read, imagine what would have happened if a teacher had delivered a comparable lecture expressing conservative instead of “progressive” opinions in a public school.

Just prior to the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, Vanessa Connor, a biology teacher at Alan B. Shepard High School in Palos Heights, Illinois, used her taxpayer-subsidized position to spout her “progressive” views on, among other topics, homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, the Bible—on which she has views that many biblical scholars would dispute—former President Donald Trump, illegal immigration, and the climate.

Connor reserved her most intense condemnation for parents and teachers—including colleagues—who don’t affirm leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex identification. She clearly had no compunction about secretly undermining even the deepest beliefs of parents who pay her salary.

You can listen to 18 minutes of her presumptuous, unprofessional, unethical diatribe here.

Connor’s views on homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, the Bible, and family

Connor—who self-identifies as Catholic—took pot shots at theologically orthodox Christians for their beliefs on sexuality without providing anything more than anecdotes as evidence for her controversial claims:

One of my students earlier has a sister who identifies as lesbian and at the recent family party, her aunt took her aside and said, “I’m going to take you to church this weekend and we are going to fix you.” … And she has other brothers and sisters who support their sister. So, [the aunt] is not a safe aunt to any of her nieces and nephews anymore. … [Y]ou live in a world where people are like, “This is a choice.” I’m sorry. Did any of you ever fill out a survey that says, “Please check heterosexual”?

No acknowledgment from Connor that the Bible condemns homosexuality; that the Catholic Church condemns homosexuality; or that for the entire history of the church until the latter part of the 20^th Century, all biblical scholars condemned homosexuality.

Connor is correct in suggesting that people don’t choose to experience homoerotic attraction. What she omits is the important part: They do choose how to respond to those feelings. Is it Connor’s belief—as a Catholic—that any and all powerful, persistent, unchosen feelings are morally legitimate to act upon?

In discussing which issues animate her voting decisions, Connor shared bizarre QAnon-esque stories and bad theology with students:

When billions of dollars are being donated to a Christian Church who gives the money to hate groups, there’s a problem. They believe that teens should go to camp over the summer and get talked out of being gay. Again, no one talked you into being straight, so, you can’t talk somebody out of being gay. And this same group donated billions to another place that believes all transgender people should be sterilized. … Billions, not millions, billions of dollars … to this church so that they can shovel it to these [hate] groups. …

Remember, this is in the name of being Christian. I don’t know about any of you. I’m Catholic … Jesus sat with the people and accepted everybody. I find it very difficult to believe that if there was a gay person, and I’m sure there was at that time, that Jesus would have been like, “Everybody but you. Leper, come on. Gay person, sorry.” … And the auntie who was going to take a girl to church, she goes, “There was Adam and Eve for a reason.” And I’m like, “Well, you need to go home and tell auntie that the story of Adam and Eve isn’t even real.” There is no Adam and Eve. The first five books of the Bible aren’t real. They are stories. They’re made-up stories. You can go ask a religious person, whoever it is. They’re just made-up stories. … Noah and the Ark never flowed anywhere. …

[W]hen you learn and you know better, you can do better. But when we have groups that don’t even want to learn and just continue to spew stuff, it’s bad. It’s really bad.

So many questions raised by Connor’s controversial statements. Enquiring minds want to know the name of the group that is donating “billions of dollars” to a Christian church and “to a place that believes all transgender people should be sterilized”? What is the name of the Christian church? What is the name of the group that allegedly wants all “transgender people” sterilized? What are the names of the “hate groups”? What are the names of the camps that are talking teens out of being gay?

What is Connor’s evidence that some “groups don’t even want to learn”? Is her evidence for an unwillingness to learn the fact that some groups reject leftist beliefs on sexuality? Those groups, of course, would include all theologically orthodox Protestant and Catholic churches. Does it go both ways? Is Connor unwilling to learn because she rejects conservative beliefs?

Connor compared homosexuality—a condition defined by subjective erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts—to leprosy, a disease that has no behavioral implications. Jesus accepts everyone, but his acceptance of sinners into his kingdom is conditional on our repenting of behaviors God tells us are sinful. Leprosy is not one of those conditions. Homosexuality is.

