The World and Everything in It: June 30, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Dorothy Pulcher, a retired transplant from Pennsylvania to Wimauma, Florida. My friend, my prior boss, Pastor Jay Deering ministered to me in the eighties by sharing WORLD Magazine. I know it impacted my faith journey. Our support can help this happen for others. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today’s the last day of the U.S. Supreme Court term. We’ll talk about a few of the key cases we learned about yesterday.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Right! The worldview implications today on Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Also today, two new films offering two visions of life well-lived: Indiana Jones and Sound of Freedom.

KATHERINE: OK. So, you quit your job, and you go and rescue those kids.

And your listener feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, June 30th. 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: Up next, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: SCOTUS Affirmative Action » The Supreme Court has ruled that race-based admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Calvin Yang was denied admissions to Harvard in 2021.

YANG: If we look at the larger picture here, beyond me, where applicants with near perfect standardized test scores and amazing extracurricular activities, who are of Asian descent routinely get rejected to these top schools. It shows that there’s something far beyond me personally.

Yang is a member of SFFA, Students For Fair Admissions, which filed lawsuits in 2014. The suits claimed that colleges’ admissions policies discriminated against white and Asian American students.

Schools have used affirmative action policies since the 1960s. The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that diversity on campus is a compelling government interest, but schools cannot employ a quota system.

SFFA President Edward Blum:

BLUM: These opinions reestablish the founding principles of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which clearly forbids treating Americans differently by race.

Three justices dissented, saying the decision reversed decades of work to address racism. President Joe Biden also denounced the court’s ruling.

SCOTUS/Groff » The Supreme Court also ordered lower courts to take another look at the case of a Christian postal worker. WORLD legal correspondent Jenny Rough has more.

JENNY ROUGH: When Gerald Groff started working at the post office, it was closed on Sundays.

GROFF: In 2012 when I started there was no such thing as Amazon Sunday delivery. It was, I thought it was a safe job.

But then the U.S. Postal Service contracted with Amazon to deliver packages on the day Groff observed the Sabbath.

He resigned and sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

That law requires an employer to make a religious accommodations unless doing so would constitute undue hardship.

The Supreme Court held that to meet that test, the employer must show the accommodation would result in substantial increased costs to the business.

FOR WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

Paris protests » Tens of thousands of police officers are deploying in France as protests continue over the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy by a police officer.

PRACHE: [Speaking French]

A French prosecutor explained that the teen had been pulled over then tried to restart the car and drive away when he was shot.

Officials say the officer in question is being investigated for “voluntary homicide.” French authorities have not released the officer’s name, but have disclosed the name of the teen: “Nahel.”

SOUND: [French Protest]

Protests raged throughout the country during daylight hours yesterday. Police responded with tear gas as rioters burned vehicles and buildings in some areas.

Wagner/missing general updates » Two Russian generals are reportedly missing since an armed uprising led by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last weekend.

No one has reported seeing Valery Gerasimov since Saturday, and Sergei Surovikin was rumored to be arrested on Sunday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says he knows nothing of their whereabouts.

PESKOV: [Speaking Russian] I recommend you ask the Ministry of Defence. It’s their prerogative.

Ask the Ministry of Defence, he said, “It’s their prerogative.”

Surovikin is a known associate of the mercenary leader. The New York Times reported he might have known about the rebellion before it began.

Prigozhin brokered a clemency deal with President Vladimir Putin and fled to Belarus. Russia says that despite the rebellion, it will continue using Prigozhin’s mercenaries, known as the Wagner Group, in its war in Ukraine.

Pence visits Ukraine » Meanwhile, former Vice President and current presidential candidate Mike Pence met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today in Kyiv.

Pence received an update on the war and assured Zelenskyy the U-S would continue supporting Ukraine.

PENCE: We need to make sure that we provide the Ukrainian military what they need make it clear to Russia, to China and any other nations, that would seek to redraw international lines by force that the free world will not stand for it.

Pence later visited destroyed villages just outside Kyiv and told locals Americans are supporting them and praying with them.

Economic Growth » The Commerce Department on Thursday adjusted its estimate of U.S. growth for the first quarter of this year from 1.3 to 2 percent.

