3. Pro-Life Movement:
“The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life” (Thomas Sowell).
Religion News
Gospel Coalition
Christianity Today (silent)
Trinity Forum fellow (Christian think tank seems to be assembling a certain type of thought)
Guttmacher Institute
Christians for Social Actions
National Association of Evangelicals (social tinkering to protect the sanctity of human life, ought we not be for a little tinkering to protect the environment)
Fall of Roe:
-pro-life activists and evangelical leaders took opportunity to argue for bigger government and to bolster pro-abortion narrative that Christians only care about babies before they’re born
-women choose abortion because the United State is insufficiently feminist and fails to provide enough entitlements
-pregnancy forces women to choose between children and themselves
-abortion narrative that babies are a fundamental obstacle to female fulfillment
-evangelicals come out as lamenting over Roe being overturned
“May the Lord give grace to victims of rape whose pregnancies are daily reminders of the worst violation”
“May the Lord give grace to women whose lives are at risk in their pregnancies & to medical providers wondering if they can intervene to save their lives”
-focused on social program that churches and lawmakers might offer in response
*** for decades it had been uncontroversial for Christians to place significant weight on a candidate’s stance on abortion when evaluating how to vote
***2019 focus not on the restrictions of abortion but twist it to support candidates that are pro-abortion but promise to address systemic racism would be more pro-life, given better education and higher paying jobs so minorities may choose to keep their babies
-Biden’s administration promised to protect abortion access, expand LGBTQ power, and erase religious liberty protections to boot
“White evangelical Protestants stand noticeably apart from other religious people on abortion restrictions” (Associated Press).
“We remember that being fully pro-life means caring about the whole life, in all its fulless and diversity” (Christians for Social Change).
-evangelical used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground, but now it is just synonymous with hypocrite
-evangelicals should back Democrats despite their stance on abortion
-evangelicals called to be the road map for navigating the unprecedented social and cultural changes we are facing
-evangelicals as an authoritative voice on political ethics
-Republicans no longer use abortion as a wedge issue
-refuse those evangelicals who had propelled Trump to victory
-distribution of online abortion drugs has ramped up
-need to transform the definition of pro-life to mean everything
-be pro-all-of-life from conception to the grave, including every ethnicity
-deny abortion, but pro-life means anything from supporting sex abuse victims to someone being denied a job because of race
-pro-life is wearing a mask during COVID pandemic
-pro-life is gun control
-pro-life is antiracism
**Being pro-life is everything except the baby in the womb
Media and Money Men:
-evangelical media covers the same topics as secular news outlets and culture journals
Christianity Today:
-progressive slant
-Interview: self-professed Christian psychology professor bemoaned the fact that states had been banning transgender medications and surgeries for children because these are complex clinical issues
-Article: highly racially divisive essay titled, “White Churches, It’s Time to Go Pro-Life on Gun Control”
-reports promoting lax border policies with no counterbalance to show the harms of unfettered illegal immigration
-no coverage of the dozens of laws being passed across the country that ban transgender surgeries and treatments on minors, drag queen performances in front of children, or bills mandating that schools keep gender indoctrination out of the classroom
-funding coming from secular foundations
-deep desire for approval of the secular elites
**Elite evangelicalism is a form of cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion
Money:
-used to taint Christian thought
-2 million grant to Christian Today for a project called “Create a Future for Christian Thought”
-Lilly endowment’s patronage of Billy Graham’s magazine between 2019-2022
-money used to educate preachers
-money used to equip preachers in bringing their message of life
Thriving in Ministry Initiative:
-overtly left-wing that its participants promote abortion, reparations, illegal immigration amnesty, and LGBTQ agenda
Funding:
-political donation support for Democrats
-candidates who ran on platform of protecting abortion without exception
-repealing the Hyde Amendment that prevents federal tax dollars from funding abortions
-support the Equality Act: threatens parental rights over children who claim to be transgender, decimate conscience rights for medical workers
-cancel religious freedom
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:
“The Equality Act represents the greatest threat to religious liberty in the United States in our lifetimes and would totally transform the United States as we know it” (Albert Mohler, president).
BUT
-funded to campaign of candidates pledging to vote for it
Religion New Service:
-money supported aggressive LGBTQ grant maker the Arcus Foundation
-push LGBTQ affirmations in the church as a question of civil rights rather then biblical rights
-recruit and equip LGBT supportive leaders and advocates to counter rejection and antagonism within traditionally conservative Christian churches
-overtly push LGBTQ doctrine
Ex. LGBTQ Bias May Be Driving Them Away
Babylon Bee:
“Our jokes are not anti-trans. They’re pro-truth” (CEO Seth Dillon).
Political Evangelicals:
-Soros/Gates/Secular foundations/Church
-world’s richest people have a strong interest in shaping society
-world’s richest people launch grant-making foundations
-take money from core partners like George Soros
-Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: left wing promotes vote-by-mail initiatives, socialized health care, and gun control
-Capital Research Center money
-Trinity Forum (research the role of Christian leaders in political life)
-Obama administration argued that it would be best for our nation if evangelicals embraced pluralism
-evangelicals should show less interest in their own beliefs enshrined in American law and mor willingness to accommodate the policies of the left
Public Religion Institute:
-accused White Christian churches of being responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy
Conservative Christians Dominionists:
-not just want religious freedom, but religious authority
-stop the efforts to purge books off school shelves (not mentioning that those books available to middle school children depicted pornographic images like boys performing oral sex on each other
-counseled evangelicals to give up the ghost on traditional marriage as a matter of law
-decisions are permanent is how pluralism is supposed to work
2024:
-Trinity Forum partner with other secularists to create Bible Study Curriculum
-bring politics into the church to help reframe Christian political identity
Rockefeller Philanthropy:
-2022 announced funding to the beneficiaries of it New Pluralists Project
-bank rolling Bible Studies
-seeking to promote leadership of rural LGBTQ+ people
-keeping and returning fossil fuel resources in the ground in the name of climate change
-collaborative efforts to the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity
-fund efforts to safeguard abortion rights
-ensure that youth have access to gender affirming care
Enumerical group One America Movement:
-leader of the LGBTQ+ affirming synagogue
-cofounder of the Black Lives Matter of Greater New York
-excuses rioting as self-defense
-called Jesus a black radical revolutionary
After Party:
-racist racial justice warriors
-frames America as systemically racist and that Christians should vote to ensure racial justice
-voting on abortion is complex but voting on the issue of racial injustice is clearcut
-books pastor’s conferences
-convinced Christian Colleges & Universities to adopt their Trinity Forum curriculum
-implement Trinity Forum curriculum through student development, student life, chapel services, discipleship groups, residence life, and student orientations
-integrate Trinity Forum curriculum into political science, theology, and pastoral ministry courses
“The irony that creating a Bible study curriculum devoted to teaching Christians how to be less political is, in itself, inappropriately politicizing Scripture.”
“Rockefeller bankrolling Bible studies to convince progressive evangelicals that they need to be less partisan or more willing to embrace conservative policies for the sake of pluralism or crucifying the self.”