The World and Everything in It - April 16, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

For the first time in the history of the poll, now in this country religious Americans are a minority.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday, and we’ll talk with Trevin Wax about that.

Plus a new clean comedy special we can all relate to.

And Myrna has a review of an album and book combo called Faithful.

BROWN: It’s Friday, April 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Time now for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Blinken visits Afghanistan to sell troop pullout » Secretary of State Tony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, doing his best to sell Afghan leaders on President Biden’s plans to pull all American troops out of the country this summer.

BLINKEN: Even when our troops come home, our partnership with Afghanistan will continue. Our security partnership will endure.

Biden announced this week that the 2,500 U.S. soldiers remaining in the country would be coming home by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told Blinken, “We respect the decision and are adjusting our priorities.”

NATO immediately followed Biden’s lead on Wednesday, saying its roughly 7,000 non-American forces in Afghanistan would also be departing within a few months.

Secretary Blinken explained on Thursday,

BLINKEN: We never intended to have a permanent military presence here, but the threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan is significantly degraded.

But critics say the ground gained against al Qaeda and other terror groups in the country will quickly be lost as soon as U.S. forces depart. GOP Senator Marco Rubio:

RUBIO: I wish that the situation in Afghanistan were different, right? I wish that the was an Afghan government that was strong and a Taliban that was headed towards defeat. That said, that’s not the trend this has taken.

Some critics have cited as a cautionary tale the American military drawdown in Iraq prior to the rise of ISIS.

US expels Russian diplomats in new round of sanctions » The United States is expelling 10 Russian diplomats while imposing sanctions on dozens of companies and people.

At a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, Chairman Adam Schiff said Moscow is guilty of many infractions.

SCHIFF: Election interference, attempted murder, illegal invasion and occupation of Crimea, reported bounties, continued cyberhacks, that list is not exhaustive. But the actions taken to respond and more importantly name and shame Russia and sanction those responsible is absolutely critical.

Sanctions against six Russian companies that support the country’s cyber attacks represent the first measures against the Kremlin for the hack commonly known as the SolarWinds breach.

The U.S. on Thursday also explicitly linked the hack to a Russian intelligence agency called the SVR.

The U.S. also announced sanctions on 32 individuals and entities accused of trying to interfere in last year’s presidential election.

Democratic lawmakers launch legislative effort to expand the Supreme Court » A group of Democratic lawmakers has launched a legislative effort to expand the Supreme Court.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey announced the effort alongside several other Democrats in front of the high court on Thursday.

MARKEY: We are here today because the United States Supreme Court is broken. It is out of balance, and it needs to be fixed.

Joining Congressman Markey—House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. and Judiciary members Mondaire Jones and Hank Johnson.

The lawmakers argued that they’re not trying to pack the court. They said it was Republicans who packed the court by denying President Obama’s high court pick, Merrick Garland, and holding the seat open for President Trump to fill.

They say to bring the court back into balance, President Biden should be allowed to pick four new justices. The Judiciary Act of 2021 is a two-page bill that would expand the court to 13 seats.

But the Republican Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, pushed back.

JORDAN: The left controls big media, they control big tech, they control big sports, they control Hollywood, they control higher education, they control the Congress, they control the White House. And now because they don’t have control of the Supreme Court, they’re going to add four people to the court. They control everything. This is a radical takeover of the country.

President Biden recently announced a 36-member commission that will examine the question of expanding the high court.

Jobless claims plummet as retail sales jump » The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to the lowest level since the pandemic began. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The Labor Dept. reported 576,000 jobless claims last week. That was a 25 percent drop from the week before.

It was the latest sign that the economy is bouncing back.

In March, employers added more than 900,000 jobs, the most since August. That dropped the unemployment rate to 6 percent, less than half the pandemic peak of 14.8 percent.

Retail sales also jumped in March. Sales at stores, car dealers, restaurants and bars jumped by nearly 10 percent—the biggest gain in nearly a year.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Defense rests in Chauvin trial » The defense rested its case in Minneapolis Thursday at the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.

And it rested without putting Chauvin on the stand.

Before the jury was brought into the courtroom, Judge Peter Cahill addressed Chauvin directly.

CAHILL: Is this your decision not to testify?
CHAUVIN: It is, your honor.
CAHILL: Do you have any questions about your right to remain silent or to testify on your own behalf?
CHAUVIN: Not at this time I don’t.

The prosecution briefly recalled a lung and critical care expert to counter the testimony of a defense witness. And with that, both sides finished presenting their cases.

The judge then addressed the jury.

CAHILL: Members of the jury, the evidence is now complete for this case. The next step is for you to listen to closing arguments and then retire for deliberations.

