The World and Everything in It: June 7, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Lena Bryan. I grew up in Ukraine. I married my husband who's from Illinois and we now live in a great state of Texas with two biological kids and our youngest daughter who was adopted from China. As you can tell, we love The World and Everything in It, and we know you will enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday: The greatest generation marks D-Day. Will there be another generation like it? And liberal Methodists lose a million members [snap] just like that.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Katie McCoy will be along in just a snap.

Later—

AUDIO: The galaxy is not a place that welcomes women like us.

A woke Star Wars just in time for Pride Month. WORLD’s Collin Garbarino has that and more.

BROWN: It’s Friday, June 7th. 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, Kent Covington with today’s news.

SOUND: [Ceremony music and applause]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: D-Day remembrance » Hundreds gathered in Normandy, France on Thursday to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

One by one, French President Emmanuel Macron pinned the Legion of Honor medal on 11 proud Americans.

MACRON:  Here you came to join your efforts with our own soldiers and to make France a free nation. And you are back here today, at home, if I may say.

Britain’s King Charles III said brave allied troops faced what his grandfather, King George VI described as the supreme test.

KING CHARLES:  How fortunate we were, and the entire free world, that a generation of men and women in the United Kingdom and other allied nations Did not flinch when the moment came to face that test.

President Biden saluted the allied veterans in attendance, many now over 100 years old … who he said saved the world from tyranny.

Biden Ukraine remarks, Zelenskyy, aid package to Ukraine » Biden also drew parallels between the defense of freedom on D-Day and the present-day response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

BIDEN: Now we have to ask ourselves, will we stand against tyranny, against evil, against crushing brutality? Will we stand for freedom? My answer is yes and only can be yes.

The president says NATO is more united than ever against Vladimir Putin, who Biden described as a ‘tyrant bent on domination.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also at the ceremony. He’s scheduled to meet with President Biden today in Paris amid reports the U.S. is set to deliver another $225 million dollars in military aid to Kyiv.

Israeli airstrike » The Biden administration is pressuring Israel for answers after dozens were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza yesterday.

That school was supposed to be serving as a United Nations-run shelter for Palestinian refugees, but Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said Thursday Hamas had also taken up residence.

MENCER: The school had terrorists who actually took part in the murderous attack of October the 7th. We took them out. We targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists of the Nukhba forces. They obviously sought to exploit the school and shelter there.

Mencer said there were between 20-30 terrorists hiding in three classrooms inside the building and that Israel targeted those specific classrooms with precision strikes.

But an Associated Press reporter said women and children were among the 30 people who died in the strike.

That number has not been officially confirmed yet, but State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the initial reports troubling.

MILLER: We have seen them (Israel) take improvements over time but still, if it bears true that this strike resulted in the death of 14 children, the results aren't where they need to be.

Israel has promised to release more information about the strike including the names of the people who died in it.

Hunter Biden gun trial » Hunter Biden is back in court today, day-5 of his trial on gun possession charges. WORLD’s Christina Grube reports.

CHRISTINA GRUBE: Hunter’s sister-in-law and former romantic partner, Hallie Biden, took the stand on Thursday. She testified that she found a gun in his car less than two weeks after it was purchased. She said that out of concern for his safety she threw the gun away in a public garbage can.

That gun was later found and turned in to police.

The president’s son is accused of lying on a federal gun purchase form claiming he was not a user of illegal drugs.

Jurors also saw texts in which Hallie begs Hunter to enter rehab soon after the gun purchase.

Additionally, she testified that he possessed crack cocaine and other drug paraphernalia though she never personally witnessed him using them.

For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.

AUDIO: 4, 3, 2… [blasts]...

SpaceX mega rocket test flight/Starliner arrives at ISS » That’s SpaceX’s Starship rocket blasting off near Brownsville, Texas. The massive rocket is 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty when stacked on its booster.

Thursday’s test flight was a big success. The spacecraft rumbled halfway around the world, then successfully splashed down in the Indian Ocean.

