The World and Everything in It: June 6, 2025

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday, the rise in anti-Semitism, a surprising abortion commentary from a leading Christian theologian, and Fidelity Month: is it gaining some ground on pride?

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by.

Also today, a new album from Ronnie Martin—a synth-pop artist turned pastor—drawing inspiration from the Psalms.

MARTIN: It’s really a Psalm about the Lord removing things from him that needed to be removed so that his eyes would be re-shifted back to the Lord

Later, Ask the Editor: a look back at a year’s worth of podcast adventures, and the faithfulness behind every story.

BROWN: It’s Friday, June 6th. 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: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: China-U.S. trade » At the White House on Thursday, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that trade talks with China will resume in the days ahead.

The president struck a positive tone after his first phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, since returning to the White House.

TRUMP: We had a very good talk and, uh, we've straightened out any complexity and it's, it's very complex stuff and we straighten it out.

He said top U.S. trade officials will be meeting with their Chinese counterparts very soon. U.S. negotiators hope to break an impasse over tariffs and global supplies of rare earth minerals.

Trump-Musk feud » President Trump also responded Thursday to criticism from Elon Musk, who just days earlier exited as the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk in recent days grew louder and more pointed in his criticism of a Republican budget bill backed by the president, calling it a big-spending “disgusting abomination.”

Trump told reporters:

TRUMP:  I've always liked Elon, and it's always very surprised, but I'm, I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.

Trump also suggested that Musk, the CEO of Tesla, was upset about losing federal electric vehicle subsidies.

A war of words later exploded on social media, with Trump threatening to cancel federal contracts with Musk's companies, including SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk retaliated by announcing plans to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which plays a crucial role in NASA's missions to the International Space Station.

SCOTUS decisions » The Supreme Court issued several unanimous decisions on Thursday. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has details.

BENJAMIN EICHER: One of the rulings, the court effectively said that so-called reverse discrimination in the workplace is just as wrong as other forms of discrimination.

The justices ruled that under Title VII (seven) all individuals—regardless of social minority status—are entitled to equal protection.

That stemmed from a case in which a hetrosexual woman said she was passed over for promotions in favor of homosexual candidates.

In another case, all nine justices agreed that Mexico can’t hold U.S. gun manufacturers liable for violent acts committed with American-made guns.

And separately, the court also ruled unanimously that Wisconsin violated the First Amendment by denying a religious nonprofit tax-exempt status based on the perceived secular nature of its services.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

News conference on Colorado attacker charges  » The man accused of carrying out a terrorist attack in Colorado on Sunday has been formally charged with 118 criminal counts.

Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman is accused of attacking a group that had gathered to call for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty:

DOUGHERTY:  The defendant is charged with attempted murder in the first degree as to 14 different victims. Each one of those counts carries a sentence of 16 to 48 years.

Authorities say Soliman threw Molotov cocktails injuring 15 people and yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack. Police arrested him at the scene.

Soliman has also been charged with a hate crime in federal court.

Travel ban latest » And Trump administration officials again pointed to that attack in Boulder in discussing President Trump’s new travel ban.

The president this week signed an order halting travel to the U.S. from a dozen different countries that the administration deems high risk.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce:

BRUCE:  What, of course Colorado showed us was the vital importance of this action, the fact that the president has been right from the start. It is another example of why this has to be done.

The ban lists nine countries located in the Middle East or Africa, as well as Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Haiti.

Trump also ordered partial bans for nations like Turkmenistan, Cuba, and Venezuela.

Multiple legal challenges to the order are already in the works.

SOUND: [Explosions]

Israel-Gaza latest » Explosions as Israel's military struck several sites in southern Beirut yesterday. Israel says it was targeting underground facilities where the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah built drones.

Meanwhile, tragic news out of the region:

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that Israel's military recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans who had been captured by Hamas during the October 7th attacks. They were identified as Gad Haggai and his wife Judih Weinstein.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, a voice from the past returns with a new recording project.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 6th of June.

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.

