Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Today is the 4th of July, and I thought I would take a moment to talk about the origin of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson said that many of the ideas in the Declaration came from John Locke. Jefferson also gave credit to the writer Algernon Sidney, who in turn cites most prominently Aristotle, Plato, Roman republican writers, and the Old Testament.
Legal scholar Gary Amos argues that Locke’s Two Treatises on Government is simply Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex in a popularized form. Amos says in his book Defending the Declaration “that the ‘law of nature’ is God’s general revelation of law in creation, which God also supernaturally writes on the hearts of men.”
This foundation helps explain the tempered nature of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence was a bold document, but not a radical one. The colonists did not break with England for “light and transient causes.” They were mindful that Romans 13 says they should be “in subjection to the governing authorities” which “are established by God.” Yet when they suffered from a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” they argued that “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government.”
Jefferson also drew from George Mason’s Declaration of Rights (published on June 6, 1776). The first paragraph states that “all men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural Rights; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of Acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.”
The Declaration of Independence is more than 200 years old. It was a monumental document at the time. Even today its words ring with truth and inspire new generations.

Kerby Anderson
When two boys are wrestling in the living room and break something, a parent is sure to say: “This is why we can’t have nice things.” Christian Schneider applies this to society at large arguing “We Can No Longer Have Nice Things.”
He opens with a story about The Portal, which is a public technology sculpture. It beams live video from the streets of New York City to Dublin, Ireland. It was one of several planned “portals” meant to virtually teleport people across the globe. It was supposed to be “a symbol of unity and wonder that draws in crowds from far and wide.” It was built to last for centuries. It only lasted six days. People in New York and Dublin broadcast middle fingers and body parts.
This is just one example of the decline of decorum and civility in our society. America’s culture is fraying. He talked about stores having problems with self-checkout lanes. Some stores will limit the lanes to people who pay a $98 annual fee.
During the pandemic, food chains set up online systems so customers could order on their phones, pay for it, and then pick it up off the shelf. Unfortunately, many people are grabbing the meals off the shelf. That happened to me when I ordered dinner for my family at McAlister’s.
Recently, “Disneyland and Disney World had to crack down on the rapidly growing number of people who claimed disability status in order to avoid long wait times on the rides at their amusement parks.” Apparently, this trick was promoted on social media so people could game the system.
And as I write this, a news story just dropped about climate activists disturbing another athletic event. And don’t even think about letting these activists into an art museum.
When a society is in cultural decline, you can no longer have nice things.

Kerby Anderson
The other day, I saw a TV commercial for the March of Dimes which reminded me that I should do a commentary on what has been called the “March of Dimes Syndrome.” In my government classes, we often talked about it as a textbook example of goal succession. The March of Dimes was created in the 1930s to combat polio. By the 1950s, we had the polio vaccine. But instead of going out of business, the March of Dimes transitioned to other causes.
John Tierney wrote about how “The March of Dimes Syndrome” manifests itself in many social causes today. He argues that “the better things get, the more desperately activists struggle to stay in business.” We have seen this recently during pride month. If you didn’t know any better, you would think homosexuals are facing massive discrimination. After all, the Human Rights Campaign declared a “national state of emergency” last year for LGBTQ people.
Anti-sodomy laws were erased decades ago. Same-sex marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court and is supported by a majority of Americans. Gay characters can be found on TV, movies, and in commercials. And don’t you dare decline to bake a cake for a gay couple.
Another example he mentions is civil rights. There has been significant success since Martin Luther King, Jr. and others marched for equal rights and against segregation. The Southern Poverty Law Center used to sue members of the Ku Klux Klan. But then, there weren’t many to sue, so it began labelled all sorts of Christian organizations as hate groups.
There are many other examples. You can tell when a group is getting close to reaching its goal. That is when it increases its apocalyptic language and tells you the sky is falling. That’s why you need some discernment during these polarizing times.

