Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Part I

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The Papal Advantage: Eyes are Drawn to a Spectacle – And This Was a Major Concern of the Reformation

Of course, much of the world is right now talking about the death of Pope Francis and the plans for the funeral coming this weekend and for other events. But you’ll notice a couple of things just briefly today before we move on to some other stories. Number one, this is what happens when you claim a monarchial status for the leader of your church. When you look at the office of the Pope and when you consider the fact that the Pope is a monarchial office, then you see the fact that there is so much cultural fascination. And of course part of this is entirely legitimate because of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church around the world, and thus the influence and power of a Pope. But it’s more than that. And this is something that is down to the center of the Reformation, and that is the fact that the Reformation is only in a very limited way, visual.

The Roman Catholic Church is in virtually every way visible. And so you have the visible glory as one of the things Luther talked about, the St. Peter’s Basilica, all the rest of it, all of the color, all of the robes, all of the monarchial trappings. And it is really interesting to see so many people in the press say, “Well, Pope Francis wanted to simplify the papacy.” And arguably he did in some sense, some symbolic gestures, even down to the placement of his more simple coffin there in St. Peter’s for the funeral and the viewing. And so he also stayed in terms of where he lived as Pope in a far more humble place. But the less humble place was still there. The palace is still there, the more monarchial trappings are all still there. And so even as Pope Francis put at least some of that on a lower scale, so to speak, it’s still all there. It can all come back in a moment.

And furthermore, the color and all the rest of it, the pageantry, the royal trappings, the visual splendor, it’s all going to be there. And one of the things we need to know, because we’re going to be thinking today about how press coverage, media coverage shapes moral culture and affects moral change. One of the things we need to see is that cameras are drawn to that kind of splendor. Cameras are drawn to a spectacle. Cameras are drawn to massive throngs of people. Cameras are drawn to color. You take the College of Cardinals, you put them in their regalia, you take the bishops and archbishops and you take all of the even Baroque and even behind that medieval art, even ancient art and symbolism that comes in an avalanche of visual effects there in Vatican City, this is where cameras are drawn.

Cameras are not drawn to a primitive Baptist chapel in the woods. Cameras are not drawn to a storefront church. Cameras are not drawn to most first Baptist churches, even most first, say, Presbyterian churches because the influence of the Reformation makes them less than visually splendorous.

Now even Luther identified this as a spiritual, a theological problem. And as a footnote, Luther did not take the visual Reformation as far as did the Reformed tradition, that is Calvin, Geneva, and that tradition. In Calvin basically, you stripped everything away so that the building is, for the most part, a place for hearing the word of God, for the gathering of God’s people. No decoration, no stained-glass, no splendor. You take all those things out. And especially art, representational art, you take that out of the place of worship. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about it singing. It’s about gathering. It’s about the visible church singing and hearing most importantly the Word of God.

You look at the mass of the Roman Catholic Church, it’s very different. It’s sacramental, it’s also sacerdotal. It’s priestly. The action is really conducted by priests and in the context of earthly splendor. And that earthly splendor is going to be very much on display.

And you’ll notice the media can’t stop talking about Pope Francis and the funeral. That’s not going to be the case for any, say, Protestant or evangelical leader, ever. And that is because there’s really nothing to attract the cameras. No splendor here, no color here, no massive cathedrals, Baroque art and all the rest here. No throngs of people dressed in splendorous robes. Not here. But that’s one of the ways you just have to understand media attention. And again, I’m not saying the media attention should not be directed at the death of Pope Francis and at the big story considering the power of Catholicism in the world of who his successor will be. I am saying it’s visual and that explains why all the cameras are going to be there.

The other thing I just want to note here is that the past, the present, and the future get smashed together in events like this where people talk about before Pope Francis and then they talk about Pope Francis and his pontificate. And then they get to the hottest issue, which is “who next.” And I’m not about to get into that speculation. That would be uninformed speculation. You can simply look at the press reports.

But one of the things that is catching my attention right now is how many people who say, “There is no front-runner,” that’s what they say every time. And they say, “You never can tell what’s going to happen.” That is assuredly true, but it’s also true that the numbers are becoming more clear. Something like 135 voting cardinals, that is of the appropriate age under age 80, and according to religion, news, service and national public radio, something like 80% of them were appointed to that role and to that status by Pope Francis himself. So the likelihood of an abrupt change in direction, that’s not all that likely, but it doesn’t serve the media’s cause to say it’s not all that likely.

Part II

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Should Parents Have an Opt Out for LGBTQ+ Books for Their Children in Public Schools? SCOTUS Hears Oral Arguments on Religious Liberty and Parental Rights

Well, all right, let’s come back to the United States. Let’s go to the Supreme Court of the United States because yesterday oral arguments were held in a very important case. And it’s important in more ways than one. You look at a case that has to do with whether or not parents have the authority and should have the right to withdraw their children from the reading of sexually explicit material, particularly LGBTQ material in the public schools. That’s a big story. A case like that is going to be important.