John Stonestreet joins us now. John, of course, is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning to you.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: John, I’d like to begin with some deeply troubling news. In just the past couple of weeks, two Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. Then, in Colorado, a man attacked a peaceful demonstration to remember the Israelis and Americans held by Hamas. The suspect allegedly using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower—all while shouting pro-Palestinian slogans. We need to add the disclaimer: allegedly.

Regardless, without pronouncing guilt on the alleged attackers, these are horrifying acts of anti-Semitic violence. What’s also concerning, though, is how anti-Semitic rhetoric is tolerated and even justified in certain corners of the culture. What do you think is going on here and how should Christians think clearly about it?

STONESTREET: There is an absolute rise of anti-Semitism in America. And we are in a cultural moment where, for 18 months, explicit acts of violence against the Jews have been called for and have been tolerated and even encouraged in the name of free speech and “protest.” And here you have a man who, having now been caught who committed these heinous attacks in Boulder had been planning this for a year, wanted to wait until his daughter graduated from high school, attempted to buy a gun, but couldn't, broke immigration law, and said he would do it again if he could, after he was caught after studying how To make these fire bombs on the internet. What this reveals is just how deep the critical theory mood has gotten in America, and the number one message we've heard is that the big fear here is that there will be reprisals against Muslims. Now I don't think there should be any reprisals against everyday Muslims. People are responsible for their own actions.

But you know, who should actually be fearful right now are Jews in America, and many of them are, and many of them have taken extended steps. For example, the Jewish students at Columbia. Look, ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims, I think we should be absolutely alarmed, not just by these events, which are alarming enough, but at the reaction that we're seeing by so many people that have so much power and over media, For example, over universities, over political jurisdictions, municipalities, I'm grateful that even though the Boulder authorities were really hesitant to call this terrorism, that the Trump administration was really quick to call it terrorism, and it is a big deal.

EICHER: John, N.T. Wright is one of the world’s most well-known New Testament scholars. He has a long record of teaching and writing in the church. But in a recent episode of his “Ask Anything” podcast, a listener sent in a question, and Wright’s response... well, let’s just have a listen to about a minute of his discussion on the issue of abortion.

WRIGHT: It's very difficult, it's very hard for a man to talk about this, and indeed one of the problems has been, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, when women particularly say a girl who's been raped or who's had incest committed on her, then discovering that unmarried men from the Catholic hierarchy are telling her what she can and can't do. You know, that's, As people now say, the optics of that are pretty bad. That's part of the same system of male bullying, which we have to avoid like the plague. However, having said that, I do think that that sense of respect for God's creation in all its rich variety is the primary starting point, even if we then have to say with sorrow and the sense of, ‘this is the least worst option in this situation,’ that there may be some cases of exceptions.

The entirety of his answer was about seven minutes, and the host who read the question and framed it up really muddled the whole thing. But I’m putting up a link to the YouTube version, so anyone can go listen for himself. I know you heard the whole thing, John, what kind of confusion does this sort of thing cause among Christian pro-lifers?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I think what N.T. Wright said about abortion was dramatically wrong, and that is coming from someone who has found him incredibly helpful. But what is it that we can learn from this? I think really a couple things. Number one, we may be tired of hearing about the abortion issue, and we may find it really repetitive, because we're in this over and over again. What is clear is that we need to continue to say this over and over and over again, because not only was N.T. Wright's answer just wrong about abortion, and not reflective of the historic Christian position, or what the contemporary Christian position should be, but it was also full of all the kind of tropes. You know, “As a man, I can't really speak about this,” and you know, “If the baby's gonna really suffer, then it's better to kill it.” And, “If someone feels really strongly and hurt and harmed by this, then we should be really quiet on this.” And none of it gets to the heart of the issue. It was really clear that he's either unfamiliar with the basic case against abortion or he doesn't care about them and he thinks he can ignore them.

The second thing that I think is a real problem, and it's a problem, I guess, because of our social media age. You know, James talks really clearly about a teacher is held to a higher standard if you're constantly teaching and never stopping because of the social media aspect of this, I think we need to rethink this. It is really, really hard for someone to talk about everything in the social media influencer age and not end up wrong about a lot and narcissistic. On the other hand, we aren't experts on everything, but that medium, that platforming, that podcast, makes us have to speak about everything, and we don't have to speak about everything. We shouldn't speak about everything.