Kerby Anderson
Is much of the transgender ideology backfiring? Consider this recent poll by Pew Research. For the last seven years, they have been asking this question: “Which statement comes closer to your views? A) Whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth, or B) Someone can be a man or a woman even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.”
I acknowledge that the question is a bit convoluted and even uses the term “assigned at birth.” Even so, the percentage of Americans who picked the first option (we are determined by the sex assigned at birth) rose from 54 percent in 2017 to 65 percent today. Notice that this increase from a majority to nearly two-thirds took place when Americans have been pummeled with lots of transgender propaganda.
Byron York is the chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner. He reported that at last year’s Transgender Day of Visibility, the White House released a list of 42 action and policy initiatives the Biden Administration has taken to support transgender people. He also reminds us that “the Biden White House has gone all out even at a time when doctors in Europe have expressed growing concern about the lasting damage caused by the irreversible medical treatments known in some circles as gender-affirming care.”
I am convinced that transgender ideology is backfiring. President Biden has put his full weight behind transgenderism, and the mainstream media have spent many hours promoting transgenderism. Yet the American people are less likely to accept some of tenets of transgender ideology than just a few years ago.

Kerby Anderson
The latest polls show a moral slide of generations. A good example can be found in George Barna’s American Worldview Inventory 2024. He concludes that “what Millennials began, Generation Z is accelerating.” This is a generational transformation of this country’s moral landscape.
Let’s begin at the top level and then work down to specific moral issues. The percentage of Americans who have a biblical worldview has been declining over five consecutive generations. The number of adults with a biblical worldview plummeted from 12 percent to 4 percent today.
A majority of adults accept lying, abortion, gay marriage, and consensual sexual intercourse between unmarried adults. This is due in large part because they reject the concept of absolute moral truth. And less than half of all adults embrace the Bible as their primary guide to morality.
Let’s look at some specific issues. A majority (54%) of Millennials say telling a lie is of minor consequence in order to protect your personal best interests or reputation. And six in ten of Gen Z also believe that is morally acceptable. Two-thirds (67%) of Millennials endorse abortion, and a slightly higher percentage (69%) of Gen Zs endorse abortion.
Two decades ago, two-thirds of Boomers did not support gay marriage. Today more than six in ten (61%) endorse two people of the same biological sex getting married. Those percentages are even higher for Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. We also can find similar increasing percentages from one generation to another concerning premarital sex. This ranges from 59 percent for Boomers to 73 percent for Gen Z.
The first step back to a moral foundation is to make sure we teach biblical morality in our families and within the church.

Kerby Anderson
How effective will the political campaigns this fall appeal to young voters? Most don’t like the fact that 2024 looks like 2020. And as one of my radio guests explained: “I am 28, and I am not excited about having a candidate running who is the reverse of my age (82).”
New polling from Democratic firm Blueprint shows how skeptical and disillusioned young voters are about their choices for president and members of Congress and the state legislatures. Registered voters 18-30-years-old were polled by asking them to respond to a series of questions.
Nearly a majority (49%) agreed to some extent that elections in this country don’t represent them. And a majority (51%) agreed to some extent that the political system in the US “doesn’t work for people like me.”
These comments match what I mentioned last month when I quoted Scott Galloway who reminded us that, “the last two generations are making less money on an inflation adjusted basis.” He argued that the social contract in America has broken because “for the first time in the US’s history a 30-year-old is no longer doing as well as his or her parents were at 30.”
An even more significant finding from the survey was the fact that nearly two-thirds (64%) agreed that “America is in decline.” And the same percentage agreed that “nearly all politicians are corrupt and make money from their political power.”
We shouldn’t be surprised at that answer. Just read one of the many books by Peter Schweizer (Profiles in Corruption, Clinton Cash, Red Handed, Blood Money). He has been on my radio program for the last few decades documenting corruption at every level of government.
It appears that candidates this fall will have a major challenge to convince young voters to elect them.

Kerby Anderson
We know that many of our public schools are failing. Therefore, it is encouraging to hear a success story. That is what John Stossel brings in a recent video. Although the public schools in his home state of New York are producing kids with below average scores, he points to one exception.
The school is aptly named the Success Academy. It succeeds, he explains, where government-run schools fail. The chain of 50 schools is run by a former Democratic City Councilwoman. On math scores, they outperform every school in New York State, even though the kids mostly come from low-income families.
They also do things differently. At Success schools, principals spend time in every classroom, giving tips to teachers. Some teachers may not like being watched, but a principal will be able to point out things a teacher may not see. Schools get better and the students improve and are more successful.
Another difference is the school day. Success Academy students typically stay until 4:30pm. Some may stay even longer. You can accomplish much more with the longer school day. John Stossel was surprised that the students said they “look forward” to school.
Lots of parents are desperate to get their kids into Success Academy. Almost 13,000 more families apply than there is space. The schools hold a lottery, and the video shows the sadness on the faces of parents and kids who don’t get into the school.
One last point is cost. The government gives charter schools like Success Academy $18,000 per student. Government-run schools get almost $36,000. In other words, Success Academy does better with half the money.
If we want to have an educated citizenry, we need more success stories from the public schools like this one.

