The World and Everything in It - August 31, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Natural immunity to COVID-19 has many people objecting to mandated shots as a condition to carry out daily life.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also a federal court upholds the right of a Catholic high school to fire an employee who violated church teaching.

Plus The Olasky Interview. How should parents discern the best Christian education for their children?

And many people have skeletons in their closets, but how many have moths in their pantries?

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 31st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Pentagon announces end of evacuation mission in Afghanistan » Taliban militants fired their rifles into the sky above Kabul on Monday in celebration after receiving word that the last U.S. military planes had departed the airport.

Hours later, General Frank McKenzie confirmed that report.

MCKENZIE: I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end to the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans. The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30th, this afternoon, at 3:29 p.m. East Coast time.

Earlier on Monday, ISIS militants fired a volley of rockets at the Kabul airport.

The Pentagon said anti-rocket defense systems were able to take out the rockets before they struck the airport. But some of the rockets landed across town, reportedly striking residential apartment blocks.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the evacuation mission now over—officials aren’t yet sure how many Americans were left behind.

PSAKI: We believe there are still a small number. I understand you’re asking for the exact number who remain. We’re trying to determine exactly how many.

But House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said the exact number hardly matters.

MCCARTHY: They’re making a conscious decision that they’re leaving Americans behind. Why would you do that?

The two-week airlift has brought scenes of desperation and horror. In the early days, people desperate to flee Taliban rule flooded onto the tarmac and some fell to their deaths after clinging to a departing plane.

On Thursday, an ISIS suicide attack at an airport gate killed nearly 200 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.

Remnants of Ida spin inland leaving destruction in its wake » The storm that was Hurricane Ida is spilling into northern Alabama and eastern Tennessee today. It’s still packing heavy rain and 30 mile per hour winds.

The storm has already carved a path of destruction from the Louisiana coast through northern Mississippi.

President Biden said Monday that the federal government will help any way it can.

BIDEN: We’ve got a million people in Louisiana without power. And for a time, Ida caused the Mississippi River to literally change its direction. And some folks are still dealing with the storm surge and flash flooding.

Rescuers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters Monday. That as residents living amid the maze of rivers and bayous along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast retreated desperately to their attics or roofs.

The storm is blamed for at least two deaths—a motorist who drowned in New Orleans, and a person hit by a falling tree outside Baton Rouge.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the good news is that the city’s levee system passed a major test.

CANTRELL: The worst case scenario, it did not happen. We did not have another Katrina. And that is something, again, we should all be grateful for. However, the impact is absolutely significant.

She said the city and the state are only beginning to survey the destruction.

The damage to the power grid was so extensive that officials warned it could be weeks before it’s repaired.

Wildfire threatens Lake Tahoe, forces evacuations » Fire officials have ordered more evacuations near Lake Tahoe as the Caldor Fire roared through forests southwest of the lake along the California-Nevada state line.

The fire destroyed multiple homes on Sunday along Highway 50, one of the main routes to the south end of the lake. The fire also roared through the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, destroying multiple buildings.

And the weather does not appear to be cooperating. Forecasters say extreme heat and triple-digit temperatures could last for several days.

The blaze that broke out August 14 has already burned roughly 250 square miles. That’s an area larger than Chicago.

COVID cases reach January levels » New COVID-19 infections have risen to levels not seen since January of this year, the peak month of the pandemic so far. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: About 150,000 Americans are testing positive each day, according to a rolling 7-day average. That is a return to January levels, though not yet near the mid-January peak of a quarter of a million daily infections.

Those are, of course, just the recorded numbers. Experts say the actual case count is likely much higher as many who contract the virus never take a test.

And deaths for COVID-19 are also still on the rise—quadrupling since early July. Almost a thousand Americans are once again dying from COVID-19 each day. Officials estimate that about 98 percent of those deaths are among unvaccinated patients.

But vaccinations are also on the rise. About 450,000 Americans are now getting their first shot each day. That’s an increase of 73 percent since late July.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: a court victory for Christian schools.