Earlier this week President Biden claimed that the U.S. economy was getting stronger.

But the updated numbers are still lower than the previous quarter when growth was 2.6 percent.

Republican Congressman Dan Meuser.

DAN MEUSER: With higher interest rates higher levels of inflation, lower consumer confidence small businesses are struggling energy prices are staying high, and he's having some sort of some sort of success plan.

The Labor Department reported earlier this month that inflation was sitting at roughly four percent in May compared to a year ago.

I’m Kristen Flavin.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Heroes at the box office.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: First up on The World and Everything in It: it's the 30th day of June 2023. 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 Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. John is President of the Colson Center and he's Host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Alright, so we're down to just hours now, John, the Supreme Court set an opinions day for today, it appears it's the last, they did that right after handing down yesterday three pretty big cases. So that means by 10 o'clock this morning, Eastern Time, the court should give us a decision in the blockbuster case, the 303 Creative Case, really hoped to have that yesterday, but but the court did give us some cases with worldview implications that we can talk about today. And so let me begin with what the court did yesterday in the case of the postal worker, who did not want to be forced to choose between honoring the Sabbath and keeping his job. And the court in that case was unanimous, nine-nothing to uphold the rights of the letter carrier. Now, I would never predict based on that, that the court would also affirm the First Amendment rights of creative professionals versus LGBT rights. We have to wait and see, but not for very long. But doesn't it give you hope, John, that because the court really does seem to be protective of religious freedom, one can hope that it doesn't require lawyers and money and years of litigation constantly. But what do you say?

STONESTREET: Well, no, actually. The thing about 303 right now that gives me optimism that this will become a blockbuster protection for people of conscience in the corporate space is that it looks likely—or at least plausible—that Justice Alito will be writing the case given the amount of opinions he’s written so far in this term. One thinks that this kind of case will go his direction.

And it’s only right, because the court created this problem, this conflict that Justice Kennedy assured us would never happen if we had same-sex marriage mandated in America and yet, here we are. On these other cases, good for the court for basically upholding this postal worker’s right to honor the Sabbath. The court’s been really clear on religious freedom to that extent, and that has to do with personal conviction and religious institutions’ right to be religious and to order their institutions in religious ways. The courts been super, super clear on that.

I didn’t quite expect the nine-nothing decision on the Sabbath. But there also is this kind of freedom of worship protection that the court has never really faltered on at all. But what has been far less clear is the ability then to take one’s deeply held beliefs into the public square.

EICHER: I do want to talk about the other culture and worldview case, John, which is the one on affirmative action. It was a six to three decision. It said race-based college admissions are unconstitutional, that they violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Our colleague, Mary Reichard pointed us to the end of the opinion, which said nothing prohibits universities from considering someone's discussion of how race affected his life, but there cannot be a box check approach or quota for race. So doesn't this sort of clear up some questions of considering race a positive trait to make up for decades of it being a negative trait versus, say, giving preference to specific individuals who had to overcome specific hurdles in their lives?

STONESTREET: Well, I think a lot of clarity comes from the dissent written by Sotomayor. I believe it basically said that race has long been considered in a negative light, and there was this sense that that will inevitably go on. So therefore, there needed to be the space for race to be considered in a positive light. And that’s precisely what the majority opinion rejected, essentially saying that race is not a negative or positive quality in and of itself.

I think the reason that’s so hard for so many to hear is because of this critical theory mood with which the western world is infected, that we actually have come to think of people in terms of these divisions, these identities. Then, not only do we think of people like that, but we assign moral status based on that.

There’s no question throughout the racialized history of America or other countries that people were judged by the color of their skin negatively. But the answer that Justice Roberts wrote in his majority opinion advises not to use race to judge people positively; people should be judged on what they accomplished. So it’s completely legitimate to say, “my experience growing up, as this particular race, here’s how I dealt with that. Here’s how I overcame that. Here’s what it says about me as a person.” But race in and of itself doesn’t make a moral claim about a person.

I think that that is the most consistent line with what the best ideals of America were. Not the practices, don’t get me wrong, because the practices didn’t hold up to those ideals, either. So anybody who sees race and individuals and America in institutional practice through this critical theory lens will then read this opinion and say, “they’ve gone back to the ‘60s!” I think that has more to do with a critical theory lens.