But the second dimension we always need to look for is the importance of such a case as a precedent, that will have applications elsewhere. That means there is a third level of our consideration, and that is how bad will it be if this goes the wrong way? And as is so often the case with the Supreme Court judgment, it’s not usually that you go away with a big win. That’s certainly the way the Left looked at at many of the decisions of the ’60s and ’70s and beyond, such as Roe v. Wade. They got more than they were actually hoping for in that case.

But for conservatives it’s almost never that way. For conservatives, even the reversal of Roe v. Wade didn’t mean that abortion was illegal in terms of federal law. It just meant that the Progressivist liberal decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973 was struck down. Conservative victories are almost never so victorious as liberal victories at the court.

Now you look at the oral arguments held in this case, just consider that if the Supreme Court comes back and says parents do not have the right to opt out their children from this kind of LGBTQ indoctrination in the public schools, then watch out because that is not going to stand alone from other issues of parental rights and responsibility.

All right, so what happened yesterday at the Supreme Court? Well, it is interesting and, at least to some degree, reassuring that most observers on both sides felt like it was pretty clear that majority of the court was going to side with the parents. And some are even saying it looked like 6-3, that would mean all six of the conservative appointed judges against all three of the more liberal appointed justices. And that is reassuring, but you don’t do the math until you have the actual decision. And that’s not likely to come before much later this year, perhaps just before their summer break in late June or in early July.

But what’s at stake here? Well, this is Montgomery County, Maryland that is a rather progressive county. It’s a blue county in a purple state. And it is a blue county in which the school board has said that parents do not have the right to opt out children when it comes to something like LGBTQ story time. As John Fritze of CNN reported, “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday signaled it will require schools to provide opt-outs for parents who have religious objections to LGBTQ+ books read in elementary schools, an outcome that would continue the court’s years-long push to expand religious rights.”

Really interesting, very interesting here. There are two levels of issue at stake. You have parental rights and religious liberty rights. Those are not the same thing. In the case of these children and these parents, they’re inseparable because of the presenting issue, which is this story hour in the reading of LGBTQ+ materials to children and teenagers. In this case most reference is to children. But it is religious liberty when it comes to the fact that many of these parents are saying that this was an infringement on their religious liberty rights to raise their children as Christians.

Now, a little footnote to that, the Wall Street Journal came along and said religious liberty is not just for people who consider themselves religious. Religious liberty means that even non-Christian or even non-religious parents should also have the right to opt out their children. Very interesting point. I think the parental rights argument is absolutely key, but it is more likely, given the trajectory of how the Supreme Court has ruled in cases in recent decades, that the decision will come down on religious liberty issues rather than directly on parental rights issues. But the two are combined and inevitably the court is going to have to go one way or the other here.

Now there are a lot of things that came out in oral arguments and also in the documents that were presented to the court in terms of the written arguments. And also you had briefs issued not only by the two sides but also by allied organizations on both sides. They’re called amicus briefs or friend of the court briefs. And both sides basically do know what is at stake. And so the argument coming from the Montgomery County schools is, an opt out provision on this, well, that’ll just lead to parents being able to opt out their children for anything they don’t like in the curriculum, which means we don’t have a curriculum, which means education doesn’t happen. The public schools have to be run by professionals and professionals who make this decision. Parents are just going to have to deal with it.

And in effect, that is exactly what the school board is arguing. Parents, when your children are in the public schools, they’re ours, not yours. When it comes to us, say, having a gay story time, gay story book time or LGBTQ book time or whatever they’re going to call it, you can’t opt your children out.

We are talking here about outright indoctrination. And I have to say at this point I’m not even going to quote from some of these books. The fact that I’m not going to go into this detail is an indication of what we’re dealing with here. Much of it is just absolutely transparent. For instance, there are books like a Pride Puppy, and you can figure that out. It’s a puppy who loves Pride Day. But you also have the transgender argument that comes in here with a child insisting that the child is of the gender opposite of the birthed gender and biology. You have two dads, you have married couples, same sex here. And all of this is presented to children in the context of a story.

And here’s where we need to take a little Christian worldview digression. We need to just step back for a moment and think about the power of a story, because a story is never just a story. This is one of the issues that Christians have to think about when we have to think about it. We ought to think about it more often, but many Christians don’t think about it until you have to think about it. What is the purpose of a story? Well, in one sense, a story is to entertain. In another sense, a story is to educate. There are stories told that, just think of Aesop’s fables for example, that come with a moral theme or they come with a point where they are used to teach, kind of what you have in math where you have lessons taught in which you’re not just talking about two plus two equals four. You have two puppies and two kittens, and that ends up in a story. Math’s a part of the story.