Plus, resisting the temptation to pretend we’re perfect.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the last day of August, 2021. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: religious guidance for religious schools.

A federal court earlier this month upheld the right of an Indianapolis Catholic high school to fire a guidance counselor who violated church teaching by entering into a same-sex relationship.

Lynn Starkey sued Roncalli High School in 2019. She accused school officials of discriminating against her and creating a hostile work environment due to her sexual orientation.

REICHARD: Joining us now to fill us in on this case is Steve West. He’s an attorney and writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD Digital. 

Good morning, Steve!

WEST: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: First of all, Steve, give us a little background on this case and how we got here.

WEST: Lynn Starkey worked for Roncalli High School a long time, about 40 years—from 1978 to 1999. But, you know, people's beliefs and behavior can change over their lives and that’s what happened here. Though she obviously subscribed to Catholic teaching on sexuality and marriage when she was hired—she had to in order to work there—that changed when she entered into a same-sex relationship. And when the school learned about it, it did what it had to do: It didn’t renew her contract. She was fired.

REICHARD: So as we mentioned, a federal court sided with Roncalli High School. How and why did the court arrive at that decision?

WEST: Starkey made a number of claims, but it all boiled down to “you discriminated against me by firing me based solely on my status as as gay person.” But the court relied on what’s called the “ministerial exception,” a doctrine courts have developed that flows out of the First Amendment. It’s part of the broader idea that churches and religious institutions—when they are acting like churches and religious institutions—should have a high degree of autonomy, and courts should not be second-guessing their decisions.

REICHARD: Let’s stop here and talk about what that “ministerial exception” means?

WEST: That refers to church doctrine, governance, and even firing and hiring. After all, if a church or religious ministry is going to fulfill its mission, it needs to be able to count on employees who believe in the mission. The ministerial exception applies to ministers, of course, but also to those employees who serve a vital religious function—like a principal of a school, an organist for a church, and a press secretary for a religious organization. And the court here said Lynn Starkey, as a guidance counselor, certainly fell in that category. She was to give spiritual advice to students. Shey prayed with them, and she served as a role model to them.

REICHARD: Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it. Will the school have to defend its rights there any further or is this case closed?

WEST: Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not over, yet. Lynn Starkey has appealed—not what the school wants, of course—but a favorable appeals court ruling could be helpful to many other schools in helping clarify the law in this area.

REICHARD: Steve, you wrote that the courts continue to wrestle with the scope of the ministerial exception. Explain what’s going on there?

WEST: No one believes that churches, religious schools, and religious ministries are completely autonomous, yet the ministerial exception arose as a way to protect their religious liberty and prevent government entanglement with religious doctrine and governance. And here is an area that can be very thankful for the way the Supreme Court has, to date, dealt with it. Yet defining the scope of the exception can be a challenge as you move farther away from someone who’s an actual minister. So, yes, it covers the minister, the teacher, even the guidance counselor, but at the other extreme it’d be a challenge to show it covers the custodian or school bus driver.

REICHARD: I know the Supreme Court’s with some recent cases dealing with the ministerial exception in recent terms.

WEST: Yes. Last summer, the Court issued a ruling upholding the right of two Catholic schools in California to fire elementary school teachers over discrimination claims, finding that they were both were “vital” because they were involved in teaching the faith. But decisions by two other courts that didn’t adopt the ministerial exception are up for review by the court. One involved a lawyer who sought a job at a legal aid clinic operated by Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission where the mission charges every employee with evangelization. Does he serve a vital religious function? Or what about a social work professor at Gordon College, a Christian college, where the college has a well-articulated vision of ministry for staff that requires integration of faith and learning? Does she serve a vital religious function? In both of those cases, state courts did not think so. Both are up for review by the Supreme Court. And then you can look further and look at the leaders of campus student Christian groups like InterVarsity. We’ve had some successes there in recent months, but I think we’ll next see the ministerial exception applied to them as we will continue to face challenges there. It will take time, but we will find some answers as to the scope of this protection as courts consider these kinds of cases over the next several years.