What Roberts actually said is that, in essence, it’s wrong to make a moral claim about a person based on the color of their skin or the racial group to which they belong. So the whole discussion on this is between the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion, and it just reveals everything and how different the worldview is between the right and the left when it comes to identity.

BROWN: John, so much going on with the Supreme Court in these landmark cases, and we're going to, as Nick said, hear more and more, as you know, the upcoming days, but it's easy for other cultural stories unfolding at the same time to get lost. Here's one of them.

Audio from a Promise Keepers rally back in 1997 in the nation's capital men from around the country, lifting strong voices, they gathered to pray for themselves, their families, and the nation. Now these days, Promise Keepers hosts a series of events called Daring Faith—again, encouraging men to live bolder lives for Jesus. One of the events was scheduled at Belmont University, and it's supposed to happen in September. Belmont is a private Christian College in Nashville. And according to Promise Keepers, Belmont disinvited the group over its response to so-called Pride Month. So it basically, you know, the statement from Promise Keepers said, "We affirm that God made human beings in His image to reflect Him, male and female with equal worth and dignity. There was no mistake in that design." Maybe you heard about this, John, what do you what do you make of it?

STONESTREET: Full disclosure: The CEO and President of Promise Keepers is a good friend of mine. And he’s someone who’s a graduate of our Coulson Fellows Program. He’s been working to rebuild this for quite some time. With regards to that Promise Keepers launch, he’s coming at this from his experience as a police officer, business leader, and committed follower of Christ, watching this in the church and wanting to really address the same issue that plagued the church back when Promise Keepers was founded. The issue then was that we need to know what it means for a man to be a man, and what it means to be a godly man.

A whole lot of society falls into place when we figure that out. I heard back from him pretty quickly about this, and my response was, “hate to tell you this man, but I could have told you that about Belmont back in the 90s.”

I think it tells you a couple of things. Number one is to your parents: Please do not fool yourself that the word “Christian” in a college’s name means that it’s Christian. Often that might refer to history, that might refer to tradition, that might refer to a marketing thing that they don’t actually mean anymore. But there was no question in my mind that they would not tolerate, you know, Promise Keepers.

So my guess about what happened was there was somebody working on the Belmont team who thought this would be good for the university. They themselves are in denial about where Belmont and the faculty and the students and many administrators have been for a long time. It’s just not new. And a lot of universities are, and they have been for a long time. You don’t know that when you go on the campus tour, and the admissions counselor tells you what you want to hear, that you just you got to dig past it. I think your question actually telegraphed something here that’s really important.

The PK statement wasn’t controversial. What PK said was not hateful, was not intolerant, was not bigoted, was not anti-gay—people did not make a statement about you know Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light or Target and the kids—it literally said what the first two chapters of the Bible says. So you have to ask Belmont (and I always like to when I get a chance when schools come out having Christian on their name and make this sort of claim) at what point are they gonna kick the Bible off your campus.

There’s nothing that PK said that is not in the first two chapters of Genesis, it is virtually identical. Good for PK for being really clear about this, realizing that to accomplish their mission, to help build up Christian men, means you have to know what a Christian man is: You have to know. And that means you have to know what a man is. And this was pretty straightforward.

If you move off of what is really straightforward, biblically, then you’re no longer in a Christian position. PK has been super clear about that from the very beginning. And you know, shame on Belmont for saying yes, in the beginning when we all knew how this was going.

BROWN: Yeah, bottom line parents, do your homework, do your homework. Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Coulson center. He's host of the breakpoint podcasts. And John, it's always great to talk with you. Really appreciate your time, thank you.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, June 30th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Two new adventure movies coming to theaters. One featuring a familiar hero and the other focused on a hero from real life.

Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Debuting this weekend in theaters is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. What should we make of 80-year-old Harrison Ford’s donning the fedora again? And did the world need one more Indiana Jones adventure?

JONES: It belongs in a museum!

PANAMA HAT: So do you! Throw him over the side!

I’m happy Lucasfilm decided to make one final Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford. 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a terrible disappointment. The franchise deserved a proper conclusion that honored its iconic legacy. And that’s what we get with this movie.