NASA has enlisted SpaceX to build a version of Starship that can return astronauts to the moon in 2026.

Thursday also brought success for a SpaceX competitor, Boeing. Its new Starliner capsule delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station.

Program Manager Mark Nappi:

NAPPI: You know, the goal was to get to ISS. The goal was to dock. The goal was to get Suni and Butch safely on the International Space Station. Um, mission accomplished.

But the mission wasn’t easy. Four thrusters went down, forcing the crew to miss the first docking opportunity.

They were able to restart three of them, and made it on the second try.

SOUND: [Chainsaws]

Tornadoes in several states kill at least 13 » Chainsaws cutting apart fallen trees in Livonia, Michigan after a tornado tore through the area, killing a toddler.

All told, tornadoes and severe storms roared through several states, injuring more than a dozen people.

In Montgomery County, Maryland one man said a tornado uprooted a tree and dropped it on his house.

RESIDENT: The firefighters came, knock on my door. They tell me to get out, and I get out. And thank God I wasn’t hurt. Thank God everyone in my house was at church.

It’s been a very rough tornado season in the U.S., which started with 300 twisters in April alone — making it the second-most active April ever.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with Katie McCoy. Plus, a new Star Wars show.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 7th of June, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy.

Morning, Katie!

KATIE MCCOY: Hey, good to be with you both.

EICHER: Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of D-Day. June 6, 1944.

President Biden was on hand at Normandy to salute the veterans who gathered. French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the Americans …

EMMANUEL MACRON: Here you came to join our efforts with our own soldiers and to make France a free nation. And you are back here today, at home, if I may say.

I read one story basically saying this is almost certainly going to be the last round-number anniversary for the Greatest Generation. According to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, we now have less than 120-thousand World War II vets still living, and it makes you wonder is America capable of producing another generation like that?

MCCOY: Oh, they're not called the greatest generation for nothing either, Nick. You think about that time in American history, the commitment to family, faith, country, the willingness to lay down your life to protect your freedoms. We still have that today, thank God, and especially in our military forces. But that generation was truly special, and it's special to me as well. It's part of my family history. So my paternal grandfather, my dad's dad, was part of the decoy unit for D-Day, and he was captured as a prisoner of war. And as a prisoner of war, he prayed that if the Lord would allow him to survive World War II, survive the Nazis, that he would dedicate the rest of his life to serving God in ministry. He preached his first sermon on Easter Sunday in the infamous Stalag III in Luckenwalde as a prisoner of war and survived, came back to the United States and devoted the rest of his life to ministry. It changed our entire family tree. But that's just one story, one story of thousands upon thousands. Well, here I am two generations removed from World War II, and we're still talking about the heroism of that generation.

BROWN: Well, Katie, let's move from the greatest generation to the current generation. There is a cultural trend out there—I found a story about it in The Wall Street Journal—this phenomenon of stay at home girlfriends. Slick videos are showing up on social media depicting young women supposedly living the life of a wife, but without the Biblical blessing that comes with marriage. It's really just a repackaging of what we used to call back in the day, shacking up, cohabitating couples.

So nothing new there, other than the social media campaign that seems to have grown up around it. Katie, one of our young female reporters, put it this way, the world is recognizing a hole and trying to fill it in sometimes unfortunate ways. What do you think?

MCCOY: Myrna, I'm still scratching my head on this one. So, I mean, yeah, talk about a contrast between generational characteristics from our previous topic, stay-at-home, girlfriends. Now, few things to boil down though, to look at this trend. First, they have to constantly be producing content that is talking about how fabulous their life is. So, there's that kind of influencer life of trying to show everything is perfect and they have this enviable existence. But along with that, the article also talks about how women have this sense of boredom or aimlessness, and I think that's wrapped up in the girlfriend part of the stay-at-home girlfriend.