REICHARD: Steve West writes about religious liberties for WORLD Digital. You can read his work at WNG.org. You can also subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on First Amendment issues, Liberties. Steve, always great talking to you!

WEST: Always a pleasure, Mary.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: natural immunity.

It’s hard to know with precision how many Americans so far have had COVID-19. Limited access to testing as well as the virus’s wide-range of symptoms means official counts are probably underestimating the number of Americans who’ve had the virus. One study in the journal Nature published in February estimates that up to 70 percent of the country has had it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Some of those people say their natural immunity should exempt them from having to get a vaccine. But does natural immunity confer the same protection as the vaccines? WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: A few weeks ago, Rashago Kemp began to feel sick. After a couple of days the 37-year-old’s symptoms worsened.

KEMP: Everything just hurt. You had these weird temperature changes where you'd feel really hot, and you'd feel really cold and you feel really hot. Like my appetite went to almost nothing.

He got tested. Positive for COVID-19. Kemp got tested for two reasons. He wanted to be responsible, and he wanted documentation that he had the virus. Kemp wants to prove he has natural immunity.

KEMP: I believe that, you know, natural immunity, especially in people that are young and healthy, like myself, is robust.

Kemp hasn’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine. He might in the future. But for now, he’d like his natural immunity to excuse him from a potential workplace vaccine mandate.

KEMP: I feel like especially with all the breakthrough cases, that my natural immunity is not only equal to but superior to the vaccinations, and I should get some credit for that.

So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t want to give people credit for natural immunity. The agency recommends COVID-19 vaccines as the best way to protect against the virus—whether you’ve had it or not.

Many companies, schools, and businesses with vaccine mandates are following that guidance, only allowing vaccines to count as protection from COVID-19. And they’re giving out medical exemptions sparingly.

To back its position, the CDC cites a study it conducted earlier this summer when the Delta variant was not prevalent in the United States. It looked at patients in Kentucky and found that unvaccinated people are more than twice as likely to get reinfected with COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated.

Now, as the Delta variant spreads, the CDC says vaccines are also the best protection against the strain—even though new data shows Pfizer’s jab only stops symptoms in 66 percent of vaccinated people. That is instead of the previous 90 percent.

Dr. Amesh Adalja is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. He says despite reduced protection against the Delta variant, vaccines are still doing their most important job.

ADALJA: What we know is that our vaccines are holding up against the Delta variant when it comes to what matters: serious disease, hospitalization, and death.

But Dr. Adalja believes natural immunity is worth something.

ADALJA: I'm somebody that advocates people who have had some level of immunity be not considered exactly the same as someone who is not vaccinated at all or has no prior immunity. And there is data to suggest that maybe a single dose of the two dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may be sufficient for a person with prior immunity to have as robust immunity as someone that's been vaccinated.

New research also points to the benefits of natural immunity, especially against the Delta variant.

An Oxford University study released this month looked at how the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines fared against the strain. The research concluded that people who had been vaccinated and had been previously infected with COVID-19, had the most protection.

And a new study in Israel that isn’t peer reviewed yet looked at 70,000 COVID-19 patients. Researchers found that patients who just got two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 6 to 13 times more likely to be reinfected than those with just natural immunity. But, again, the strongest immunity was found in those who had been previously infected and had been given at least one dose of a vaccine.

Still, Dr. Adalja says, overall, vaccines provide a more standardized immune response against all of the coronavirus strains than natural immunity alone.

ADALJA: The vaccines contain the genetic material for the spike protein, which causes the immune system to have a very concentrated and effective immune response against the spike protein, which seems to be the most important aspect of our immunity. And although there's different immunity that's induced when you're naturally infected, it doesn't seem that they're as important as having a really robust response against the spike protein, which is what the vaccine delivers.

But some countries are treating natural immunity as equal to vaccines—at least for now. Italy requires a digital green pass to enter public places like restaurants, museums, and gyms. Who's eligible for a pass?