That will happen on Monday.

Meantime, another former Minnesota police officer made her first appearance in court. Kim Potter is facing a second-degree manslaughter charge in the death of a young black man.

Potter fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop on Sunday in suburban Minneapolis. The incident has sparked days of unrest.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: America loses its religion.

Plus, a new musical project that reimagines familiar Bible stories.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, April 16th, 2021.

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.

Here’s one of these slow-motion trend stories: We’ve all seen it coming. We all expected it. And yet, when it arrives, we’re a little shocked and saddened, in a way.

It’s the Gallup “houses of worship” survey of the United States. 80 years of surveys about the religious life of Americans.

And the shocked-not-shocked finding is that for the first time in the history of the survey, religious Americans are now in the minority. American membership in a house of worship sits at 47 percent. That is, just 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

This survey released several weeks ago, but we haven’t reported it here.

Still, it’s been a long time coming and its effects aren’t going away anytime soon.

BROWN: Well, it’s Culture Friday, and joining us now is Trevin Wax. He’s general editor for The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources. He’s also a visiting professor at Wheaton College.

Trevin, good morning!

TREVIN WAX, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: So we can slice and dice these data points any way you like. There’s a generational component: two-thirds of elderly Americans belong to a church, but as you get younger in the demographic, the drop-offs are noteworthy. Baby boomers, 58 percent. Gen X, 50 percent. Millennials and Gen Z, 36. There’s a decay of the culture component. Our elite institutions have been secularizing for a long time, and it just seems logical that this would be the result.

But just because this news doesn’t seem all that newsy doesn’t mean it’s not significant. Why does this story have your attention, Trevin?

WAX: Well, I think what initially struck me about this survey was something you might you might call it the snowball effect, in that if you look at the data, it really is in the last 20 years, that this decline has become much faster and more precipitous when it comes to who is identifying as a church member who says that they are a member of a mosque or synagogue or a or a church. And so for me, all of the generational components were about what you’d expect. I mean, we’ve seen a secular, secularizing trend. But I think the quickness of the drop off in the last 20 years going from where we were 20 years ago to where we are now being a minority of Americans saying that they are a member of a religious organization, that that in itself is a pretty stunning collapse, so to speak. And now that doesn’t mean that a lot of people still aren’t going to church. In fact, church attendance is measured differently than church membership. But it certainly gives us a view that commitment to a religious organization, commitment to religious institutions, commitment to a religious faith is on the wane rather quickly in our society.

EICHER: What about the Covid disruption? I look at economic numbers all the time and one thing we’ve seen is that the economic recovery was what they call “V”-shaped: that is, a violent plunge down—the upper left of the V dropping diagonally down—and then the bounce-back that’s just as abrupt. Might we see something of the same thing with religious attendance when the mask mandates end? Is that part of it at all?

WAX: I don’t think that that has much to do with Gallup survey of religious membership because there are a lot of people that have not been attending church regularly in the last year who would still say that they are a member of a congregation of some sort. Gallup was looking at membership rates. attendance rates, like I said, is a different survey. So of course attendance rates are going to be way way down this last year because of COVID. And I do think you’re likely to see something of a V shape that once the mask mandates are over and once we are really on the other side of the pandemic. I do think that you’ll see a recovery when it comes to church attendance. But I do think a lot of congregations are going to feel unstable for a while. So just because there might be a bounced back of church attendance doesn’t mean that they will be going back to your church.

I know of lots of cases across the country pastors I’ve spoken with who have lost members during this COVID season. Not because people have drifted away from the faith entirely, but because they’ve, you know, they visited other churches online and they didn’t I guess they didn’t feel super connected to the congregation that they’d been a part of. And so they had been on the periphery already and sort of migrated to another service where they might like to worship better, they might like the sermon more, I think there’s going to be a sense of destabilization in churches for the next year or so even if attendance does begin to creep back up.

EICHER: Is there a positive way to look at this, maybe in this sense? Couldn’t it be said that in a hostile culture, church membership has some cost attached to it, not just benefits. So naturally, it’s a little weird and countercultural to go to church, let alone believe what’s taught there, and maybe the health of a smaller church community is better.

I’ll quote the Baylor historian Thomas Kidd who writes at The Gospel Coalition: “If nominal, utilitarian, civil-religious ‘Christianity’ is mostly what’s fading away with the cratering of American church ‘membership,’ then I say good riddance.”

Do you say the same, Trevin?