Kerby Anderson
When the Southern Baptist Convention met a few weeks ago, the messengers adopted a resolution about in vitro fertilization (known as IVF). While it is unusual for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to debate medical ethics, they felt a need to respond to the recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court on IVF.
The mainstream press reported this as an attempt to condemn the practice. The actual statement was to “reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being” and asked that doctors “only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation.”
When I wrote my book about genetic engineering in the 1980s, I started to hear from infertile women (the modern-day Hannahs) wondering about the ethics of IVF. If you are interested, you might want to obtain my recent booklet, A Biblical View on Genetic Engineering.
Let me also point you to the work by Dr. Jim Denison, who have been on my radio program. He has an excellent white paper on, “When does life begin? Frozen embryos, IVF, and the sanctity of life.” He is the Theologian in Residence for the Baptist General Convention of Texas and serves as Resident Scholar for Ethics with Baylor Scott & White Health.
He reminds us that “at the moment of fertilization, the embryo possesses the chromosomal makeup of a distinct human being with all inheritable factors.” And we also know that all persons are equal in their right to life (Psalm 139:13–16).
This perspective would therefore call for the careful and moral application of IVF. The Southern Baptist Convention resolution is not radical but based on sound biblical and medical information.

Kerby Anderson
Depending on the news source you have, you may or may not have heard about the arrest of eight individuals from Tajikistan who are suspected terrorists. In case you are unfamiliar with that country, it is at least 95 percent Muslim and located near Afghanistan, Pakistan, and communist China. Put another way, they come from a country that has been a hotbed for radical Islamic terrorism.
The FBI and other intelligence agencies believe these eight illegal aliens were planning a terrorist attack like the attack at the Moscow concert hall. At least four of the men involved in that attack were from the group ISIS-K. All eight of these men are connected to ISIS-K.
How did they get into the US? First, let’s remember that President Joe Biden and Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assure us that people crossing our border have been vetted. Second, we now know that at least one of these individuals used the app provided by the Biden administration that allowed people to get in the country. Third, some of the others were apparently intercepted by Border Patrol, supposedly vetted, and sent on their way.
Let that sink in for a moment. These men were not the “gotaways” I sometimes talk about in my commentaries. Yes, 8 million have crossed the border since President Biden took office, and another 2 million are “gotaways” that I usually suggest may be involved in trafficking or terrorism and did not want to be caught.
But these men were confident they could “game the system.” They didn’t even try to avoid being caught. And I might mention that another potential terrorist was caught in New York City with a full arsenal of weapons in his vehicle (such as loaded magazines and body armor).
This is the danger America faces from an open border and a vetting process that is broken.

Kerby Anderson
Nuclear war may be unthinkable, but we need to think about it, so it doesn’t occur. Recently at a China-Russia summit, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed, “There can be no winners in a nuclear war, and it should never be fought.” While we can take comfort in their statement, we also need to realize these two leaders have threatened the use of nuclear arms in the past.
In his latest book, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, Victor Davis Hanson explains that war can settle disputes, topple dictators, and bend the trajectory of civilizations. But he also warns there have been times when war ended in utter annihilation.
He provides four historical examples: the city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and Aztec Tenochtitlan (tuh/noch/te/lan). The leaders believed their illustrious pasts would be enough to prevent their destruction. Alexander the Great, Roman Scipio, Muslim Mehmet, and the Spanish conquistador Cortés proved them wrong. Each of them didn’t just attempt to defeat their enemy but were successful in destroying them and their culture.
There are many ways that nations and people can vanish from history. Sometimes natural causes like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or plagues wipe out a population. His book provides four examples of how wartime destruction of a culture and civilization have taken place in the past. His book is an important warning that it could happen again.
What is striking is how quickly the transition from normality to the end of days can take place. This rendezvous with finality was unexpected. Their leaders failed to assess their military and cultural weaknesses. This needs to be a warning for us today.