EICHER: Yeah, so I was going to ask you if you had some advice for me, there’s this thing my car does, and I wonder if you could advise me on that.

STONESTREET: The Christian worldview of how to fix a Honda Accord, yeah, you know!

EICHER: But I was edging toward a serious point are we making too much of this? It did get a lot of traction on social media, but is this just a tempest in a teapot?

STONESTREET: Well, you know, that's a great question. I think his podcast is well respected and rightly so. And just because someone was a reliable teacher doesn't mean that they always are. But also, if somebody's wrong on something doesn't mean they're wrong on everything in the past that was clearly right. I mean, I think about, for example, the New Testament scholar Richard Hayes - most articulate, clear understanding of New Testament ethics having to do with sexuality, and then near the end of his life, here changes his mind. I think of somebody like Stanley Hauerwas - brilliant and helpful in so many areas, but not always right on everything. Eugene Peterson. So in one sense, it is a big deal because N.T. Wright is a prominent, probably the most prominent theologian on the planet right now. But I think you take the expertise of theologian and then add in the social media component, and you know, things get inconsistent at the very least, I guess.

BROWN: We’re one week into June, and at least in a few places, it seems like something’s changing. “Fidelity Month” seems to be gaining traction. Some big retailers have scaled back their pride-month displays. And there’s encouraging clarity coming from places like the Identity Project, which I know the Colson Center is heavily involved in.

So, John—it does seem the tide may be turning, but there are contrary signs, too. What do you say: Do you think we’re seeing early signs of a cultural course correction?

STONESTREET: Well, I guess maybe I'm a little more optimistic. I'm not sure that we're not seeing a momentum in the other direction. I think we absolutely are. It's going to take more than just seeing the lasting and permanent harm that the “T” part of the acronym of Pride Month has brought, for example, same sex marriage is still highly embedded, and homosexuality has been normalized at a level that's still bad for children and bad for people, and is infiltrated in the conservative and even Christian movements, and that's going to have to be uprooted and cast out, and it's going to be hard and painful, and people are going to be really mad, and that sort of thing. So that's what the next couple years look like for us.

But I do really appreciate the fact that we have resources now that can help us be articulate, that can help us champion things that are better. And you mentioned two resources, I think The Identity Project is a great one.

And I also want to give a shout out to Fidelity Month. I am all in on fidelity month. I mean, think about it, instead of celebrating a vice, and even instead of condemning the celebration of a vice like pride, let's hold up the virtue of fidelity. Let's hold up the beauty of living in faithfulness to others instead of just being selfish and narcissistic, right? I mean you literally and pride are celebrating narcissism. You're celebrating basically expecting the entire world to revolve around whatever you want, as opposed to taking the things that matter the most, that are outside of you, that you owe an allegiance to, and standing strong on what those responsibilities are. I'm really bullish on Fidelity Month, and I'd say, go to fidelitymonth.com, and join in. Put that on your social media. In other words, don't just not participate in ‘pride.’ Let's promote something good.

BROWN: All right! John Stonestreet is the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you John!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, June 6th.

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: A master of the synthesizer, a master of divinity, and a new album based on the Psalms.

EICHER: Ronnie Martin is back with a project titled “Consume Like a Moth What is Dear.” It’s part theology, part 1980s electronic nostalgia. And as WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza tells it, that combo makes perfect sense.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Ronnie Martin has been a multi-faceted contributor to the independent Christian-music scene for over 30 years now. In 1994, his and his brother Jason’s alternative Christian band Dance House Children had recently called it quits. Ronnie Martin signed with Tooth & Nail Records, the edgy independent Christian label that introduced acts such as MxPx, Thousand Foot Krutch, Underoath, and Kutless to the world. But even by Tooth & Nail’s envelope-pushing standards, Martin was strikingly different. He called his solo act Joy Electric. Martin embraced the electronic sound world of analogue synthesizers with both arms and wrote from a position of vulnerability in which religious clichés were nowhere to be found.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Candy Cane Carriage” by Joy Electric]

That’s Melody’s third track, “Candy Cane Carriage,” and in the years that followed there would be plenty of other songs where that one came from. In 2012, after Martin had released 14 albums and 11 EPs, he retired the Joy Electric name.

