The World and Everything in It: March 5, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Dr. Jeff Myers, and I’m the president of Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado, where my students and I study how to embrace God's truth and champion a Biblical worldview, just like our friends at The World and Everything in It. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Donald Trump stays on the ballot in all the states voting on this Super Tuesday.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about yesterday’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling.

Also today, Canada pulls back from the brink. It’s pausing a plan to offer so-called medical assistance in dying to people who suffer from mental illness.

And the Classic Book of the Month. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. Today you’ll hear how the book continues to inspire Christian community.

AUDIO: We have the seniors and freshman over to our house. Get the new students to meet the old students and to then talk through this book.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, March 5th. 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: Now here’s the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Super Tuesday preview » Today is Super Tuesday, the biggest election day of the year until November. Sixteen states or territories will vote today with almost 900 delegates up for grabs. That’s just over one-third of the roughly 2,400 delegates needed to win the GOP presidential nod.

But Saint Anselm College political scientist Chris Galdieri says there isn’t much suspense heading into today’s vote.

GALDIERI: We’re not even wondering what states Haley might win because there don’t appear to be any of those on the board.

Donald Trump’s lone GOP rival Nikki Haley won the District of Columbia, but everything else has gone Trump’s way.

And he now enjoys a lead of more than 60 points in recent national polls.

SCOTUS Trump » And Trump’s name will appear on every state’s presidential ballots the rest of the way.

TRUMP: I want to start by thanking the Supreme Court for its unanimous decision today. It was a very important decision.

The court ruled that states do not have the authority to remove his name from presidential ballots. The justices said only Congress has that power.

Several states had sought to kick Trump off of their ballots, citing the insurrection clause of the Constitution accusing him of inciting the Capitol riot in 2021.

Monday’s ruling reversed a decision by Colorado’s state Supreme Court asserting the state could erase him from the ballot. Trump charged that that effort was politically motivated.

TRUMP: Essentially, you cannot take somebody out of a race because an opponent would like to have it that way.

Trump told Biden to fight his own fight.

The incumbent’s campaign responded saying, Trump’s “chaotic musings” remind voters “why they voted him out of office.”

The Supreme Court next month will take up another case involving Trump to determine whether the Justice Dept can prosecute him for alleged election interference while in office. His lawyers argue Trump had presidential immunity.

Cease-fire update » The White House is pushing hard to nudge a cease-fire deal in Gaza across the finish line. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:

KIRBY: Hamas just has to take it. It’s a deal that the Israelis have signed up to. It’s forward leaning. It will get us a 6-week cease-fire so that we can get all those hostages out. Yes, we want that temporary cease-fire in place right now.

Negotiators from Egypt and Qatar are meeting with Hamas leaders in hopes of finalizing a deal before the start of the Muslim Ramadan observance.

Vice President Kamala Harris:

HARRIS: We are in a window of time right now where we can actually get a hostage deal done.

A major sticking point has reportedly been the unwillingness of Hamas to provide information about the remaining hostages the terror group has been holding, and whether they’re still alive.

France abortion » Abortion is now protected under the French constitution after a landslide vote of approval from both houses of Parliament.

Many abortion advocates celebrated in the streets after the vote.

Opinion polls highlight the pro-life minority in the country with opinion polls reporting that over 80 percent of French citizens support the amendment.

Texas Wildfires » Firefighters battling historic wildfires in the Texas Panhandle got a bit of a break yesterday. WORLD’s Travis Kircher has more.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: More firefighters and favorable weather conditions helped authorities keep the ongoing wildfires in check on Monday.

Officials say cooler temperatures brought the winds down and the humidity up.

That meant first responders were able to hold off the flames from threatening more homes and communities.

Two people have died and well over one million acres have already been burned since the fires started last week.

At least three-thousand head of cattle have also perished. The state’s head of agriculture says that number is expected to rise dramatically as more livestock have to be put down due to their injuries.

For WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

Court rejects Biden administration’s trans employer mandate » A federal court has ruled that the Biden administration cannot force religious employers and healthcare providers to pay for or perform transgender surgeries, procedures, or treatments.

The administration introduced mandates in 2021 that sought to force religious organizations and providers to do just that or face charges of discrimination.

The Christian Employers Alliance sued, saying the mandates violate First Amendment liberties. And on Monday, a U.S. district court in North Dakota found that the mandates would substantially burden the religious beliefs of those employers.

AUDIO: 3-2-1, ignition, engines full-power, and liftoff. Go SpaceX, and go NASA! 