One wonders how many and which Catholic scholars Connor consulted that led to her conclusion that the “first five books of the Bible aren’t real”? My guess is very few. The hubris of a government employee presenting her highly arguable religious beliefs as facts to a captive audience of other people’s minor children makes her unfit for teaching.

Connor explicitly condemned parents, aunts, and uncles who believe homosexual acts are immoral:

[H]ow many of you have some person in your family—your parents … aunts and uncles …  distant relatives— … that … are not supportive of LBGTQ+ … members [of] society? … So, if … a [gay] friend wants to come to your house, then it becomes like an issue for you. And guess what? Lots of us have grown up with people that were either racist or sexist or whatever.

“Supportive” is a euphemism for affirming, and it doesn’t refer to affirming persons as humans created in the image and likeness of God. It means affirming as good ungodly sexual acts and relationships. To leftists like Connor, “supportive” people must love the sin as well as the sinner.

Connor taught other people’s children that being “safe” requires teachers to facilitate cross-sex metaphysical delusions, and that students whose parents oppose name changes can legally change their names without their parents’ consent when they turn 18:

[W]e just had a panel discussion just for teachers that was given by students that go here. One of the students does use the “they/them” pronouns. … And it’s been suggested to us that … a safe teacher … would … try these different pronouns. …[C]ertain teachers will be okay with that. …

We do have students here who have amazing support from their families, who have already gone and legally changed their name. …  But when you’re 18, I think legally you could change your name to whatever you want, and you wouldn’t need your parents’ consent.

So, our [Gay Straight Alliance] is … making like a poster or a picture … to encourage teachers to put [it] in their classrooms so students know it is a safe classroom. We had that for years at Eisenhower. And I brought it up to Mr. Nisavic who runs the GSA, because at Eisenhower …  not every teacher [was] putting them up outside their classroom door.

So, imagine, whether it’s about sexuality or it’s about race or it’s about gender, if there was something that you could identify with and feel like, “Oh, this teacher cares.” And then you walk into your next classroom, and that’s not there. How do you feel about that teacher? How do you feel about being in that room? Okay. So, we have students here who … have … been more open, like, “This is me. Call me this.” And we also have students here who go by names, but teachers are not allowed to refer … by that when they call their parents.

So again, how sad and horrible is that, if you don’t have that great support at home and then you come to school and there isn’t that support … here? We should not be okay with that. And that’s what I brought up. I wasn’t okay with it. That’s horrible.

In Connor’s personal worldview, which she used the classroom to promote, parents who oppose “trans” name changes are unsupportive. And teachers who don’t put up posters affirming homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation are unsafe, uncaring, and “horrible.”

Not only does Connor believe that student “safety” requires teacher-collusion with science-denying “trans”-cultic superstitions, but she also believes safety requires secrecy:

And if someone finds that you are a safe person, please know you don’t have a right to tell anybody else.

The student-recorded portion of Connor’s shocking lecture begins with this announcement;

[T]his idea of gender being fluid is not anything new. Gay people—I’m just encompassing LGBTQ+ community—they’ve been around since humans have been around.

What’s missing from her statement is that all manner of sinful inclinations and acts have been around since humans have been around, something the purportedly Catholic Connor should know.

Connor suggested without stating that the presence of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation throughout history indicates those conditions are morally neutral or good. Would she be willing to apply that principle consistently to all inclinations and behaviors found among man throughout history?

On sexually integrated restrooms and locker rooms

Connor implied she cares a lot about students’ feelings, but she really seems to care only about the feelings of some students. She condemned the feelings of students who don’t want to undress in the presence of opposite-sex peers:

[I]n second period, I heard someone go, “No. … I couldn’t change in the locker room [with an opposite-sex peer].” And I said, “Well, it’s funny that you brought that up because the biggest places where these people feel the least safe are in locker rooms and in gym classes, because there are so many of you and so few teachers. And in the bathrooms. And we have students here that don’t go to the bathroom during the day, ever.

What about girls who don’t want to use bathrooms with opposite-sex peers? What about the girls and boys in an expensive New York City private school who “started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day” because they didn’t want to share restrooms with opposite-sex peers.