That’s when he experienced a call to non-musical forms of ministry. His peers affirmed his ministerial gifts, and he realized that he had a desire for what they were affirming. Prayer and introspection followed, and he was ordained in the Evangelical Free Church of America. In addition to pastoring, he became a church planter and the author or co-author of books with titles such as Pastoring Small Towns: Help and Hope for Those Ministering in Smaller Places and The Bride(zilla) of Christ: What to Do When God’s People Hurt God’s People.

Then in 2021, Martin began making music again, this time under his own name.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “From the Womb of the Morning of the Morning, the Dew of Your Youth Will Be Yours” by Ronnie Martin]

That’s “From the Womb of the Morning, the Dew of Your Youth Will Be Yours,” a quotation, incidentally, taken directly from Psalm 110:3 in the English Standard Version. It’s also the title cut of Martin’s first album as “Ronnie Martin.” Other than the prominent programmed drums, it found Martin picking up where he’d left off. As Martin told me recently, by the way, those drums were no accident.

MARTIN: For From the Womb, you know, I wanted to do a record that kind of captured sort of the records from the early-to-mid-’80s, where they used a lot of these really big, over-pronounced drum sounds. And I had never done that. So I really wanted to try that and do that, and I did it.

Now Martin has released a new album, Consume like a Moth What Is Dear. Like From the Womb of the Morning, its title comes from the Psalms. Unlike From the Womb of the Morning, ’80s drums are nowhere to be heard.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Consume like a Moth What Is Dear” by Ronnie Martin]

The new album finds Martin continuing to base songs on the Psalms. The title cut comes from Psalm 39:11: “When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath!”

Martin says that the album is something of a travelogue detailing his journey through relational rough times during and after COVID.

MARTIN: It’s really a Psalm about—it’s when the psalmist writes about the Lord removing things from him that needed to be removed so that his—you know, basically so that his eyes would be re-shifted back to the Lord. He would remember where his strength comes from, and just sort of the way that the Lord deals with us, very kindly in that way, but also it very much kind of wakes us up, and it brings us to some dark places.

The new album harkens back to Martin’s early goals of making all of his music’s sounds with analogue synthesizers. I asked Martin about his heroes in that field. He said that they include such usual suspects as Keith Emerson, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream. Then I also asked him about After the Fire, the late-’70s, early-’80s major-label British band made up of Christians and whose music prominently featured synthesizers.

MARTIN: I don’t mention them a lot, but I would say After the Fire, especially the—kind of the greatest-hits Der Komissar album—probably in my top-five favorite albums of all time. Massive influence. I basically say all I’ve been doing my whole career is writing “Love Will Always Make You Cry,” “Carry Me Home,” and “One Rule for You.” Every song I write, I’m just trying to write one of those three songs. That’s it. That’s it right there.

Martin integrates After the Fire’s influence into his own sound well. But sometimes, if you know what to listen for, you can make that influence out—like in this song from Consume like a Moth What Is Dear:

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Flee like a Bird to Your Mountain” by Ronnie Martin]

That’s “Flee like a Bird to Your Mountain,” and After the Fire should be proud of having inspired it. It doesn’t sound much like “Love Will Always Make You Cry” or “One Rule for You.” “Carry Me Home,” however, is a different matter.

MUSIC: [Excerpt from “Carry Me Home” by After the Fire]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, June 6th. 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.

A year of stories, a journal full of moments, and a few minutes now to remember what God has done. Here’s WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler with Ask the Editor for the month of June.

PAUL BUTLER: I sat down this week with the program journal, intending just to scan it. Instead, I ended up staying in it for hours.

It’s a pretty simple document: a running list of the stories we’ve reported over the past year. But reading through … I felt overwhelmed … and compelled to stop and thank God for his faithfulness to us … in letting us tell stories of courage and perseverance and grace. And in giving us a team of reporters, producers, editors, and technicians who make The World and Everything in It possible each day.

With the use of audio and strong storytelling … we’ve been able to walk you through moments of deep suffering:

SOUND: [ISRAELI HOSTAGE]

Israeli families waiting for hostages.