SpaceX launch to International Space Station » The Space X Falcon rocket blasting off from Kennedy Space Center taking four astronauts to the International Space Station where they’re scheduled to arrive today. They’re expected to be on board the orbiting lab for six months.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Analysis of the Colorado ballots case. Plus, Classic Book of the Month for March.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the fifth of March, 2024.

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: the road to Super Tuesday.

Voters in fifteen states go to the polls today. They’ll get to cast ballots for their preferred candidates. And as you heard a moment ago, that includes voters in states like Colorado, Illinois, and Maine where state officials tried to remove Donald Trump from the ballot.

REICHARD: All nine justices agreed that Trump cannot be removed from the 2024 ballots. That would take an act of Congress.

You could hear the eventual ruling in this comment during oral argument last month by Justice Elena Kagan to one of the lawyers arguing to keep Trump off the ballot:

JUSTICE KAGAN: Most baldly, I think the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about the Supreme Court’s decision is Daniel Suhr. He is an attorney well versed in constitutional law. He’s also a contributor to World Opinions.

REICHARD: Daniel, good morning.

DANIEL SUHR: Good morning, Mary. Great to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, Daniel, it’s unanimous in judgment that Colorado can’t kick Trump off the ballot. And why not? What’s the basic principle?

SUHR: Sure, Mary. So the Supreme Court was looking at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It’s one of the post Civil War amendments, and the rule that the framers of the amendment laid down was pretty simple: if you engage in insurrection against the United States, in violation of an oath that you had taken previously, you can’t serve in government office. Right, and that makes sense. If we had a bunch of Confederates being elected to federal office after the Civil War, Reconstruction wouldn’t have worked out like the framers of the 14th Amendment wanted. So that provision was exhumed from the dustbin of history just in the last year on the allegation that President Trump’s behavior on January 6 2020 was somehow engaging in an insurrection, and therefore Section 3 would apply. And what the Supreme Court said is, if you read Section 3, that that’s not something that’s up to individual states, it’s only the federal government that can decide who is eligible for federal office. We don’t want a patchwork of different state governments making individual rulings about who can or can’t serve as our president.

REICHARD: And to be clear, this opinion says nothing about insurrection or January 6th happenings, correct?

SUHR: That’s right, Mary. There’s no factual conclusion, there was no jury trial here. All that we have is really a legal conclusion that the 14th Amendment, especially Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, only applies to federal offices, and can only be enforced by federal officials.

REICHARD: Now, all nine agreed on the result, but they didn’t all agree on the reasons why. Let’s start with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote her own concurrence. What did she say? And why does it matter at the end of the day?

SUHR: Her concurrence is very short. It’s only a page. And she basically said that the majority of the court decided more than they needed to in this case. What the majority of the Court said in its opinion, was that only Congress can exercise the power to disqualify someone from federal office through a law that Congress would enact, that would implement Section 3 of the 14th amendment. And what Justice Barrett said is that that was more than the Court needed to decide. But she only said it for a paragraph. Her second paragraph was emphasizing that that disagreement is secondary to what the court does agree on, that the entire court agrees that Donald Trump is appropriately placed on the Colorado ballot, and that that’s not something that the Colorado Supreme Court can decide for itself.

REICHARD: And what was the main message of the three liberal justices then?

SUHR: Yeah, I think the three liberal justices were frustrated that the court really shut the door, not just on this action, but any future action, trying to disqualify President Trump. There was at least some suggestion that if state courts could not remove President Trump from the ballot, that perhaps federal courts could remove President Trump from the ballot, and the way the majority opinion is written, it really forecloses that possibility. It really says that this is a problem for Congress; that Congress, when it drafted the 14th amendment 150 years ago, intended for Congress to be the ones that adopted an implementing law, and therefore, some future federal court judge could not do what the Colorado Supreme Court had done here.

REICHARD: What does this ruling tell you about the priorities of the Supreme Court this election year?

SUHR: Yeah, the court clearly wants to maintain its appropriate role, which is deciding only the cases and controversies before it. The court doesn’t want to be partisan or perceived as partisan. Right, I love the line, “Judges don’t wear red jerseys or blue jerseys, they wear black robes,” that once they take the bench, their job is to be nonpartisan, right? To be blind in the sense that like the statue of Lady Justice is blindfolded. And yet partisan and political and election related questions come to them all the time. And their job is to decide them as best they can, based only on the law, not on their personal political preferences. And it seems like in this case, the entire court was unified in that goal and even if they didn’t get there perfectly in one another’s opinions, that they wanted the American people to hear that they are administering the law fairly and without regard to the political or partisan consequences of their decisions.

