A busy fortnight

An alphabet soup of provocative news filled the last two weeks:

A is for Alfie Evans, who died at April’s end, 11 days short of his second birthday. Maybe he would have died then anyway had Britain’s High Court of Justice allowed his parents to move Alfie to the hospital in Rome that was eager to accept him, but we’ll never know. Thirty British police officers guarded Alfie to keep his supporters from rescuing him. How odd for a hospital to treat a toddler like a roach: He can check in but he can’t check out.

B is for Brokaw, the 78-year-old retired NBC news anchor suddenly treated like a tomcat, one of those sexually mature felines prone to fighting over females. Retired journalist Linda Vester said Tom Brokaw had forcibly tried to kiss her 23 years ago. The Washington Post said another woman also accused him, but did not disclose her name. Brokaw said Vester “had failed in her pursuit of stardom” and accused her of playing “more Look At Me than Me:Too.” Vester stood by her story, and Brokaw stood by his emphasis on “social justice in medical emergency rooms, corporate offices, social therapy, African women’s empowerment, and journalism.”

C is for California, where one of its legislative branches passed a bill to prohibit words or actions designed “to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” If the California Senate displays a similarly cavalier attitude toward freedom of speech and religion, the left state’s march toward dictatorship will accelerate. The likelihood of passage, unless legislators show some understanding of liberty, has already contributed to cancellation of one conference where students would have heard affirmation of Biblical standards of marriage and criticism of homosexual behavior.

D is for a disastrous dinner, the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual bash. The headliner, “comedian” Michelle Wolf, verbally knifed any conservative politician within reach, and even reached into wombs: She complained that Mike Pence “thinks abortion is murder, which, first of all, don’t knock it till you try it. And when you do try it, really knock it—you know, you’ve got to get that baby out of there.” She made these comments without looking at her cue cards, which could have read, “I hate troublesome unborn children and a hundred million American adults. Admit it, elite journalists: So do you.”

E and F are for Education First (EF), a 46,500-employee company founded in Sweden and now headquartered in Switzerland. The company plans to buy the Pasadena, Calif., acreage long used for missionary training by the U.S. Center for World Mission, now rebranded as Frontier Ventures. EF will use the property to open an expensive non-Christian boarding school. The overlapping boards of Frontier Ventures and what has been the William Carey International University have not divulged specifics on how they will use the tens of millions of dollars generated by the sale.

G is for “global citizens” who will receive “life-changing education” on the former training ground for missionaries, some of whom called the prospective sale a “massive betrayal.” A Frontier Ventures/Carey U. press release acknowledged that the boards had received offers from 11 Christian organizations: “Perhaps the most difficult question arises from the fact that after so much deliberation, the purchaser is not a faith-based organization.”

H is for holy matrimony, and what happens when something that should be heavenly turns hellish. Sophia Lee’s cover story in the next issue of WORLD describes problems in one church, but leaders in hundreds of others are also in water over their heads. Amid our cultural tsunami, comments overlooked for years get fresh attention.

That happened starting at the end of April regarding a vivid story Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson told 18 years ago. He spoke of advising an abused woman to go home and pray at bedside for her husband. She did so, came to church with two black eyes, and asked Patterson, “Are you happy?” He said he was, because her remorseful husband came to church that day for the first time.

A blogger reported that story five years ago, but it received little pickup. This time, it went viral. Early in May headlines like “The Scandal Tearing Apart America’s Largest Protestant Denomination” appeared, but this may actually be a unifying moment. Egalitarians who do not see a Biblical distinction between men’s and women’s roles condemned Patterson’s endangering advice, as did complementarians who see men and women as equal before God but delightfully different.

Patterson also received criticism for a sermon illustration in which he spoke approvingly about teenage boys saying a 16-year-old girl was “built.” Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the institution he heads, issued a press release in which Patterson said, “Any physical or sexual abuse of anyone should be reported immediately to the appropriate authorities. … I have no sympathies at all for cowardly acts of abuse toward women.”

Patterson added, “I do not apologize for my stand for the family and for seeking to mend a marriage through forgiveness rather than divorce. But I do greatly regret that the way I expressed that conviction has brought hurt.”

Beth Moore, founder of Living Proof Ministries, said, “I’m pro marriage. Nearly 40 years of ups and downs to back that up. But when we as a church culture demonize divorce as the worst possible outcome—the sin of all sins—we truly have no clue on this ever loving earth what some people are enduring. We do not submit to abuse. NO.” Thousands of Southern Baptist members vigorously criticized Patterson’s remarks.

The good news in this sad news may be the growth of a new evangelical consensus based on very old Biblical teaching: God calls husbands to sacrifice themselves when necessary to protect their wives. Those who do the opposite deserve no protection.