Dial of Destiny opens with a spectacular scene set during the last days of World War II, featuring a quite convincing digitally de-aged Ford fighting to keep Nazi soldiers from looting priceless antiquities.

Most of the movie is set in 1969, in which an elderly Dr. Jones feels the world has passed him by. Americans busily celebrate astronauts and excitedly look forward to the future of space. No one has time for Dr. Jones’ archeology and love of the past.

But when his goddaughter Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, shows up looking for a legendary device that can predict fissures in space and time, Indiana gets dragged into another globe-trotting adventure.

INDIANA JONES: Get in the pool!

HELENA: Why? How did they open the door?

JONES: Well, they didn’t get out the doors! Get in the pool!

Out of the five Indiana Jones movies, I rank this one in the middle. It’s not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but it’s much better than the other two.

The movie is rated PG-13 for violence and smoking, but it includes almost no strong language or sensuality. With Dial of Destiny, director James Mangold revives to the most endearing aspects of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The script, the score, and the visual language allude to key moments in the original. And it’s nice to see Indiana unlock some puzzles from the past.

INDIANA JONES: Under the moon, life lies at her feet.

Sure, the climax is a bit of a mess because Mangold couldn’t figure out how to land the plane. But nostalgic fans of the franchise will feel like both they and Indiana have finally come home after a lifetime of adventure.

If you’re interested in a true-life adventure with higher stakes, you might want to mark July 4th on your calendar. That’s the day Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom debuts in theaters.

The movie dramatizes the story of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad, who left his job with the Department of Homeland Security to rescue children from slavery.

Jim Caviezel plays Ballard, and the movie opens with his investigation of a child pornography ring. Tim has a good track record of arresting pornographers, but the darkness he’s exposed to starts to take its toll. One of his fellow officers wonders whether they’re doing enough.

CHRIS: Let me ask you something. How many pedophiles you caught?

TIM: As of today, 288. Not so bad.

CHRIS: How many kids you found?

The question haunts Tim, and he gets permission from his superiors to set up a sting operation which ends with the freeing of one small boy who had been stolen from his home in Honduras. The boy tells Tim about his sister who’s still enslaved, but the American bureaucracy tells Tim his investigation is over.

With his wife’s blessing, Tim heads to South America, hoping to track down the girl’s whereabouts.

KATHERINE: OK. So, you quit your job, and you go and rescue those kids.

Collaborating with both underworld contacts and local authorities, Tim devises another sting to capture enslavers and rescue children—this time on a much larger scale.

JORGE: Forget about what could happen to us. She could be killed too.

TIM: What if this was your daughter, Jorge?

Sound of Freedom is a well-crafted movie with an evenly paced script. The movie follows Tim’s single-minded quest to rescue one young girl, and it introduces a secondary problem, asking whether our current systems and resources are sufficient to address human trafficking.

The movie doesn’t belabor its faith-based roots. But it reminds viewers that human rights and dignity derive from our Creator.

VAMPIRO: Why you doing it?

TIM: Because God’s children are not for sale.

Caviezel brings a riveting intensity tinged with despair to Tim’s moral toughness. And the movie gets a boost from a strong secondary cast. Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino plays Tim’s wife, and the reliably entertaining Bill Camp plays one of Tim’s unsavory allies with both humor and sadness.

VAMPIRO: When God tells you what to do, you cannot hesitate.

The movie boasts high production values, with much of the filming done on location in Colombia. The beauty and the poverty of the setting seem a fitting metaphor for the children’s innocence and the wickedness they’re trapped in.

The movie is rated PG-13 for a couple of instances of profanity and heavy subject matter. Sound of Freedom avoids graphic depictions, but merely talking about sexual abuse against children makes for a disturbing film. Sensitive viewers will probably want to steer clear, but this is a story that needs to be told.

TIM: And everyday, ordinary people don’t want to hear it. It’s too ugly for polite conversation.

Sound of Freedom is a wake up call, reminding Americans of the evil that’s perpetrated both inside and outside our borders.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

EICHER: If you're interested in more reviews and entertainment news in your inbox, subscribe to Collin’s weekly newsletter at wng.org/newsletters. It’s called The Muse.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, June 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, listener feedback for the month of June. We begin today with a handful of corrections.