But there’s something else. And that is that stories, narratives actually have the power to reach hearts. And so this is something that can sometimes puzzle adult Christians. Adult Christians can wonder at times why we are emotionally moved by things with which we disagree. That’s one of the strange things about stories. It’s one of the very subversive things about, say, the movies and all of the narrative devices around us. We are exposed to these stories and the stories begin to wear us down. Sometimes the moral change comes when we begin to laugh at something that was unthinkable. Sometimes it comes when you just get drawn into a storyline. And before you know it, a sitcom on television is the picture in the house next door.

And here is where a story is never just a story, and Christians have to understand that. So when you’re talking about this kind of storytime in the schools and you’re talking about these kinds of books, they’re not going at the ears of our children. They’re going for their hearts. And that is explicitly what they’re about. And they will say, by the way, that they’re doing this for representation and inclusion. “We’re the public schools. And that means we’re the public schools are for everybody” is going to be the argument. “And as the public schools, we need to reflect all the families that are represented in our school.”

And honestly, when it comes to the public school context, this is one of the most difficult issues for Christians to face. But it’s a different thing for Christians to show up, say, at an athletic event and there are two moms cheering on a player. That’s a different thing than being drawn into the issue of a story with a deliberate intention to try to bring about moral change. Now, frankly, the two moms in the stand, their presence can also bring about moral change. And that’s another issue why many Christians have problems with this context, and I fully understand that.

But my point is that this is an involuntary situation. That’s the reason why this is a Supreme Court case. It’s an involuntary situation. Children are not volunteering to hear these stories. Parents are not volunteering, Christian parents, they’re not volunteering their children to hear these stories. And so the parents are saying, “We need to have the right to opt out.” The three more liberal justices appear to be saying, “No, you don’t, because there’s no end to this. We’ll simply lose control of the public schools. The schools are entrusted with control of the curriculum. Now you’re going to be taking that curriculum away.”

But the conservative justices, by their questions and by their statements, and by the way, it got testy. It got testy yesterday. You had Justice Alito who was interrupted, who didn’t like being interrupted. Very interesting things going on here. The Supreme Court doesn’t deal with minor issues, it deals with big issues. I think all nine of the justices fully recognize that this is going to be a case with a huge precedent.

Now if it indeed goes as the Left fears and as we hope recognizing this parental right, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the court defines that right. But you know. When it comes to issues of importance from a Christian worldview, there are a few bigger than this, there are few more pressing than this. And when it comes to our children, there are a few questions more urgent than this.

The CNN report cited a law professor who said that the Supreme Court has adopted a very expansive notion of religious inequality, and that just leads me to want to ask why would a less expansive notion of religious liberty look like? What would a less expansive notion of religious inequality look like? And by that inequality, it means that law professor is citing the fact that these parents are saying that their religious liberty rights have been violated by the school, thus the school’s going to have to change its policy. We’ll see. We will see. It is just really interesting to understand that these are issues that are not just for Montgomery County, Maryland. There will be national value to this decision one way or the other, national impact. And the other thing to consider is even if the right side wins, the battle’s not over. It goes on.

Part III

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Gov. Youngkin Makes Another Bold School Proposal: Virginia’s General Assembly Accepts Youngkin’s Ban on Cell Phones in Classrooms

But wait just a minute. Before we leave, classrooms in Virginia, big news on a completely different issue. Governor Glenn Youngkin, Republican governor of Virginia, sometime back called for the legislature there in Virginia to pass a law, that’s the general Assembly in Virginia, that would mandate cellphone-free education in the public schools K-12. And I think just a matter of, say, a few years ago that would’ve seemed impossible, implausible, politically unsustainable and probably doomed to fail here. Well, it has just been adopted by the General Assembly. The bill is now headed to become law. The governor who called for it is certainly expected to sign it. And once that happens, it will go into effect according to the legislative structure.

And it was last July that Governor Youngkin called for this. It is very interesting to see how the national conversation has changed on this issue. There are catalysts for change. I think in one sense there was a preparatory period for Americans beginning to rethink this issue simply because so many people look at so many young people with their phones and recognize this is just not a good picture. And we’ll be talking more about why it’s not a good picture.

But one catalyst was Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation. And here’s another issue in terms of how culture changes. If you look at something and you say that’s wrong, it’s hard to translate that into a law. You have to now, under current circumstances, have some kind of statistical argumentation, some kind of theory of the case. And that’s what’s been building over the years. A lot of parents and others have looked at the cellphone phenomenon in the schools and said, “This just isn’t sustainable. Something’s going to have to change.”