Kerby Anderson
The world keeps getting increasingly more dangerous. Robert Clark provides several examples. There is the “war in Ukraine; China’s increasingly bellicose actions in the South China Sea and its little-talked-about nuclear proliferation; and Iranian aggression that threatens the existence of Israel, the lives of U.S. forces and their allies in the Middle East, and the security of global shipping lanes.”
All of that is enough for any of us to avert our eyes and focus on something else. But his argument is “The World Needs the West.” We may not want to think about foreign policy, but the future of a stable world depends on us electing the right politicians and appointing the right cabinet officers.
After the Cold War, we enjoyed a “peace dividend.” That allowed many European countries, along with this country, to reduce defense spending. This loss of military capability led to a loss of a credible deterrent. Many Americans don’t want to go to war. Perhaps the best way to avoid war is to have enough military might that will deter aggression.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal put it this way: “Mr. Biden talks about a world at risk from autocracies, but he acts like this is 1992 and the Soviet Union just collapsed. The world today is more like the late 1930s, as dictators build their militaries and form a new axis of animosity, while the American political class sleeps.”
The editors are also aware of our national debt and argue that what is currently spent “for defense in 2025 is a fraction of what Congress has blown on social programs over the past three years.” They argue we need an informed debate about priorities.
During this election year, we need to remember what is at stake not only in this country but around the world.

Kerby Anderson
When school is out, that is a time when administrators should establish needed policies before schools and colleges reconvene. High on the list is to develop policies concerning student walkouts.
In a recent article, Stanley Kurtz reminds us how the country has been swept up in successive waves of disorder and lawlessness on campuses. These range from protests about racism to protests about the election of Donald Trump to high school walkouts about guns to recent pro-Hamas demonstrations.
He reminds us that missing from all of this is any trace of accountability. Speakers are shouted down. Jewish students and conservative students are threatened. And high school students not only walk off campus but are often praised and even authorized by faculty.
In many cases, civic education in the schools has been co-opted and converted into a pretext for political activism under euphemisms like “civic engagement” or “action civics.” Students are not only encouraged to protest but are often given course credit for protesting or lobbying.
The Supreme Court has ruled in Tinker v Des Moines that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door. But that case involved students wearing black armbands to class, not allowing students to just walk out of class and head to a protest off campus without any supervision from the school.
Also, that case assumed that the public schools would be neutral, but we now have cases of schools promoting protests and taking sides. Students face teacher pressure and peer pressure, along with pressure from outside the school. And there is a concern over student safety and the school’s liability.
It is time for accountability. It is time to develop and promote policies concerning student walkouts.

Kerby Anderson
Whenever I am out speaking and take questions, there is one question I can assume will be asked. Aren’t you concerned about the possibility we will soon have a central bank digital currency? Financial leaders in other countries are calling for the implementation of these CBDCs, and concerned Americans wonder if they are coming to this country.
My first response is to mention that I have written about CBDCs, which is usually followed by an encouragement to do it again. Hence, this commentary. My second response it to point to the upcoming election. President Biden signed an executive order encouraging the Federal Reserve to study the feasibility of digital currency. Former President Trump is on record opposing CBDCs.
Why should we be concerned? With CBDCs, every transaction could be tracked by the government. The government and the federal reserve would know even more about you, your family, your clients, and your charities. Although some critics fear we would lose our privacy, I fear a greater issue.
CBDCs would make it easier for governments to freeze financial resources. The Canadian government prevented the protesting truckers from accessing their bank accounts, but that would be made much easier with CBDCs. And CBDCs can be programmed. This could be used to prohibit people from buying certain goods or at least place a limit on how much they might purchase.
Proponents believe CBDCs would give central banks a new opportunity for monetary policy. It would be easier, they say, to undertake “helicopter drops of money.” But they also add that it would be possible to implement negative interest rates by shrinking balances in CBDC accounts. That is bureaucratic speak for taking money out of your account.
In many ways, this election will determine the future of CBDCs.