Yes, we’ve got to set the record straight. The first one comes from the June 5th History Book. An item on Charles Spurgeon. Doctor Ed Read pointed out to us that Spurgeon suffered from bright's disease, b-r-i-g-h-t, bright’s disease. Not blight with an “L,” as we reported. Correction made in the transcript.

EICHER: Next, a June 15th story on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the PCA. In our promo at the start of the program we called it “the Presbyterian Church OF America” and it should have been “the Presbyterian Church IN America.” PCA elder B.L. Peters reminded us of the correct name, which many of us knew, because it’s the denomination of which the congregation in which I’m a member belongs. That one fell through the proverbial cracks. Sorry about that, fellow PCA people.

BROWN: Two corrections now from our June 20th story on elections in Spain. First of all, we identified Pedro Sanchez as “President” when he’s in fact the Prime Minister.

Additionally, we gave the wrong year for Francisco Franco’s death. He died in 1975.

EICHER: Now an oversight. In our June 16th Father’s Day commentary, we never identified Andrew Belz’s father by name. We simply said Andrew’s dad. Listener Bill MacDonald thought we should set the record straight, and we agree. Andrew Belz and WORLD’s founder Joel Belz are brothers, and their godly father was Max V. Belz.

BROWN: One final correction this morning—and we received a lot of mail pointing this out. In our June 15th story on the growing shortage of medical caregivers in nursing homes, we incorrectly lumped CNAs and registered nurses together. We referred to all of them as nurses. But listener Lizzie Kiesle sent us this:

LIZZIE KIESLE: Thank you for covering the nursing shortage in nursing homes. However, the information lacked clarity on terms. It is common but inaccurate to call many health professionals nurses. Your segment mentions the potential Connecticut law mandates that nurses should spend 4.1 hours with nursing home residents. The law actually includes both nurses and certified nursing assistants in that 4.1 hour requirement, certified nursing assistants or aides rather than actual nurses typically provide the majority of care to residents in nursing homes. And it is important to distinguish the difference. Again, thank you so much for covering important topics like this one.

EICHER: Our thanks to all those who care for people in our nation’s nursing homes.

BROWN: A quick note of appreciation from one of our listeners about a recent History Book entry on the history of typewriters. Susan Jones from Indianapolis wrote us to say how much she loved that piece. Susan told us she’s blind and uses her typewriter almost every day. Because she can’t use a pen or pencil, that typewriter, she says, is indispensable for writing a quick note on a card or nice stationery. Susan, thank you for writing us, and for listening.

EICHER: One last email this morning from long-time subscriber and listener Allen Miller. He starts off expressing his appreciation of The World and Everything in It and the many spin offs. But he was particularly moved by the recent Effective Compassion season on the church and foster care.

His family listened to each episode, together as a family, and they shed many tears while listening. He said they hadn’t been WORLD donors, but the Effective Compassion season motivated them to give as a show of support.

BROWN: That’s great. What an encouragement!

EICHER: It is, and I think you’ll really appreciate this, too. I want to quote this part of the letter as he concludes, and here’s the big surprise: “we start our foster care training course next month.” How about that!

Well, I think that’s a great conclusion to our June Giving Drive. There’s still a little time left if you mean to make a gift to help us get a good start to our new fiscal year. So a gentle reminder to visit wng.org/donate.

MB: Well that’s it for this month’s Listener Feedback. Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in. If you have comments to share with us you can send them to editor@wng.org. And if you’re writing, why not take a moment and record your comments on your phone and send those along as well. We’ve included instructions on how to do that on our website: wng.org/podcasts.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Addie Offereins, Mary Muncy, Grace Snell, Joel Belz, Will Inboden, Onize Ohikere, Zoe Miller, Janie B. Cheaney, Leah Savas, Travis Kircher, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And because it takes a late night to ensure your early morning routine, thanks to Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters. Our production team includes Kristen Flavin, Benj Eicher, Emily Whitten, Lillian Hamman, and Bekah McCallum.

Anna Johansen Brown is features editor, and Paul Butler is executive producer.

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: Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! Psalm 149 verse 1.

Remember to worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church this weekend!

Go now in grace and peace.

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