WAX: So I appreciate Thomas good for a lot of things. And there is a sense in which I know what he’s saying. And I agree with that, in the sense of if we’re talking about a nominal Christianity that is devoid of the Gospels power to change lives, that because it’s just sort of a ritualistic cultural thing, then yes, we should want the true biblical Gospel to to be blazing to, to we should want that kind of nominal cultural Christianity that doesn’t really have intrinsic power to it to fall away. So in that sense, yes, I agree with what he’s saying there with that sentiment.

There is another side to that statement, though, and it’s that the plausibility structures of our society or what is it that there are enough people in society do a certain thing that makes it seem like a reasonable thing to do or a plausible way of life, when when those are affected? Be when you see stats like this, those plausibility structures are affected. So when you only have a minority now, of Americans who claim membership at a church, it doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re no longer spiritual in some sense, or that they even no longer have a religious practice of some sort. But they have no institutional ties. What that does is it makes those who do have institutional ties feel much more out of the mainstream than they might have before.

So what happens is culturally, there’s a massive shift here, where the the challenge and the task becomes all the harder for all the more difficult for Christians who are seeking to fulfill the Great Commission. You know, make disciples, baptize people, teach them everything that Jesus taught us to do and and to belong to his family. That belonging part where there is obligation, when it comes to religion is, is something that seems more and more foreign to people when you see numbers like this. So that is not a good thing. That is something that makes the Christian task harder in our day, rather than easier. And I think that that is something that we have to reckon with, even while we can appreciate the sentiment that yes, we want true Christianity blazing on fire for God Christianity to be the norm, rather than a sort of shell of cultural Christianity. That has often been the case.

BROWN: Trevin, Nick mentioned earlier the generational component and I want to drill down a bit more on that.

The numbers show a significant decline in Millennials and Gen Z. Only 36 percent belong to a church. That’s a 20 plus percentage-point drop from the Baby Boomers who traditionally have been more theologically orthodox.

So, out of a desire to be relevant to these young people, do you think pastors are feeling the pressure to create a reward system to pander to the younger generations?

WAX: Well, I think there’s all sorts of cross pressures that are happening for pastors in this cultural moment, and one of them certainly is generational. I hardly ever speak to a pastor when we talk about challenges facing the church that they don’t bring up younger generations and how to engage them in to involve them. One of the challenges that you have with a lot of younger people, and I think other surveys would show that would bear this out is that a lot of younger people simply don’t have many affiliations or associations at all. So it’s not just that they’re not members of a church, but they’re really not. There’s a lot of younger people that aren’t members of anything. You see the decline of civic institutions. I mean, it’d be hard, you’d be hard pressed to find, you know, a lot of rotary clubs and coladas. And, you know, those kinds of civic organizations that are just teeming with young people. The idea of obligation and reward in for many of these associations are, it’s just much less for younger people.

What we are finding in statistics and surveys, not from Gallup, but from other organizations, about churches that are effective in reaching and engaging young people, what you find is they don’t water down the biblical message, they take Jesus’s message seriously, you find that they are involving young people in leadership earlier, rather than just sort of catering to young people, they are reaching out to young people to have them lead, to have them serve in the congregation. So where are they? It’s clear that they own this, that this is not just church for them, but that they are for the church as well. And so that, you know, there’s Cara Powell’s book Growing Young talks a lot about different aspects of churches that are effective at reaching younger people. And some of the things that we find are not what you think. It’s not the size of the church, the the flashy worship service necessarily. It’s all sorts of different things than you might expect are what are effective in engaging young people and keeping them involved in the church.

EICHER: Trevin Wax. He’s general editor for The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources. He’s also a visiting professor at Wheaton College.

BROWN: Thanks, Trevin!

WAX: Great to be with you. Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Alright, it doesn’t get any worse than this. I will provide the translation.

WOMAN: Eine kleine Babyschlange im Salat!

A German-speaking woman living in Australia is narrating a video she’s shooting with her phone. “Eine kleine babyschlange….” That means a little baby snake. “…im Salat!” —the salad or in the lettuce.

And so as the babyschlange pokes its head out of the lettuce. You’ll hear her say, he’s coming out. I’d better replace the lid, schnell—quickly.

WOMAN: Er kommt heraus!! Ich werde schnell die Abdeckung auf. Waaa!

So this snake came packaged in lettuce from an Aldi supermarket in Sydney, Australia, and it turns out the little babyschlange is poisonous.

The refrigerated supermarket supply chain likely lulled the cold-blooded juvenile into a stupor because he made a trip of more than 500 miles from packing plant to point of purchase.

Needless to say, the customer got in touch with a snake expert to help out. Aldi for its part is looking into the incident. I imagine so. And what the wildlife agency’s reptile coordinator said, well, I think this really doesn’t make things much better.