But the change really came about when you had people putting together arguments such as in The Anxious Generation book, putting it together in a book in which you could say, “Here’s the documented evidence. Here are the scientific studies” as if we needed scientific studies to understand much of this. But the scientific studies are, in truth, far more substantial and more compelling than you might think because so many of these studies are showing that it’s affecting everything from the attention spans to the linguistic ability to the emotional stability and the relational ability of children and young people. It is also going even to the effects upon their tear glands. And in particular the fact that they’re not working so well.

It turns out that if you don’t blink, the tear glands don’t produce tears, and thus the eyes do not have the moisture that they need, which could add up to big problems in the future. I’m just pointing to the fact that in moral terms, it is interesting that in order to translate anything into effective policy, and frankly even to speak to many parents who should know better, you have to come armed with all kinds of scientific data to prove a moral point.

I just want to underline that from a Christian perspective, there is a limited utility to that. There are a lot of things Christian parents are going to have to do that aren’t going to come to all kinds of scientific argumentation and research data. Or if it does come with such data, it’s going to be too late for you raising your kids. You’re going to have to operate on moral judgment unapologetically.

Part IV

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From Idea to Story to Societal Change: The Washington Post Runs Major Story on ‘Marriage Sabbaticals’ That Reveals How Moral Changes Happens in a Society

All right, while we’re thinking about how moral change happens, it’s very interesting, The Washington Post ran an article just days ago entitled “Marriage Sabbaticals in Books,” mentions two authors. I’m not going to mention them. And the important thing here is that as we’re thinking today, particularly about how moral change happens, I mentioned a lot of it happens through narratives. And in this case you’re talking about an autobiography and you’re talking about novels, and these are pushing the idea of a marriage sabbatical.

And so basically it means that it’s a non-monogamy pact between a man and a woman and a married couple. I guess given the moral context in which this is argued, it could be anyone declared to be legally married. But in a couple, you have an agreement that for a time, referred to as a sabbatical here, you would simply take a leave from marital fidelity and go out and experiment presumably to come back.

Now, let me just remind you that sabbatical has to do with Sabbath. It had to do with the fact that the Sabbath followed the week of work and was to be set apart as a holy day. In some areas of life, including higher education, professors are sometimes given a sabbatical, which is a leave one out of every seven years. You’ll notice the biblical pattern to that. And here you have that as a metaphor being applied to a marriage sabbatical. I don’t think I have to say that from a Christian worldview perspective, this is a profoundly horrible idea. 

But as much as I think just about everyone listening to The Briefing is going to agree this is a profoundly immoral, sinful, and horrible idea, I’m not talking about it because I fear that listeners to The Briefing are attempted to declare a marriage sabbatical. I’m mentioning it because this is the way moral change happens in a society. You have a novel, you have an autobiography, it is turned into a screenplay, it shows up in streaming video, it shows up in various forms. Before long, it’s a drama, it’s a miniseries. It’s a sitcom. That’s the way it works.

And right now, the big issue is it’s a story in The Washington Post. And in this story, there’s a lot I wouldn’t possibly cite out loud on The Briefing. Just out of respect, I wouldn’t say some of the things that are in this article in the Washington Post, the most influential newspaper in our nation’s capitol.

So one big way that moral change happens is that media authorities such as The Washington Post say, “You know, this looks interesting.” And we need to understand that the jump from “This looks interesting” to “This is going to become standard fare in the culture, and this is going to become something that is celebrated by the cultural elites and the Hollywood glitterati and all the rest,” that’s a very short jump these days.

Even the way this article ends tells us a whole lot about where we stand in this culture and how moral change takes place. In the final paragraph, we are told, “Marriage or relationship sabbaticals may be a novel solution,” get the pun, “to revive a relationship.” This is horrible. This is exactly the wisdom of the world that leads down the path not to life, but to death.

No one with a straight face can say this is the way to save a marriage. No one with a straight face can say this is a way to buttress a manageable moral sense of sexual rules. No one can believe that. No one can look at this and say, “You know, this is going to strengthen marriage.” But we need to look at it just to the extent we discussed it here to say, this is in The Washington Post. It is presented as something for our consideration. And we need to notice that something like this is just a further catalyst, a further accelerant towards the direction of the sexual revolution and the subversion of marriage and the subversion frankly, of ontology, the subversion of gender, even biology in our own age.

But in this case, let’s just note this isn’t directed to children, at least not yet, but it is directed to adults. And adults may say, “It doesn’t really matter what narratives I entertain.” I just want to underline that a Christian can’t say that. A Christian knows it does matter what narratives we entertain. It matters what narratives are entertaining to us.

Finally, one moral test is whether or not two words can truthfully be put together. When you look at this compound, “marriage sabbatical,” you’re looking not only at an oxymoron, you’re looking at a denial of what marriage truly is.