Connor manipulated students emotionally by suggesting that opposition to undressing in the presence of opposite-sex peers is equivalent to bullying and will lead to suicide:

[W]e still live in a world where people get beat up, people get killed, and people are committing suicide at a high rate, thinking, “Apparently it’s just better for the world if I’m not here.” There was the 16-year-old young man who was on the autism spectrum, who came out as being gay when he was 12. And due to the bullying, he took his life this week.

It would have been helpful and illuminating for students if Connor had discussed the high post-“transition” suicide rate. She should have discussed the possibility that gender dysphoria, like depression and suicidal ideation, may be a symptom caused by, for example, trauma, abuse, or autism. She should have mentioned detransitioners who experience “sex-change regret.” She should have discussed the astonishing increase in the number of adolescent girls identifying as “trans”—a number that suggests “trans” identification may be a social contagion like cutting and eating disorders. Connor should have mentioned that there is no long-term research on the safety and efficacy of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

Illegal Immigration, border security, Wuhan flu

Instead of offering a complete picture of complex and controversial topics, Connor chose to indoctrinate other people’s children by condemning and censoring ideas she abhors. Her goal was not only to change students’ beliefs. Her goal was also to turn her students into activists:

Do you think Shepherd is inclusive or not so much? … Here’s the thing. You guys, young people change the world. You don’t need to wait for adults. And the quickest way you can change the world is coming up really soon when you all get the right to vote. … You’re never going to find a presidential candidate who believes in everything you do, but you have to decide “what are those big sticking points for me?”

One is the world. People are upset about coronavirus. People are buying soap and hand sanitizer as if it’s gold? … But no one cares that we’re killing the earth.

And in an election year, she essentially told students in her biology class who they should vote for:

[W]ith this president [Trump], you keep having this issue with minorities. I mean, do you know how many people are so severely traumatized? Like kids being taken away from their parents.

… [Trump] doesn’t even know that the Corona flu isn’t a thing. He needs to get out of that office. Young people have to help stand up. I mean, at this point in time, if somebody else walks and talks they can do better than he is.

Leftist “educators” who are not experts in even the fields they were hired to teach now believe they’re experts in Critical Race Theory, gender theory, sexuality, morality, and theology. Worse still, while claiming they honor all voices, value diversity, and foster critical thinking, these inexpert, dogmatists call ideas they detest “racist,” “transphobic,” “homophobic,” and “sexist.” Like all propagandists, demagogues, and authoritarians, these “educators” hurl epithets and censor rather than openly debate ideas, which would require logic, reason, and evidence. “Progressive” public school propagandists demand absolute autonomy to impose their moral and political views on their captive audiences because their goal is control—not education.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Bio-Teacher.mp3

Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s an insubstantial dollop of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism (or nationalism); or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riot.

Schor cites Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

[W]hen [Russell Moore] saw a “Jesus Saves” sign displayed near a gallows built by rioters, “I was enraged to a degree that I haven’t been enraged in memory. This is not only dangerous and unpatriotic but also blasphemous, presenting a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ that isn’t the gospel and is instead its exact reverse.”

Moore is right, a sign saying “Jesus Saves” displayed near a gallows built by lawless rioters is dangerous and blasphemous. But why does this sign enrage him more than when former constitutional law professor and then-president of the United States Barack Obama cited Scripture as his justification for endorsing the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages? Why does it enrage him more than when self-identifying Christians currently serving in Congress defend the legalized extermination of humans in the womb? Why does the lawless rioters’ signage enrage Moore more than what our elected leaders say and do?

Just calling oneself a Christian no more makes a person a Christian than does a man calling himself a woman make him one.  Scripture teaches that “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Moore and others claim that the image of Christianity is now marred in the view of leftists, many of whom already hate Christianity and seek its eradication from public life. But is that true? Or are leftists cynically exploiting the indefensible acts of those who falsely claim to be Christ-followers? Are leftists using the signage and rhetoric of anarchists who bear no resemblance to true Christ-followers to further cow cowardly Christians and to turn them against courageous Christians like Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton?

Who is doing more damage to the church (small “c”): the Capitol rioters or the heretical wolves in sheep’s clothing who have infiltrated every denomination and are corrupting doctrine and leading flocks astray, including the Southern Baptist Convention? Some will argue that both groups damage the cause of Christ, which is true, but which should enrage Christians more?