Kerby Anderson
Kids aren’t growing up. But you already knew that. We now have more evidence for why this is a significant problem. In the past, I have quoted from the book, The Coddling of the American Mind by co-author Jonathan Haidt, who I interviewed on our radio program. He argues that young people are fragile and have been protected by a culture that promotes safety at all costs.
In a new book, Abigail Shrier takes a different look at the problem by focusing on how psychology has become an all-consuming ideology. She argues in Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up that much of what has been said and written about psychological and emotional “trauma” is wrong. She also argues that kids would be better off if they had no therapy at all.
You might remember her previous book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. In my interview with her and in her book, she documents the push to medically transition girls who may merely have gender-dysphoria. Her new book picks up with that concern by examining our therapy-obsessed culture. Both Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier reveal that the younger generations are sadder and more emotionally distraught than previous generations.
She argues that our anti-adversity worldview is to blame. Therapy has become an ideology. By talking about trauma and “treating” it, we have robbed an entire generation of character qualities like grit, perseverance, and resilience.
Instead, the writer of Hebrews (12:1) reminds us to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” James (1:12) says we are blessed if we “remain steadfast under trial.”

Kerby Anderson
A few decades ago, Americans were increasingly concerned about privacy. Back then, we did several radio programs on the topic but now many of our privacy concerns have faded.
Mark Zuckerberg put this in perspective. He said when he got to his dorm room at Harvard, the question many students asked was, “why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?” He then went on to acknowledge that people (especially his generation) became more comfortable with sharing information online.
In his book, Why Privacy Matters, Neil Richards writes about some of the myths that surround privacy concerns. One myth is that privacy is about hiding dark secrets. We hear the argument that “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” But that doesn’t mean we should have everyone see everything. We wear clothes out of modesty. We don’t want videos of what we do in a bathroom or bedroom.
Another myth is that privacy isn’t about creepiness. He provides lots of examples of privacy invasions we would not tolerate. Yet we have the famous comment by Google’s Eric Schmidt that I have mentioned in previous commentaries. He explained that: “Google’s policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”
Another myth is that privacy isn’t primarily about control. We are assured that we can make informed choices about the amount of information a technology company can use. But do you really read all the words in a privacy notice? One famous study from more than a decade ago estimated that if we were to quickly read the privacy policies of every website we encounter, it would take 75 full working days to read them all.
Privacy concerns still exist, and we need to focus on them in the future.

Kerby Anderson
You have probably heard the phrase, “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes.” That observation is true, especially in economics.
Investor Ray Dalio learned that lesson at a young age. In 1971, he was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. When President Nixon announced that paper currency could no longer be turned in for gold, he expected pandemonium on the floor as stocks took a dive. Instead, the stock market jumped 4 percent as the dollar plummeted. He was surprised because he hadn’t experienced a currency devaluation, but he would have known if he had studied history.
This isn’t the first time the US has had to deal with significant inflation. In fact, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve (Jerome Powell) vows that he won’t make the mistake of Arthur Burns, who was Fed chairman in the 1970s.
I recently read an article from a Yale economics professor who was at the Federal Reserve back in those days. He said Arthur Burns wanted to remove energy-related products from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) because of the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil embargo. Blaming oil prices on a war. Does that sound familiar?
Then came surging food prices. Arthur Burns argued that this was traceable to unusual weather (specifically an El Niño event) that affected such things as fertilizers and feedstock prices. He, therefore, wanted to remove food prices from the CPI. Again, doesn’t this sound familiar?
By the time he was done, only about 35 percent of the CPI was left. If you have been listening to my commentaries for any length of time, you know that we no longer measure CPI the way we did decades ago.
This isn’t the first time America has had to deal with significant inflation, and we can learn lessons from economic history about what we should do.

Kerby Anderson
Why do we write down our laws? I recently read an article providing a practical reason for writing down the laws of a nation, but I would also like to add one historical reason for why we write down our laws.
This country is supposed to be a nation of laws and not men. We haven’t always lived up to the vision, but that is what we are to aspire to achieve. When you write down a law, you give it a fixed meaning. A government with laws with precise meanings is a government of law not of arbitrary power. You know what rights the government acknowledges, and you know what prohibitions will be punished.
In my booklet A Biblical Point of View on Constitutional Interpretation, I talk about two different views. Originalism attempts to understand the mindset of the framers who constructed it. That is why some have referred to this view as “strict constructionism.” The other view is modernism, also often called “the living Constitution.” It attempts to find meaning for the Constitution today and rejects attempts to view it through the eyes of white men who lived in the 18th century. Ultimately, rights and legal definitions become putty in the hands of judges and justices.
Historically, we write down laws because of the Puritans. They wrote out their covenants because they understood that they were to answer to God for their actions. These covenants bound each person to another person and the whole community as an agreement under God. They also understood that the rights they enjoyed came from God. Ultimately, these Puritan Covenants became a model for the US Constitution.
Americans want to live under a government of law, not a government where justices find principles in the unwritten “penumbras” of a living Constitution. Laws are written down to fix their meaning and protect against judges and justices who want to change the law arbitrarily.