Doug Badger is a public policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

BADGER: Two groups of people. One, those who have been vaccinated, and two, those who have certification that they have recovered from the infection within the past six months.

After six months, the country no longer counts a recovered person as immune. Right now, studies disagree over how long natural immunity lasts, as they are also questioning how long vaccine immunity lasts.

Badger says, like Italy, naturally immune people should also be allowed to function as normal in the United States. But officials here haven’t made documenting natural immunity a priority.

BADGER: So CDC has never encouraged,  for example, a doctor to give a recovered patient, a note or some certification or a local public health agency to give the certification that John Doe recovered from COVID as of June 4, 2021. We have our little CDC cards, those of us who have been vaccinated, but we don't have anything that we carry around to document that we've recovered from infection.

That makes it more difficult for schools, hospitals, and businesses to figure out who falls into what categories: never-infected, recovered, and vaccinated.

But recovered COVID-19 patients like Rashago Kemp and experts like Dr. Amesh Adalja at Johns Hopkins say it would be a system worth figuring out.

ADALJA: If the goal is to protect people against COVID-19, I think that this should be something that we incorporate into guidance. If you have natural immunity, one dose of vaccine. If you don't have natural immunity, two doses of vaccine. If you're immunosuppressed, three doses of vaccine.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

NICK EICHER, HOST: If you’ve ever had a package stolen from your doorstep, you know how upsetting that can be.

Kristin Levine knows that feeling. She was the victim of a porch pirate last week at her home in Connecticut.

Levine said she got a notification on her phone from her front door security camera when Amazon delivered a package.

Then, only five minutes later, she received another alert—and this time, her package was gone.

Video showed the thief brazenly snatching the package—making no attempt to hide his face from the camera and then casually walking away.

Reviewing the footage, she got a good look at the suspect. He stood about 3 feet tall and was covered with black fur.

The good news is, she found her package in a neighbor’s yard. Apparently the black bear had no interest in the contents of the box—a package of toilet paper.

REICHARD: I guess it wasn’t the Charmin bear.

EICHER: Guess not!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 31st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The Olasky Interview. 

Today, a conversation with author and educator Gene Edward Veith. Christian families looking for public education alternatives have a growing list of options. But how should parents evaluate those choices? Veith offers some helpful advice. Here’s editor in chief Marvin Olasky.

MARVIN OLASKY, EDITOR IN CHIEF: Let’s start with basics. What should parents look for in a Christian school?

GENE EDWARD VEITH: Well, two things, Christianity, of course. And that's not always something you can take for granted. But also, that would be a real school, that it's actually teaching substance—teaching content. It's a place to learn knowledge.

OLASKY: So let's say a parent is, is aware of the decline of public schools, and has decided, I'm going to send my child to a Christian school. What are the things that parents should particularly be looking for?

VEITH: When the reformers started the project of universal education to try to get every Christian to be able to read the Bible for themselves, the kinds of schools they opened were classical Christian Schools. And the result was that not only could they read the Bible well, and the education was given to peasants and to women, and it was an education flourishing, but because it was a classical education, not only could they read the Bible, they could do a lot of other things in that tied into the social mobility that came with the Reformation, with the economic explosion that came of following the Reformation. And it's just a very powerful approach to learning. So a lot of schools are self consciously cultivating that.

OLASKY: So when a parent is checking out of school, what are say three questions that the parents should be sure to ask?

VEITH: Well, I'd like to ask about the reading lists. What did the students read at the different levels? Now, it might be classics of the past, classic works, that's a good sign. It doesn't have to be necessarily, but are they reading exclusively contemporary works, works out with an obvious ideology behind them. That's a good test, look at reading list.

OLASKY: So check the reading list. Teach history rather than social studies.

VEITH: Wow, that's a good a good sign. Yeah. Just what they call subjects that can be can be telling

OLASKY: One question parents often have, you'd expect to see some emphasis on creation rather than evolution. What kinds of questions should parents ask about that?

