Culture Friday: The Christian influence

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 26th of July. 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 author and speaker Katie McCoy.

Morning, Katie!

KATIE MCCOY: Good morning, Nick And Myrna.

EICHER: Katie, I’d like to play some audio from an interview by the psychologist and author Jordan Peterson … an interview with Elon Musk. I’d always heard vaguely that Musk had had a sad experience involving a son who became transgender. Listen to this.

ELON MUSK: I lost my son, essentially. So they call it deadnaming for a reason. So the reason it’s called deadnaming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.

JORDAN PETERSON: I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine what that’d be like.

They go back and forth a bit, lots of long pauses, and Musk finally says, because of his experience, “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”

Then the two men kind of sit in the silence, a little awkward. Musk kept steady eye contact with Peterson, and he said finally: “I think we’re making some progress.”

So I’m struck with this, Katie, you know, Musk is determined to make the most valuable automobile company, and he does it, Tesla. Musk is determined to launch the biggest rocket into outer space, and he does it. SpaceX accomplishes that. Musk is determined to return free speech to social media, so he buys Twitter. Point is, when Musk is determined to do something, you might pay attention to that.

MCCOY: Yeah, no kidding. Something that stood out in that really tragic story of his son was how he described what is called "deadnaming." Deadnaming takes on a couple of different meanings. It usually means that a transgender person is referring to the name that their parents gave them as their deadname. But along with that, there's the new chosen name, and that is also to signify that they have a new identity.

And you know, when I think about all the different social aspects, cultural aspects, technological aspects, medical aspects, and we've talked about them all on this show, it is always worth remembering there is a spiritual aspect to this too. There is a spiritual battle and undercurrent that is trying to take captive a generation. And I really believe you can see it in this concept of deadnaming, it is truly a perversion of the Christian story that God put in our hearts to desire, to want and to be looking for. So this idea that you have to have a new identity so that you can find real life, and you have to consider yourself dead and have a new name, and then you can really be living. It's like this faux resurrection to get a new identity, actually, by destroying the identity that God gave you as his physical creation.

And I look at all of that and just think, what a picture of the demonic perversion of the Christian story in a way that is exploiting very lost and vulnerable people and leading them to horrible harm. It really is Satan's trick in this generation.

EICHER: Let’s talk about another thing Musk and Peterson discussed.

MUSK: I’m actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity. I think they’re very good.

PETERSON: So in what sense then are you not religious? … So Dawkins just came out three weeks ago or thereabouts and announced that he was a cultural Christian, right? And so the question—

MUSK: So I’d say I’m probably a cultural Christian. I was brought up as an Anglican and I was baptized …

Katie, obviously, believing in the principles of Christianity or its cultural expression won’t save you, but it’s interesting to me. I’ve heard our Christian witness is jeopardized by the cultural stuff.

MCCOY: Well, it certainly can be harmed if we get the categories wrong. So when people talk about cultural Christianity, you could even look at some of how post-Christianity and its patterns. We see that at work, people like things like kindness and generosity and hospitality to strangers, but they just don't want to have to be bogged down with the exclusive claims of the Christian faith, like Jesus is Lord, and He is the only way to be made right with God.

So in every generation, we have to be very mindful that we don't confuse the effects of Christianity with the substance of Christianity. And I find it kind of interesting though, Nick that even atheists and agnostics are recognizing the difference between a Christian culture and a Christian conversion. Isn't that just kind of interesting? They recognize that they are appreciating the effects of the Christian faith, but they're not ready to be all in with who this Jesus is and what He demands of our lives, like repentance, faith and following Him in every aspect of who we are.

But let's look at this trend, because I think there's a reason for hope here. There's this fascinating pattern of more and more secular thinkers expressing appreciation for Christianity because of its effect on society, and we can see they're tracing the impact of the Christian influence on society, especially Western culture, and that culture's value of the individual, especially even things like free market, freedom of conscience, even free speech, to say nothing of giving people an answer for questions like meaning and purpose, and that shouldn't surprise us, because Jesus said we are the light of the world. We are those who shine truth and hope into darkness, and we're the salt of the Earth. We are moral preservatives against the decay and the corruption of human sinfulness, and we live best when we live by God's design. Society works best when society is operating according to God's design.

You know, one of my favorite examples of this in history, I'm kind of a history nerd. I'm going through kind of a medieval English history podcast kick. But one of my favorite stories is from the seventh century, where a Christianized Ireland instituted something called the law of the innocents, and the law of the innocents protected women, children, clergy and other non-combatants in times of war. These are things that we might associate with relatively modern evolution of human history. In fact, this law of the innocents, again, seventh century, punished sexual violence against women, and it shows, broadly speaking, that those who have been justified by God are going to bring about just laws into the world. And we can spend all day talking about examples in Christian history of men and women who have done just that.

BROWN: Everybody is talking about Kamala Harris. As the presumptive democratic presidential nominee, she’ll be the most pro-abortion presidential nominee in American history—the first to visit an actual abortion clinic during her vice presidency.

Question, Katie: you used to teach women’s studies from a biblical worldview. Is there anything to the argument that it might be time to have a woman in the Oval Office calling the shots? From a women’s studies perspective, is that a legitimate point of view?

MCCOY: Well, first, Myrna, I think we can take a step back and celebrate the fact that all of a sudden, everybody seems to know what a woman is now. But in all seriousness, is it time for a woman president? Well, sure, if she's qualified and capable, but let's look at the things that Vice President Harris stands for regarding women.

The only thing that I can really find that she stands out in in trying to fight for women over is the right for them to have abortion on demand, and the right to get the abortion pill by mail, by the way, where one in 25 of them can end up going to the emergency room. Other things with Vice President Harris's record about women include she voted against something called the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. This piece of legislation would have guaranteed that doctors have to give equal medical care to infants who survive an abortion procedure. Vice President Harris voted against that. She's certainly not for protecting female-only access for women in sports, and that's not only an equality issue, but in many cases, a safety one.

Vice President Harris was in favor of something called the Equality Act, which is one of those things that sounds really great, until you get into the nuts and bolts of what it is, and it would have reversed legal precedence of religious freedom for Christians everywhere. And then finally, she was for decriminalizing prostitution, and that would have only added to the exploitation of women and girls. But you know, Myrna in our culture of identity politics and tribalism, we often tend to look the other way on whatever doesn't fit the framework that we want to support, and I think something that I'm sitting with, and I would humbly ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to sit with as well, the same way that there are legitimate concerns for the public witness of Christians who look the other way on the words and actions of former President Trump, and they often do that in the name of policies that he will represent … in the same way there are legitimate concerns for the public witness of Christians who look the other way on the words and actions of Vice President Harris, and doing so in the name of the identities that she represents. Proverbs 11 says that the Lord detests dishonest scales and James 2 warns us against partiality. And I think this election season, we all need to be willing to let God's words step on our toes.

BROWN: Katie McCoy is an author and speaker. Her latest book is titled To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond. Thank you, Katie!

MCCOY: Great to be with you both.

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