Perhaps leftists hate—not the rioters—but those genuine Christians whom they can now slander by associating them with the acts of anarchists. And perhaps there’s another reason leftists hate genuine Christians.

Jesus forewarned Christians about their fate, but American Christians blinded by the freedom we have long enjoyed, can’t see the hatred Christ foretold even as they are cursed and cancelled:

 If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Schor bizarrely writes this in an article ostensibly about Christianity on display at the Capitol riots:

In the video shot by a New Yorker reporter during the siege, the fur-hatted Jacob Chansley—known as the “QAnon shaman” for his alignment with the conspiracy theory as well as his self-described spiritual leanings–delivered a prayer thanking God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.” While Chansley spoke, other rioters fell silent in apparent participation.

Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, was the tattooed, furry-chested, jammy-wearing, buffalo-horn accoutered anarchist who strutted into the Senate chambers with a cocky grin on his face. Why he is included in an article purportedly about Christianity is baffling. If crazy QAnon ideas have infiltrated churches as heretical views of sexuality have, they must be purged. In my experience, however, heretical views of sexuality are far more prevalent in churches than are QAnon ideas and far more dangerous.

Chansley is a “shaman” who follows his own syncretistic religion that includes elements of Eastern mysticism, chakras, auric/planetary frequencies, hallucinogenic drug use, and a weird movement called Ministry of Tomorrow (MOT).

Chansley was first introduced at age 11 to hallucinogenic drugs by his father, which raises an issue few are addressing: the importance of fathers. How many anarchists on the left and right grew up with good fathers in the home?

So, while Chansley may be a Trump-supporter, he is definitely not a typical hardworking conservative Trump supporter or a theologically orthodox Bible-believing Christian. He is, however, definitely a lunatic. The fact that some lunatics support Trump has as little to do with Trump as the fact that there surely are lunatics who support Biden. After all, lunatics and anarchists have to support somebody. Here’s more from Chansley/Angeli, but I don’t recommend wasting your time.

The fact that Chansley “delivered a prayer thanking God” during which “other rioters fell silent” does not mean Chansley is a Christian. Surely Schor knows that Muslims pray, Hindus pray, shamans pray, and Christian heretics pray, and they all think they’re praying to God.

Theologian John Piper offers a helpful explanation of the relationship between the diverse loves of Christians. The first love for Christ-followers must always be for Christ and his kingdom:

[N]ever feel more attached to your fatherland or your tribe or your family or your ethnicity than you do to the people of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ is more closely and permanently united to others in Christ, no matter the other associations, than we are to our nearest fellow citizen or party member or brother or sister or spouse.

But, Piper explains, many of our lesser loves have value too:

God means for us to be enmeshed in this world. We’re “not of the world,” Jesus says, but we are in the world, and we are supposed to be in it. … We may be in a city, a state, a country, and if I ask, “What is patriotism in this enmeshment?” my answer is that patriotism is a kind of love for fatherland — and I mean fatherland in a very general sense. It could be a city (Minneapolis), or a state (Minnesota), or a country (US, Brazil, China, Nigeria), or a tribe (Ojibwe, Navajo, Fulani, Kachin). And that love for these enmeshments, these belongings, is different from the general love that Christians have for everybody or for the whole earth. …

So, it seems to me that this is good, and that the goodness is implied in the Bible, and God created us to be in skin, in languages, in families, in cultures. He doesn’t mean for us to despise our skin or our language or our culture, but rather to be at home in them, and to feel good about them — of course, we have to add — up to a point. They’re all sinful, and so we never give them absolute allegiance. We never cease to be exiles and sojourners, even in our families and tribes and ethnicities — indeed, in our own bodies. …

In the end, Christ has relativized all human allegiances, all human loves. Keeping Christ supreme in our affections makes all our lesser loves better, not worse. Under his flag, it is right to be thankful to God that we have a fatherland, a tribe, a family, an old pair of slippers that just fit right.

The challenge for Christians in this time of turmoil and growing persecution is to hold fast to the whole counsel of God, rooting out heresy of all kinds; to proclaim the whole counsel of God even when the world hates us; and to come alongside those who speak truth in the public square and are mocked for doing so. We have no biblical warrant for speaking truth only when we’re guaranteed doing so will be cost-free.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Were-the-Capitol-Rioters-Christians.mp3

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