“It’s the first snake I’ve ever had in sealed, packed produce,” he said, adding, “We get frogs in them all the time.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, April 16th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: something to make you laugh this weekend.

Who couldn’t use that?!

EICHER: Right? Well, if you’ve listened to the program for a while, you know Megan Basham has a special affection for clean comedians who compete in the mainstream arena. This week, she recommends a new special by one of her favorites: the Tennessee Kid, also known as Nate Bargatze.

MUSIC: FAMILY BY DREW HOLCOMB & THE NEIGHBORS

MEGAN BASHAM, REVIEWER: One of the most refreshing things about Nate Bargatze’s brand of comedy is that he’s not just family friendly. He avoids taking aim at any tribe.

His latest set, The Greatest Average American, just debuted on Netflix. And as you might expect, it’s heavily focused on the pandemic and events of 2020.

BARGATZE: I mean, let me tell ya. 2020 has been my favorite year. They said there’s been UFOs and no one cares [LAUGHTER].

But there’s not a politicized joke in the bunch. And that’s on purpose. In a recent interview, he told the Daily Beast, “Politics has overwhelmed every facet of entertainment. So I like being an outlet you can trust you’re not going to get lectured.”

And there are certainly no lectures, just laughs when he talks about the various Covid camps.

BARGATZE: You want to be in the middle I think. I’ve got friends that take a shower with their mask on. They sleep with the mask on because they have a hamster and the hamster probably has it. They live alone. It’s just them and the hamster. And I also have friends that I don’t think have even heard about Covid. It looks like someone told them to try to go get it. That’s how they’re living [LAUGHTER].

And of course there are all the ways the coronavirus has changed our public behavior.

BARGATZE: I can tell you one thing that’s gone forever. Coughing in public. That’s a wrap. You drink water wrong at a restaurant, just go walk in traffic [LAUGHTER].

Most of us have seen movies and TV as a means of escape from the lockdown reality of the last year. But Bargatze offers a strong argument that leaning into our shared experience is cathartic. We may not all have tried to perform stand-up over Zoom, but we’ve all experienced some form of video-conference fail.

Now, that said, some bits don’t feel as sharp or developed as his past specials. But then, like so many other entertainment professionals, comedians haven’t had the opportunity to hone new work in front of live audiences the way they usually do. So a few of the seams show here. But there are still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, particularly when he turns to the subjects of marriage and family.

BARGATZE: At the end of the day someone called my cell phone. They have my wife’s cell phone, they have my cell phone. They called my cell phone and said, “Hey, do you know what bus number your daughter’s supposed to be on?” And I said, I’m her dad. This is how you thought you would get this information, was to call the dad? [LAUGHTER].

True to form, there’s no profanity, no sexual material. And the one joke that glancingly references gay marriage does so only to highlight innate gender differences in traditional marriage. He then quickly turns back to the ways men and women tend to fulfill separate roles.

BARGATZE: I would rather you ask a lady that doesn’t know her. I think she could get to the bottom of it quicker than I can. I had to go get her. I go, alright, I’ll come get her. Tell me the name of the school and I’ll come get her [LAUGHTER].

But don’t think that avoiding racy or snarky jokes equals bland or corny. Far from it. Bargatze just avoids falling back on the cheapest tricks in the playbook—confusing crudeness or derision with comedy. I hope the Bashams weren’t the only ones cracking up at the familiarity of a fight he and his wife had about the meaning of the phrase “one fell swoop.”

BARGATZE: I just go, that’s not what “one fell swoop” means. And instead of possibly just being wrong, she goes “I know what one fell swoop means.” “I go, yeah? It doesn’t sound like you do, alright. And we have the same last name. I can’t have you out there in one fell swoop conversation. What do you think two birds one stone means? Let’s just go through them all. I don’t know if you know any of these” [LAUGHTER].

We know the Proverb about sharing a house with a contentious woman, but Bargatze illustrates the pitfalls of being a contentious man.

BARGATZE: So I laid there, just thinking about it. You think about it a lot. Cause you learn the longer you’ve been married, sometimes it’s like, let stuff go. You know? Who cares? And the next morning I still kind of wanted to talk about it because we didn’t talk all night, you know? So I went in to her, and I was look, it’s just not what it means, you know? That got it going real good [LAUGHTER].

Whether it’s dealing with the stress of life under Covid or marital strife, we laugh at what we recognize. And that process of taking ourselves less seriously is what creates the best medicine. Bargatze’s new pandemic special is just what the doctor ordered.

I’m Megan Basham.

