Culture Friday: China versus modern feminism

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 19th of January, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: One thing we’ve not talked about and I just learned this, John, about what seems to be at the heart of China’s problem of population decline and demographic time bomb and that is, China’s feminist movement.

You heard that right. The New York Times reports women don’t want to get married and don’t want to form families in part because they don’t believe in it.

The Times reports the communist propaganda campaign about rejuvenating the nation by building families has fallen on deaf ears among young Chinese women. The Times points out: “authorities have tried to silence China’s feminist movement, but its ideas about equality remain widespread.” It quotes an activist saying that “during these past 10 years, there is a huge community of feminists that have been built up through the internet. Women are more empowered today.”

The story does go into some abusive practices by men, and they obviously want to avoid that. But the report finds a widespread belief that marriage and childbearing will make them more vulnerable to abuse and isolation, not less.

It concludes by pointing out that government policies to encourage women to marry, quoting one woman: “make me feel that it is a trap.”

What do you think about that?

STONESTREET: I think there's a number of things to say about this. First is the Chinese Communist Party is sleeping in the bed that they made, I mean when you lock down on fertility in various ways like they did in the last four, five, six decades, first with a one child policy then with a slightly revised one child policy and then a two child policy and then a three child policy-ish. And then you know, you basically think that every aspect of life is under government control as opposed to seeing an entire realm of human activity as being outside of government control that the government's actually supposed to create space for rather than dictate. Well, this is just what happens when you treat family as something that can be constantly tinkered with and manipulated and controlled and, and managed for the good of something else as if family and marriage and children aren't inherent goods, and ends, in and of themselves.

So that's the worldview that's been inculcated into this place now for decades. And the other thing I'll say about this: the New York Times could have written this article about America immediately, where you have basically, in fact, there was a study that came out I think Brad Wilcox highlighted from the University of Virginia, that you have young women who are skewing left in their political views and young men who are skewing right in their political views. And that's really lowering, in many ways, the number of committed relationships and whether, you know, there's trustworthiness across the sexes. And that, of course, then leads to, also contributes, I would say, to the decline in marriage and other things.

But where is that coming from? Well, it used to be the man's joke, right, that marriage is a ball and chain. This is now a woman's taken-for-granted idea that is taught to them from the beginning to the end, fertility is taught as something that is a problem to be overcome, not actually a feature of being made in the image of God as a woman. And of course, there's plenty of blame to men to go around, too. You know, I'm not blaming women here. I'm just saying, Look, this idea that marriage is somehow bad for us, specifically, when it comes to women, and then choosing not to participate in those things, I mean, that's the headline of the really most parts of the globe for the last 20 years, not just China, you have to ask not only, you know, what's behind the current belief, which is what the New York Times did about these women in China. But where does this ethos come from where there's such cynicism heaped upon the family, there's such skepticism about it, where it's assumed to be bad as opposed to being good for various reasons. And that's really, I think, what's at work here. It's a much bigger story than the New York Times told, both geographically and ideologically.

BROWN: John, I’ve got to ask about politics. This week was the Iowa caucuses, next week New Hampshire. Erick Erickson was on with us a couple of days ago basically saying it’s over, the polling is real, and our former president looks like he’s going to get another shot at it.

But all I see online is finger wagging at conservative evangelicals. One prominent critic on the religious left said, you know, it’s much, much worse this time around, because evangelicals didn’t have to go with Trump, but they did.

Is it as simple as all that, John?

STONESTREET: Well, you know, you look at the results, and there were other options there. And the one that was chosen, clearly and overwhelmingly was Trump. So at one level, the critics have a point. And, you know, my personal view is, is I wish they would have chosen differently. And I think that just because politics is a pragmatic activity, really, you have to be grounded in principle, and then you got to make a pragmatic decision. And as you do that, I think that there are pragmatic concerns with Trump as a candidate, I mean, he doesn't poll as well against, you know, head to head against Biden, as the other candidates have. I think there's concern on whether he will be able to stack the administration, the way that he did the first time around.

So all the wins that we point to in the Trump tenure, and there were a lot of wins for people of conscience and people, for example, who were pro-family and pro-life and pro-religious liberty, like, these were things that ended up being good and actually move the needle. But that had a lot to do with the fact that every president comes along with three or 4000 other people who are unelected and these unelected folks can make an enormous difference and swing the pendulum dramatically. All you got to do is go back and look at the priorities and the proposals of the Department of Health and Human Services from President Obama to President Trump to President Biden, and it'll feel like whiplash, but that's there.

So the question is, are we going to get that same sort of result that we liked the first time around? I'm not sure that that's the case. And there are reasons for that. But at the end of the day, if it's a head to head, people on the right, and people on the left have to defend their moral decisions, and those in the evangelical center, and those on the evangelical left are really, really quick, to make those to their right defend their support of a guy like Donald Trump, without any sort of reciprocating that defense of a political decision on the left.

Look, this administration, the current one, President Biden, did not just sign on to a Democratic platform on the abortion issue. The head of the reelection campaign said the top priority of the Biden administration, in the next term, would be returning all the rights that were lost when Roe was overturned. In other words, abortion is the number one issue. So look, if this does go the way that it seems to be inevitable now - something could change - but if it does come down to the moral priorities right now, the right and moral priorities right now, the left, it's not even close in terms of what's being pushed on a moral level.

I always pray that God does not give us what we deserve. But biblically speaking, that tends to be what government is, it's a reflection of where a particular group is, and God can show grace and God can show mercy. And that's what I'm praying for right now. But the essence of the political illusion is not looking to God for that grace and mercy. It's looking to somebody who will save us from them. And unfortunately, that dominates the discourse. It's not completely wrong, that “them” are a real problem and a real threat. I know that gets downplayed, oftentimes on the evangelical left, these are real issues, and real people's lives are at stake, real children are at stake. But as Chuck Colson used to say, salvation will not come in Air Force One, no matter what the Iowa voters decided.

EICHER: Nevertheless — and this’ll be last — there’s nothing wrong with going out, exercising our judgment, going to the polls, and doing our civic duty, making your best judgment. Do you have any hope at all, John, I was thinking about the column in the newest WORLD Magazine by Lynn Vincent calling on public evangelicals: “This election year, disagree but do it with grace.” Do you have any hope for that, or is it going to be an ugly rerun of last time, do you think?

STONESTREET: Well, it'll be because of God's grace and God's mercy if it's not ugly, right? I mean, I know it's the right that gets accused because of January the 6th, of not accepting election results. We know that that actually now has become a feature of every campaign on both the right and the left to not accept the results and to claim that something has gone wrong. And we also know, too, that there's a whole lot of pent up energy, let's put it that way.

So do I have hope based on what I see, no, it'll get uglier before it gets easier. And part of that is look, the political divide is based on a divide over real moral issues right now. You know, it's not like we're agreeing on what we're trying to get to as a nation but disagreeing on how to get there. We completely disagree on what we think we ought to be going after as a nation? I mean, these are very polarized sides, and as deep as it gets.

Now, I do think that the real answer in the long run lies with rebuilding society so that there's a whole lot of life that's not touched by politics. That is something that Christians can lead in. That's something that the church can illustrate that we can just go and do an awful lot of life that doesn't touch politics, and maybe we can see that balance shift so that it doesn't overtake everything.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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