Abortion
Outrage as midwives’ chief announces she will lobby for abortion up to BIRTH
End-of-Life
European Suicide, Spiritual and Physical – One Follows the Other by John Stonestreet – “We’ve already witnessed the spiritual demise of Europe. Can its physical demise be far behind?”
Video: WATCH: Belgians warn of euthanasia’s unseen dangers by Steve Weatherbe
Dylan Rizzo’s recovery further evidence a “vegetative state may not be as persistent as it was once thought” by Dave Andrusko
Pfizer Says No Use of Drugs in Assisted Suicide by Wesley J. Smith
Family Living
Why This Couple Drops Off Their 2-Year-Old at Grandma’s Every Weekend by Maressa Brown – “Only the parents of a child truly know what is best.” What do you think?
4th Grader Comes Home With Disturbing News—Then Mom Realizes Her “Worst Nightmare” Is Coming True by Leslie Blanchard – “It wasn’t pretty, but I prevailed”
The Best Way to Encourage Your Husband by Heidi Goehmann
Political
Nuns Defeat Obama in Court by Paul Albaugh
Worldview and Culture
Influential Pastor Steve Chalke to Perform Same-Sex “Marriages” by Simon Turpin
Male and Female He Created Them by Deaconess Kim Schave
Homosexuality and Transgenderism: The Goal is to Redefine Everything by Gary DeMar
Bathrooms, Biology and Federal Overreach – Bad Ideas and Their Victims by John Stonestreet – “Was everyone who lived before 2015 an unenlightened bigot? Recent statements by this administration may give you that impression.”
Video: Alliance Defending Freedom – The Unintended Victims of Bathroom Bills and Locker Room Policies
Gary Varvel cartoon on traditional values
What Young People Should Know and Love about the Church by Jessica Jenson
Balance by Kevin Conklin – “Every pastor I have ever met is busy – some more than others. In spite of this, I’ve also met a few who hardly ever seem hurried. This is a remarkable phenomenon. How is it that so many appear to be so hurried while only a few rarely do? In pondering this question, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s equal parts art, science, and discipline.”
Audio: World Lutheran News Digest – Undeniable Anti-Christian Sentiment in the U. S.
Audio: Free To Be Faithful – The tax status of religious organizations is being threatened …
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The Immigrant Family
by James M. Kushiner, Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James
In 1940 census reports from working-class neighborhoods on the east side of Detroit, Michigan, you will find living side-by-side immigrants from places like Poland, France, Canada, Scotland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Yugoslavia, for example. The parents were immigrants; most of the children were born in the United States.
Such neighborhoods were made up of transplants–often a single person or married couple from one country moved to another, where they set down roots and began a new family, native born to this American soil. I was a first generation native-born to my immigrant mother.
What was the fuel driving all this transplanting? Family. Not simply the static “nuclear family,” but the family in the extended sense of a future-oriented family tree, branching out with sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Young single men and women sometimes left behind their parents to settle in America because there was no future for them: no land to inherit, no work to be had. They left their parents behind, perhaps in the care of other family members, because they wished to establish families of their own in a place that could sustain them. Parents will often encourage their children to seek a place where they can not only survive but thrive. It’s what parents do: seek the welfare of their children, taking the long view of their future.
This future orientation implies the dynamic sense of generations. The word generation (Hebrew dor, Greek genea) is itself so much a part of the fabric of the Biblical narrative that we take it for granted. Each generation is a cumulative fruit of the cyclical fruition of the married union. The child is generated, brought forth. The generations are like waves of the human sea. History is made by the generation of offspring and the parental desire to nurture, protect, and provide for the “fruit of the womb,” which is a gift from God.
The creation of Man as male and female was divinely determined in the counsels of the Godhead (“Let Us make man in our image….”) Man was thereby endowed with the one-flesh union of marriage as husband and wife, by which they would be able to follow the path with which they had been explicitly blessed by God in their creation: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion…”
The parents and children of Detroit’s east side in the Great Depression (the families were large and the houses small) were inspired by familial concerns. They survived hardship and endured. They became educated. They worked. Many of these young men went off to war with a sense that they were fighting to protect their families, city, and nation.
Detroit prospered as the Arsenal of Democracy, becoming the third largest American city in the 1950s. During the Post-War boom, Detroit boasted the highest standard of living in the United States. Its rigorous public school system was superb. It was touted as a “Model City.” Not bad, for a city of immigrants.
To look at pictures of Detroit today, you would never know that. What happened? Beginning in the late 1960s families in Detroit began to worry for the well-being of their children. In the aftermath of armed riots, parents became alarmed by social engineers and courts that forced school busing. Real-life families didn’t like putting their 6-year-old on a bus to go across town so their child could help racially integrate schools. Many parents once again, like their immigrant parents, emigrated-this time to the suburbs. Detroit spiraled down, losing workers, businesses, a strong tax base, and quality schools. It never recovered.
Families built the city; when families fled, it died. Now, if you wanted to restore Detroit, what could you not do without? Families. Generations upon generations of them. This is true for every place, sooner or later. Threaten the family and you threaten society. It is the fundamental building block.