So not only is it cohabitation, you have two people that have essentially an emotional contract of a relationship, who are linking up their lives and yet wanting to keep one foot outside of the door in case they want to dart. And yet, Myrna, on the other side of that, here's where this story is even weirder: it's an oddly traditional throwback, and that's something else that we're seeing with Gen Z; there's these really interesting trends of wanting to go back to relatively traditional ways of thinking about life. And girls are describing how they like generally to be able to stay home. One girl talked about how she gets a dopamine high cooking and taking care of the house, and she feels that sense of contribution.

But here's the fascinating thing: contribution is what I would go back to when you have a woman who is staying home, devoting her life to raising her children and molding those little minds and souls. That is contribution. It's not just a coexistence, it is a collaboration together to contribute something to the Kingdom and to the world and to create something that the two of you individually could not and that you can together. It's an interesting moment that we're in. We're seeing this odd throwback to times of generations ago, and I'm still scratching my head over it. Myrna here, I've talked about it for a few minutes. I still don't think it makes any more sense than it did when we first started talking about it.

BROWN: Because, you know what we're missing. We're missing the the Biblical mandate. You know, marriage is God's idea.

MCCOY: And it's as we are designed to. Be this relationship without the covenant and commitment, it is it? There's an emptiness. There's something that is missing with it, and we're seeing that generationally since cohabitation became an accepted thing in society. But now it's a little bit like people are sort of trying to dress it up and give it a more fun social media spin.

BROWN: Well, no spin on this next story, Katie. Methodists in Africa, 1.2 million members strong, have taken a stand. The Ivory Coast annual conference declared that the United Methodist Church, and I'm going to quote now, "is not based in any Biblical and disciplinary values, and that it is now based on sociocultural and contextual values which have consumed its doctrinal and disciplinary integrity." You cannot get any clearer than that. And so they left. Do you think we in the West could learn from the African church?

MCCOY: This was such a remarkable story. So you'll recall that just a few weeks ago, the United Methodist Church had their massive conference in which they very clearly broke from a Biblical teaching on a Biblical ethic, and you saw a lot of different expressions. Not only of that, but of general critical theory that had been adopted into their, I guess you would call it, Christian teaching and practice. Really, it was a syncretizing of doctrine. And the African Christians who are were part of The United Methodist Church, they have drawn a line in the sand.

They lost. The United Methodist Church lost a million members in a day, and they just said, we're not going to be part of this. Here's what I love about that statement, Myrna: they juxtapose two different influences in how they are going to relate, not only to develop their sense of self, but what they believe in society. They juxtapose Biblical disciplinary values with sociocultural and contextual values. And it doesn't matter what country, culture or continent you are a part of, we are all going to be formed by one of those two sets of values, Biblical or disciplinary, or sociocultural and contextual. And what this group, this Ivory Coast Annual Conference, has determined is that it is absolutely incompatible. They're precisely correct.

And one of the things that we should take note of is the ways that perhaps traditions in the West, here in the West, are trying to amalgamate, syncretize, or sort of make peace with those sociocultural and contextual values. Secularism is like every other "ism." It is a worldview. It is a way to understand who we are, what went wrong with society, and how we fix it. And the truth is, it is fundamentally incompatible with the philosophy and the worldview, the way of Jesus, that is Christianity. So I applaud our brothers and sisters in Africa, and I hope that we too will have that kind of backbone and courage when it comes to drawing a line in the sand on what we will be formed by.

BROWN: All right author and speaker, Katie McCoy, Thank you, Katie.

MCCOY: Thank you!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, June 7th. 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: Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: This weekend Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of famed filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, makes her directorial debut with a movie that feels very much like it’s part of the family business.

MINA: I don’t understand. Is someone coming here?

MADELINE: We call them the Watchers.

The Watchers is a suspenseful thriller about a small group of people trapped in a mysterious forest in which evil beings come to watch them at night. The movie is very Shyamalan-esque: beautiful, yet brooding with plenty of closeups and a setup that leaves the audience guessing about what’s going on.

MADELINE: It’s important to remember that we are in their territory. The Watchers allow us to live because we follow their rules.