AVIVA SIEGEL: I’m just going to beg, and beg until they bring Kieth home.

A candlelight prayer vigil for victims of a church shooting in Wisconsin.

VIGIL SERVICE: God never called us to live out our faith alone, so here we are tonight…we need each other…

We talked with flood victims …

ERIC BRINKER: So many people with excavators, skid steers, tractors, rebuilding their own roadways…

We listened as brave men and women battled wildfires and picked through the rubble out west.

We took you to the crossroads of global crises.

ZHANNA KOSIAK: You understand that wherever you go, God is with you…

We met Ukrainian, Russian, and Afghan refugees … we heard from believers who serve and advocate for them.

We visited the site of the Pennsylvania rally where a gunman attempted to assassinate President Trump.

DAVID PHILLIPS: People around the world know where Butler, Pennsylvania is now…and for all the wrong reasons…

We found hope in unexpected places.

SOUND: [LENDING LIBRARIES]

Like lending libraries committed to truth and beauty, where the story remains about great books … not the cultural confusion.

We’ve been all around the world together …

MARIA: We believe that education is a lot more than math…

To Brazil, where parents teach their children under the radar.

MARIA: …to build a human being right?

To Syria, alongside rangers and aid workers.

SOUND: [FREE BURMA RANGERS]

Our reporters brought back stories from Canada, Rwanda, Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand—and many more.

We’ve followed the levers of power.

AUDIO: [DEBATE]

From presidential debates to state funerals. From legal arguments to heated congressional hearings.

DAWN LAND: No one has the right to consent for kids to be sterilized…

With our bureau next to the Supreme Court and across the street from the Capitol … we’ve been able to catch up with lawmakers making decisions that affect us all.

And we’ve met some unforgettable people.

An asteroid hunter.

FRANCK MARCHIS: I used to make fun of people of looked for asteroids…

A team listening to life beneath the soil.

JAKE ROBINSON: Something like 75% of the world’s soils are degraded…

A mom who reversed an abortion-pill decision—in a race against time and chemistry.

MAKENNA GREENE: I broke down and I kind of told her what was happening. And she's like, Well, is there anything we can do about it, and I was like, I don't know.

We’ve talked with detransitioners as they told stories of pain and healing.

FOREST SMITH: I learned a prayer of “Christ join my suffering to yours”, that brought me a lot of meaning.

Families struggling with infertility … and the ethical and spiritual concerns over I-V-F. Families growing through adoption.

D’LYNN HERTING: And so he had that compassion on me and allowed me to have my three kids…

We met female athletes standing up for fairness in sport … and sometimes taking a knee instead of competing with men.

RILEY GAINES: We were told that we were the problem if we opposed this…

Of course … it takes a team to make this happen. You’ll hear their names in a moment.

But right now, I want to thank you. In just the last two months … we served up more than a million program downloads a month … and reached a quarter of a million unique listeners regularly each month.

Without you … your prayers, your encouragement, your sharing the program with others, your financial generosity … none of this would be possible.

Next week, we begin our June Giving Drive … and prepare our budget for the year ahead … and as we do that, I simply want to say: thank you! We’re all humbled by your generosity and by your commitment to pray for this work.

The list of stories grows everyday, and I look forward to sitting down with the program journal next year … and seeing, once again, how God used you to make it all possible.

I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, as Paul just said, it’s time to name the team who helped make it happen this week:

David Bahnsen, Leo Briceno, Lauren Canterberry, Emma Eicher, Hans Fiene, Travis Kircher, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Mary Muncy, Onize Oduah, Arsenio Orteza, Mary Reichard, Elizabeth Russell, John Stonestreet, Cal Thomas, and Carl Trueman.

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

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros. Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz with assistance from Johnny Franklin this week.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Lindsay Mast and Leigh Jones are standing in as feature editors, Paul Butler is executive producer, and Les Sillars our editor-in-chief. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” —Titus 2:11-14

Now, we’re not meant to walk the Christian life alone, so here’s your weekly reminder: Go to church this weekend. Be encouraged, and be an encourager. We need each other.

And Lord willing, we’ll be right back here with you on Monday. 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.