MUSIC: FAMILY BY DREW HOLCOMB & THE NEIGHBORS

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, April 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio.

TODAY SHOW HOSTS: This morning we are keeping the faith with six-time Grammy Award winner Amy Grant and singer/songwriter Ellie Holcomb…

MYRNA BROWN, REPORTER: It isn’t often and if we’re honest, it’s down-right rare that a Christian book, album and livestream event is ever promoted on prime-time secular media. Then, too, it’s not everyday a group of award-winning Christian artists, and best-selling authors gather to collaborate and create in an old converted church turned studio outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

MUSIC: RAHAB’S LULLABY (GOD ABOVE, GOD BELOW)

That’s exactly what 27 artistic heavy-hitters did during the winter of 20-19, just a few months before the pandemic. But there was another group of women represented during those long weekends and their stories are the inspiration behind the Faithful Project: a book, album, and live-stream event inspired by the women of the Bible.

MUSIC: I will tell it like it is. I was hanging by a thread, pushed out to the furthest edge and I wasn’t proud of it.

That song, God Above, God Below, Rahab’s Lullaby, features singer/songwriter Sandra McCracken. Like a snug glove, the soft, simple chords and strong harmonic chorus are a perfect fit for the book’s first chapter, written by author Amanda Bible Williams. Williams tells the story of Rahab, the Canaanite woman who risked her life to save the spies.

MUSIC: He is God above. He is God below.

Forever labeled a prostitute, Williams writes, “Rahab’s story is about a different kind of profession – not her line of work, but her profession of faith.”

MUSIC: There’s no place you’ll be, where He cannot go. Look at my faith these eyes have seen. I know the Lord.

Like other projects before it, Faithful includes the often-told stories of familiar women in the Bible, including Ruth, Esther, and Mary Magdalene.

MUSIC: AT THIS VERY TIME

But to its credit, the Faithful Project also tells the story of a lesser-known woman in the Bible… Jehosheba. Found in 2 Kings, Jehosheba risked her life to save the life of her 1-year-old nephew, one of Israel’s future kings. In her essay, writer Kelly Needham makes a compelling correlation between this ancient woman who poured herself out daily for the life of her nephew to the high calling we have today as wives and mothers.

MUSIC: AT THIS VERY TIME At this very time that God has appointed. Is anything too hard for the Lord. Though nothing is too hard for the Lord.

That thumping chorus from songwriter Ginny Owens, underscores the significance of Jehosheba’s story. Because of Jehosheba’s hidden sacrifice, peace was restored to an entire nation.

MUSIC: YOU CAME FOR ME

There are 12 songs on the Faithful: Go and Speak album and 11 chapters in the corresponding Faithful book. It’s worth noting, a few of the essays are noticeably stronger than the songs they’re connected to. For instance, it’s hard to compete with the witty Lisa Harper who writes, I aspire to be like Ruth and Esther, but Sarah, not so much. The idea of buying Pampers and Depends at the same time, just isn’t appealing.

MUSIC: THIS TIME I WILL BRING PRAISE

The Faithful project is also realistic in its reflection of life’s bright and dark moments. In chapter 11, Ginny Owens writes about Hannah and her years of barrenness. Owens, who is visually impaired, also reveals the rejection, humiliation, and isolation she felt from her sighted classmates.

Ruth Chou Simons writes about Leah and the spurning she felt from Jacob. Simons, an Asian American, also recalls growing up as an immigrant and being riddled with rejection for her almond-shaped eyes, the foreign words she spoke, and the fried rice they ate. But the two authors don’t leave us with just sad stories about being dismissed and misunderstood, because at some point in our lives we’ve all spent time in that space.

MUSIC: THIS TIME I WILL BRING PRAISE

As co-writer of the praise anthem, I Will Bring Praise, Simons reminds us God sometimes chooses to write His redemption story through the most unlikely women and through circumstances that don’t always make sense. Our response: praise.

MUSIC: This time, this time, I will bring praise. I will bring praise to the Lord. This time, This time, I will give thanks. I will give thanks to the Lord.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It takes a team to put this program together and deliver it to you each morning.

Thanks are in order: Megan Basham, Anna Johansen Brown, Kent Covington, Katie Gaultney, Kim Henderson, Onize Ohikere, Bonnie Pritchett, Mary Reichard, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Sarah Schweinsberg, Julie Spencer, Cal Thomas, Steve West, Whitney Williams, and Emily Whitten.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are our audio engineers. Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. And Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And, thanks to you. Because of your support, you’re helping make it possible to bring Christian journalism to the marketplace of ideas.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”

Have a wonderful weekend of worship with your brothers and sisters.

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