Kerby Anderson
Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote about the “Leftist Mind,” and that got my attention since I have recently written a booklet on the “The Liberal Mind.” My goal was to describe the foundational assumptions of a liberal mindset. Hanson instead reminded us of how leftists supported the Electoral College and every decision from the Supreme Court until recently.
A decade ago, Democrats loved the Electoral College. The “blue wall” states made the election and reelection of Barack Obama possible. Then the wall crumbled in 2016 to Trump, and now they condemn the Electoral College as a “relic of our anti-democratic founders.”
Leftists loved the Supreme Court decisions on abortion, school prayer, same-sex marriage, pornography, and Miranda rights. The “Left cheered the Court as it made the law and ignored legislatures and presidents.” They welcomed Justices appointed by Republican presidents who drifted leftward and provided the needed votes on “affirmative action to Roe v. Wade, to Obamacare.”
What was the response? “Was there any serious right-wing talk of packing the court with six additional justices to slow down its overreaching left-wing majority – or of a mob massing at the home of a left-wing justice? Certainly not.”
But now that there is a narrow majority of originalist justices on the Court, “the once-beloved Court is being slandered by leftist insurrectionists as illegitimate. Every sort of once-unthinkable attack on the courts is now permissible.”
If you are looking for any consistency, you will not find it. Each of these examples illustrates the “end justifies the means” perspective of the Leftist Mind. And that’s why it is difficult to take many of these current arguments seriously.

Kerby Anderson
More than a decade ago, I did an interview with Mark Bauerlein about his book, The Dumbest Generation. Last week we focused our attention on his new book, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up. The ignorance and faulty logic of young people in college has now made its way into the young adult culture.
He reminds us that social commentators predicted that the millennial generation would make a significant impact on society because they were coming of age in the Digital Age. Back then, professor Bauerlein was warning that smartphones and computers were having a negative impact on his students and young adults.
He explains the millennials “grew up in a world of their own” and “it didn’t provide them with the tools to handle the ordinary pains of life once they had to leave that world. Most of them had no religion to give shape and direction to their mortal careers, no doctrine to explain suffering when it came.” On one side you had the “nones” who rejected religion. On the other side you had Christians who adopted the Christian Smith description of “moralistic therapeutic deism.”
We also talked about the cancel culture. They may have protested Charles Murray and Heather MacDonald, but they may never have a read a word written by them. They just knew they were supposed to protest these people when they showed up on campus.
A majority (51%) in one survey said they were justified in shouting down a speaker if the speaker utters “offensive and hurtful statements.” And the university faculty and administrators also failed them because many of them could not even explain why certain college courses were necessary.
The dumbest generation has grown up, but it doesn’t appear that too many of them have grown up emotionally or intellectually.

Kerby Anderson
Although Päivi Räsänen is the person on trial, realistically it is the Bible that is on trial. She is a long-serving member of the Finnish parliament, a medical doctor, pastor’s wife, and a grandmother. She continues to face persecution for her religious beliefs.
Five years ago, her church decided to sponsor a “pride parade.” She responded by posting some Bible verses and asked how that decision aligned with Scripture. Instead of a civil debate and a reasonable response, she was slapped with criminal prosecution.
In the process of discovery, the government officials found a church pamphlet she wrote on marriage and sexuality. The government charged her and the other author of the pamphlet (a Lutheran bishop) with “agitation against a minority group” based on a war-crimes statute in Finnish law.
The two were put on trial two years ago with most of the focus on biblical passages and the way in which the defendants interpreted them. The good news is that they were eventually acquitted of all counts. The bad news is the government filed an appeal to Finland’s Supreme Court.
Her case reminded me of the Swedish pastor Åke Green who preached a sermon based on Romans 1 arguing that “sexual perversions” are harmful to society. His case was prosecuted and convicted in the local courts. Eventually his case went all the way to the Swedish Supreme Court. The justices ruled that he violated Swedish law but that his freedom of religion was protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.
I believe this “Bible trial” in Finland will determine whether free speech and religious liberty will be allowed in this country and in other European countries.