REICHARD: Okay well let’s move on now. On Sunday, Nikki Haley won her first primary contest…the District of Columbia, where the GOP reported that just over two thousand people cast ballots. The Trump campaign congratulated Haley for being crowned “queen of the swamp.”

After the South Carolina primary, Haley said her 40% share of the vote isn’t some small number…that there is a segment of the GOP that doesn’t want Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. But do you see that translating into any wins for Haley tonight?

SUHR: No, what happened in Washington DC, I think will be her one and only win. There’s, I suppose, some people who think that maybe some other state, maybe Utah, would also come through for her. But at the end of the day, all of this commentary on the horse race assumes there’s a race in the first place. And there ain’t. This has been over for a long time. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee once again. And really all we can take from the results in Washington DC, are to show the disconnect between where the Republican base is at, and where many of the party’s leaders and professionals are at. That the people who live and work in Washington DC are lobbyists, are consultants, are congressional staffers, are think tank people, and they are just in a fundamentally different place on politics and the future of the party than most of the base because most of the base is enthusiastically ready for Trump 2.0 And that wasn’t what they wanted. They didn’t want Trump 1.0, they’re not excited about Trump 2.0. They’re gonna get it either way.

REICHARD: So do you think Haley will drop out of the race if Trump wins big tonight?

SUHR: Yeah, look, part of the reality of politics is that it runs on money. At the end of the day, you’ve got to put gas in the campaign bus. And if a candidate doesn’t have a compelling rationale to continue in a race, the donor dollars dry up really quick. There’s the extent to which this election is a little unique on that rule, because many donors are supporting Haley not because they expect her to win, but because they want to make a statement. They’re intentionally distancing themselves from President Trump, so that they can say, like, “He’s not my guy. Look, I supported Nikki Haley, even knowing that she wouldn’t win.” So there’s some of that sentiment. But even that as a source of funds is not a long term sustainable strategy. And so the longer she stays in the race, the less of a rationale there will be for her, the less support there will be for her. And I think sooner rather than later, this thing will draw to a close.

REICHARD: Daniel Suhr is an attorney in Wisconsin and writes for WORLD Opinions. Daniel, thanks for joining us!

SUHR: Thank you, Mary.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: euthanasia in Canada.

On Thursday, Canada’s House of Commons voted to postpone expansion until 2027 of a law known as MAiD, an acronym for Medical Assistance in Dying. Here’s justice minister Arif Virani explaining the priorities of the Liberal Party government.

ARIF VIRANI: And what we understand as a government and as parliamentarians is that mental illness causes suffering and that suffering is equivalent to physical suffering.

Joining us now is Lia Milousis. She practices family law in the province of Ontario, and also serves as a human rights lawyer for the Acacia Group. She’s here to talk about what this means for vulnerable Canadians.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Lia, good morning.

LIA MILOUSIS, GUEST: Good morning, Mary. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: So Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, but it was limited, and I’ll quote the law saying it’s reserved for those for whom “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable.” How did Canada get so far beyond that as we heard just moments ago where some in government are saying people should be able to end their lives if they have mental illness?

MILOUSIS: Yeah, that's a great question, Mary. And I would say the expansion has happened quite rapidly, so many Canadians aren't actually aware of what the steps have been.

So, back in 2015, the Supreme Court in the Carter v. Canada decision ruled that for individuals over the age of 18, who have a grievous and irremediable medical condition, where they have a condition that's in an advanced state of decline, and the suffering they experience is intolerable to them, they can consent to have a third party assist in ending their life. That then was codified in federal law, through Bill C-14. And as you said, you know, there was this requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable, and that that really was meant to capture the fact that the Supreme Court decision focused on a case where a woman had a terminal condition and was at the end of of her life.

Now, what happened, as inevitably happens when you start, you know, opening the door to something new as people fight over what the boundaries are. And so in 2019, there was a case in Quebec called the Truchon decision. And Nicole Gladu and Jean Truchon were two individuals who met all the other criteria except the end of life criteria. And so they had a condition that that they said was intolerable to them in terms of the suffering they experienced. And they argued that they should qualify, even though they were not near the end of their life. And the Court of First Instance concluded that that was the case that it was a violation of their Charter rights.

The issue was that that now MAiD, medical assistance in dying, is available to individuals with a mental illness. Because a mental illness is often a condition that, you know, it persists, it's a chronic condition that can cause intolerable suffering. And so there was a caveat added that this would not permit individuals whose sole underlying medical condition was a mental illness to qualify. So there was a kind of a safeguard built into the law. And then when that piece of legislation went to the Senate, the Senate disagreed. And so they recommended removing that and adjusting it. So that in 18 months, there would be the possibility for someone who has only a mental illness to qualify for medical assistance in dying. The federal government changed that to 24 months. And since then, there have been two different delays, two additional delays.