VEITH: Well, right, ask about the science curriculum. See what they do with science. See how they handle evolution and creation. There are Christian Schools that say, “we teach creation in our theology classes, but we teach evolution in our science classes.”

Ok. Here's part of the genius of a classical approach to education, it ties knowledge together. Progressive education is highly specialized. And even when it teaches multiple subjects, they're taught in isolation, and you study one different area, and then you take another class, and it teaches another area, and they have nothing to do with each other. What that does is to sort of fragment the mind and a lot of times people come out with knowing a lot about very little. And they haven't been exposed to anything else.

A part of the classical approach is to tie things together. So you have to see that the science course has to accord and relate to the theology course. And what you learned about creation in the Bible class has to shape how you approach the natural world and its wonders in the science classes.

I think it's helpful for schools, again, to give a good education to make students aware of the contrary, worldviews out there. And that's a way for them not to be influenced by them, because a lot of times otherwise they'll think that's the answer. That's the only truth. My Christian school was sheltering me from this, they must not have wanted me to know about that, because it must be true. So again, that bigger connected approach to education, I think that's very important.

EICHER: That’s Gene Edward Veith talking with Marvin Olasky. To read more of their interview, we’ve posted a link in today’s transcript at worldandeverything.org. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 31st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s commentator Whitney Williams on cleaning out the pantry.

And I don’t mean a clean one. Like mine.

AUDIO: [Sounds of vacuum]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: “I’m just nasty. We’re a nasty family and that’s all there is to it,” I thought yesterday as I spied squirmy larvae in our oatmeal, trashed a cocoon-infested spaghetti box, and swatted at the winged disgustingness flying out of my pantry. “If people knew about this nastiness ...” I thought, as I got out my handheld vacuum to clean crumbs from deep, dark, webby corners of our shelves …

Ping. Just then, I got a text from a new friend thanking me for a thank you card I’d sent her.

I texted back: “You’re welcome” with a heart emoji, hit enter a few times and then typed: “Current situation—COLON—pantry moths.” Send.

My pastor calls that being 100 percent known.

My new friend responded that she was so sorry and shared that she’d dealt with pantry moths many years ago and that it was no fun.

“Yep. Nastiness confirmed, Whitney. ONE TIME, just one time this classy lady’s dealt with pantry moths” I thought, “While Mrs. Nasty here has dealt with them HOW MANY TIMES over the last 12 years?”

But then I received another text from her. This woman that I barely knew, this woman who, as far as I could tell, had it all together, shared with me that the night before she heard a loud kathunk on her nightstand and saw a brown flash out of the corner of her eye. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she spotted the largest roach she had ever seen—it was YUUUUGE, she texted me, spelling it with a Y. YUUUUUGE.

I chuckled to myself as I pictured her franticly swatting and bravely (her adjective, but I fully agree with its use in this circumstance) BRAVELY picking up the four-inch roach and disposing of it in the toilet, all while her husband—her protector!—slept peacefully in bed just a few feet away.

Quite honestly, in this Pinterest-perfect, Instagram-filtered world, I think a lot of women would sooner admit to murder than to a roach in her house, but I believe my pantry moth confession shattered the pretense between my new friend and me.

And why should there be pretense among believers, anyway? Christians pretending they are something they’re not, pretending they are better than they actually are, only lessens our testimony ... as if we don’t need Jesus’ saving power as much as the next guy. Yes, confession before God is what matters most, but false fronts don’t help anyone—does the person putting on a false front question whether or not the grace of our Lord is sufficient to cover his sin? Does his fronting benefit his brother in Christ who feels alone in his sin struggle?

There’s a line, of course. Opening one’s larvae-infested sin pantry to the world requires wisdom and discernment. But when it comes to shining light into dark corners, setting traps, and swatting sinfulness, two are better than one.

I’m Whitney Williams.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Afghanistan. The U.S. military operation officially ends at midnight tonight. We’ll talk about what’s next for the country.

And, second chances. We’ll take you to a special court in Mississippi where mercy follows judgment.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.