The Watchers is rated PG-13. There’s no sensual material, and the language is pretty mild for a PG-13 movie, but the movie is pretty scary. Fans of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies will enjoy The Watchers. I think Ishana’s debut ranks up there with the best of her father’s films.

Now let's talk about something I was less pleased with.

MUSIC: [ACOLYTE Intro]

It’s no secret that the Star Wars franchise is experiencing malaise. Recent Star Wars shows on Disney+ have garnered mixed reviews from critics and elicited disapproval from many fans. The latest series in the franchise, The Acolyte, doubles down on Disney’s recent missteps, and the die-hard fans will absolutely hate it.

MAE: We have unfinished business. Attack me with all your strength.

The Acolyte is set 100 years before the events of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy in which Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. This makes the show chronologically the earliest on-screen depiction of the Star Wars universe. Viewers get their first glimpse of the Republic at its height when the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

Besides exploring some uncharted territory on the timeline, The Acolyte attempts to introduce a new genre to the franchise. The Mandalorian brought the feel of a dusty western to a galaxy far, far away, and Andor featured interstellar espionage. The Acolyte bills itself as a mystery thriller, in which the Jedi act as galactic policemen investigating a string of murders.

JECKI: The suspect matched your description.

OSHA: You think that I killed her?

JECKI: Where were you last night?

The story follows twin force users Osha and Mae who were separated as children. Osha took the path of the light side, hoping to become a Jedi Knight. Mae followed the dark side, becoming a force-wielding assassin. After Osha is accused of Mae’s crimes, Osha’s old Jedi master must investigate the murders to clear his former apprentice’s name.

VERNESTRA RWOH: We have a suspect in custody. An old padawan of yours… Osha Aniseya.

The production values for The Acolyte are strong. The sets and special effects are top notch, and the action sequences provide plenty of thrills. The series includes Carrie-Anne Moss playing a Jedi version of her Trinity character from The Matrix. And lightsaber battles become intricately choreographed kung fu. But the new setting and splashy visuals aren’t enough to save this cringe-inducing story.

OSHA: You’re making a mistake.

Disney only gave reviewers access to the first half of the series, which runs through July 16, but from what I’ve seen, I don’t hold out much hope for the second half. Turning Star Wars into a murder mystery with Jedi detectives intrigued me, but halfway through the first episode, I knew the series wouldn’t live up to its promise. There’s no mystery or suspense for the audience, and the showrunner fails to create a successful police procedural.

The investigation makes no sense, and the Jedi detectives are incredibly stupid. They ask all the wrong questions and dismiss the most obvious clues. The plot is full of holes. Even worse is the terrible dialogue that’s laden with boring exposition and platitudes, which the actors deliver with wooden pretentiousness.

VERNESTRA RWOH: I see I have underestimated your attachment to her.

If those deficiencies weren’t enough to condemn The Acolyte in the eyes of the die-hard fans, the show’s wokeness will finish the job. The series engages in some heavy queer baiting—the practice of including apparently gay characters while leaving some ambiguity. Viewers are even subjected to a lesbian coven of preachy force witches.

MOTHER ANISEYA: The galaxy is not a place that welcomes women like us.

The showrunner is gay and so is much of the cast. Disney checks all its DEI boxes with this series, and white males are suspiciously underrepresented in this galaxy that would eventually create the very white, very male Empire. The show even includes a scene in which a character awkwardly asks about someone’s pronouns. Could this be why the Republic fell?

YORD FANDAR: I have a bad feeling about this.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, June 7th, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next “Ask the Editor” for the month of June. WORLD Radio executive producer Paul Butler responding to a few emails he received this week after Monday’s History Book on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

PAUL BUTLER: I’ve been involved with our weekly WORLD History Book segment since 2015. Over those nine years, I’ve gotten a handful of encouraging responses, but to be honest, most of the feedback that comes in either points out a factual error, identifies a mispronunciation, or offers a counter perspective.

But this week your responses to Caleb Welde’s commemoration of D-Day has had a very different tone.

Amy Brown of Lancaster County, PA, has a son who’s just graduated from West Point. She writes:

“I want to thank you for … today’s podcast. Personally, it made me feel like I was in that dreadful moment and tears streamed from my eyes as I thought of the family members back home grieving over their loved men who were now entering a dreadful war.”

Amy ended her note with a reminder for all of us to follow the example from 1944…encouraging us to pray for the protection of the young men and women who serve in the military today.

Bill Mech from Des Moines, Iowa, also said he was also moved to tears by Caleb’s story. He writes:

“While the prayers offered on-air in those days were in a very formal style that may seem stilted to modern ears, it was obvious that they were heartfelt and sincere. But it was the national call to prayer that moved me most, to hear that our leaders knew that as a nation we were wholly dependent on Almighty God for military success as well as for the comfort in suffering that so many households throughout the country were facing.”

Bill laments that our nation has in so many ways forgotten God but ends his note hopeful, saying that…in his words “... if and when we face such a national crisis again, [may] God … be remembered and common purpose restored. May God preserve our republic through the prayers of His people for mercy and grace.”

A couple weeks ago, I asked Caleb if he would be willing to write that D-Day History Book. I encouraged him to listen to the many broadcast recordings from the time, and identify a few highlights that we could cut together in a timeline of events. I had no idea what Caleb would uncover, how prominent prayer was during the broadcasts immediately following the invasion of Normandy.

NBC: Ladies and gentlemen. At this time, the National Broadcasting Company is pleased to present another prayer in the busy schedule of this historic day…

June 6th, 1944, was a very busy broadcast day, with breaking news bulletins, first hand accounts, interviews with government and military officials. But nearly every hour throughout the day they still took a moment to pray.

NBC: Almighty God, God of our Fathers, we thy people bow humbly before thee on this fateful day of human history.

I’m guessing that for many of you, Monday’s History Book was the first time you’d heard that. It was a surprise to me. When Caleb told me what he’d discovered, I knew that needed to be the focus of our D-Day coverage.

FDR: Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, have set upon a mighty endeavor…

Can I admit something to you? Not only was I also moved to tears listening to Caleb’s piece, I was also convicted that I sometimes lack a prayerful focus as we cover the news of our day. Not that we include prayer on our program, but know that as we cover the news, we do so prayerfully. In hope and with faith in the one whose will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I’d like to end this week with one more broadcast prayer from D-Day…this from Roswell P. Barnes, General Secretary of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America.

BARNES: Thou hast been the refuge and strength in all generations of those who put their trust in thee. May it please thee this day to draw to thyself the hearts of those who struggle and endure to the uttermost have mercy on them and suffer not their faith in thee to fail, guide and protect them by thy light and strength, that they may be kept from evil. May thy comfort be sufficient for all who suffer pain or who wait in the agony of uncertainty.

Forgive us and cleanse us, as well as those who strive against us, that we may be fit instruments of thy purposes. O, Lord, God, we humbly dedicate to thee, ourselves, our nation and our cause place in thy hands, all we have and all we are, and all we desire, and unto thy most gracious keeping, we commend our loved ones and ourselves, ascribing unto thee all praise and glory through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

Amen. That’s this month’s Ask the Editor. I’m Paul Butler.

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

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Caleb Welde, Lindsay Mast, Carolina Lumetta, Emma Freire, Chelsea Boes, Andrew Walker, Leo Briceno, Onize Ohikere, Mary Muncy, Bethel McGrew, Leah Savas, Cal Thomas, Katie McCoy, and Collin Garbarino.

Special thanks to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters.

Our Senior producer is Kristen Flavin and Paul Butler is Executive producer.

Additional production assistance from Benj Eicher, Emily Whitten, and Bekah McCallum.

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 Apostle Paul writes, “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints. And I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.” —Philemon 4-6

Worship with brothers and sisters in Christ in church this weekend. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here 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.