REICHARD: In that clip we played a moment ago, the member of parliament equated physical suffering and mental suffering, and the reasoning follows that therefore euthanasia should be available to people with both kinds of suffering. How would you respond to that argument?

MILOUSIS: Yeah, so I would agree, insofar as you know, I don't think it's appropriate for us to be telling people that their suffering isn't actually intolerable. We don't know. And so I, you know, having experienced a mental health issue myself, you know, frankly, I found it more intolerable than a physical condition would have been because I couldn't touch it. I couldn't see it. I couldn't, I couldn't point to anything that was actually the source of my suffering. It was this amorphous abstract pain. So I have immense empathy for people who experience mental health issues and experience psychological suffering.

The issue, though, is that there are actual differences between a mental illness and a physical illness. And one of the key ones from a medical perspective is the question of irremediability. And so the law requires that that the condition not be, there can't be a remedy–that things cannot improve. And the idea is that we're only going to be ending the lives of people that we cannot actually assist any further in living and recovering. And the issue with medical assistance and dying for mental illness as the only underlying condition is we don't actually know from a medical perspective, when a mental illness becomes irremediable or not.

When a doctor tries to evaluate based on certain criteria, whether someone's mental illness is going to never recover, that this will be the case for the rest of their life, we're only correct 47% of the time. So it's essentially a coin toss, whether we're going to be ending the life of someone who will never recover or whether we're going to be ending the life of someone who could have recovered with some additional treatment.

REICHARD: Last question: what’s the reason Canada is delaying expansion of MAiD?

MILOUSIS: The fact is that the medical community is not ready and is clear that there is not consensus on the irremediability of mental illnesses. And the fact is that we do not have the evidence to support this expansion. And I think the government has appropriately recognized that and is delaying. But really what it should have done, and I hope it still does do, is alter course entirely and abandon this idea of pushing a message of death when we really should be advocating for a message of hope. It frankly is unconscionable for a government to ever affirm the belief in an individual that their life has no meaning and no purpose anymore that is not within the purview of government authority. And our job as a society is to bring a message of hope and meaning and purpose when someone finds themselves in that place of despair and suffering.

REICHARD: Lia Milousis is a human rights lawyer for the Acacia Group in Ontario Canada.

AUDIO: [Jet pack]

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hear that?

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s really loud!

EICHER: Yeah, jet engines are like that! But there are no aircraft here. Just engine and pilot. It was like a scene from Iron Man shot in Dubai, only Tony Stark wasn’t there.

But there were a bunch of rich guys. This is no cheap hobby: strapping jets to themselves, racing just a few feet above the water around Dubai Marina. It was the world’s first-ever jet suit race.

These things are incredible. 15-hundred horsepower, max speed 80 miles per hour.

Issa Kalfon took first place.

ISSA KALFON: Everything's hot, it's running, the engines are screaming at you, and it is that whoosh and then it bites in that power is there.

What goes up must come down. One of the racers drove himself right into the water. But no worries. He was rescued.

No word, though, on the jet-suit that became a wet-suit.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 5th. 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: what it means to live in Christian community.

WORLD reviewer Emily Whitten says a German theologian martyred for standing up to Hitler can teach us how to live faithfully in Christ.

NCF CHOIR: Our blessing cup is the communion of the blood of Christ. Our broken bread is the communion of the body of Christ.

EMILY WHITTEN, COMMENTATOR: That’s the student choir of New College Franklin, a small Christian liberal arts college in Franklin, Tennessee. Each year, their in-coming freshmen read a book titled Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It’s also WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month for March. Founder and Dean of Students Gregory Wilbur says it’s become a tradition to discuss the book each year.

WILBUR: We have the seniors and freshmen over to our house, and feed them dinner, get the new students to meet the old students, and to then talk through this book.

Bonhoeffer’s book is a manifesto on how to live out authentic Christian community. Wilbur says the seniors often use the book to reflect back on their time in college and find lessons to take into their careers. The book also helps freshmen think more realistically about their college years ahead, seeing them as a gift.

AUDIOBOOK: It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us… [20:35] It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

Our culture often pushes us toward isolation or superficial connections. One study found that the average college student spends 8-10 hours a day on their smartphones. In contrast, Bonhoeffer says we need embodied community because we are both “spiritual” and “physical” beings. Often by living in the same space, we learn things like how to confess our sins and find forgiveness.

AUDIOBOOK: It is nothing else but our fellowship with Jesus Christ that leads us to the ignominious dying that comes in confession, in order that we may in truth share in his Cross. The Cross of Jesus Christ destroys all pride.

Theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together in 1938. The Nazis had recently shut down his underground seminary, where he lived with 25 students. So he used the time to put some of his reflections in writing. Of course, to avoid persecution, many German churches embraced Nazis and their evolutionary ideas about the elimination of the weak. In contrast, Bonhoeffer saw that in Christ, both stronger and weaker Christians are part of one body, each gifted to serve the other.

AUDIOBOOK: It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others. Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

This is a short book–slightly more than 100 pages. But Bonhoeffer gives practical advice for issues that often crop up when Christians live together. For instance, tribalism.

WILBUR: You can group around the people who think the same way you do, or have the same views on things. You don't have that same luxury when you're forced to be in relationship with a smaller group. You have to work out differences. You have to figure out how to live together. How to do that respectfully. How to speak the truth in love.

Bonhoeffer sees pride behind much of the conflict we experience in community. We speak when we ought to listen. We take offense when we ought to bear with another’s weakness. We rebuke harshly rather than with kindness.

AUDIO: Under the following paragraph, start playing :55 sounds of gathering/talking leading.

God’s Word is often the light we need for such blindspots. Whether you’re in a family or a Christian organization, Bonhoeffer suggests having daily devotions as both a group and an individual.

That’s something Greg Wilbur has put into practice at New College Franklin. One morning this February, I joined 20 to 30 students gathered for a devotion in Cornerstone Presbyterian Church. That’s where the college meets. Built in the 1840s, it’s marked by beautiful mahogany pews and stained glass windows.

AUDIO: Let’s stand. Turn to the midday office. Page 25. Hallelujah. Sing to the Lord a new song. 

After devotional time, the students go upstairs for classes, but they soon return for a midday choir practice. Like Wilbur, Bonhoeffer sees singing hymns and Scripture–especially the Psalms–as helpful in keeping hearts focused on Christ.

AUDIOBOOK: We sing words of praise to God, words of thanksgiving, confession, and prayer. Thus the music is completely the servant of the Word. It elucidates the Word in its mystery.

Faith Crampton works for the college in Student Services. She says when was a student at New College Franklin, living within such a small community wasn’t always easy.

FAITH CRAMPTON: I lived for a couple of years in a three bedroom apartment with five other women. So there were six of us, which was a lot of women in a small space. And um, so there was just a lot. And even just friendship conflict, and everyone being 20-something. And fighting over boys.

When the Holy Spirit grows his people in such practical ways, it may not be as striking as an Asbury-type revival, but it’s just as life-giving.

CRAMPTON: So much of the smoothness of working through those problems. I really just felt that it’s because the Spirit of Christ is here. 

In Life Together, our Classic Book of the Month, Dietrich Bonhoeffer often writes poetically but a little too confidently about some things that go beyond Scripture. For instance, Greg Wilbur disagrees with Bonhoeffer’s rule that Christians always sing together in unison. Still, Bonhoeffer gets a lot right about our hunger for deep Christian fellowship.

AUDIOBOOK: Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.

I’m Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday March 5. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: Muslim aggression in Turkey. WORLD commentator A. S. Ibrahim says a recent power play by the president of Turkey is nothing new.

A. S. IBRAHIM: Imagine a beautiful Christian church in a small Middle Eastern town. The people of the town cherished their church for generations. It’s where they and their families worshiped, prayed, and got baptized. Then imagine a Muslim army invading the town with soldiers, horses, weapons, and chariots. After slaughtering the town’s leaders, the Muslims declare the church building a possession for Allah and Muhammad.

This tale is not purely imaginary. It’s a rough outline of what really happened to a Byzantine church in today’s Turkey. The Church of the Holy Savior was built in the 12th century, and it’s located in the historic area of northeast Istanbul, near the Adrianople Byzantine Gate. Sometime after Muslim Ottomans invaded in the 1400s, they converted the church to a mosque. All of its icons and frescoes were painted over to suit Muslim worshipers. The building then remained a mosque for four centuries. But in the early 1900s, history lovers and archeologists sought to restore the building after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was later opened as a museum in the 1950s.

But today, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has decided to turn the historic church back into a mosque. That’s after his infamous decision in 2020 to turn the stunning Hagia Sophia church into a mosque. As a strong devotee of Sunni Islam, he wants to be celebrated among Muslims as a hero—a sort of a modern caliph who advances Islamic power.

To achieve his goal, Erdoğan first annulled the ruling that designated the building as a museum, initiating the process to return it to a mosque as it was under the Ottoman Caliphate. The plan was to finish in October 2020, but it took longer than that to renovate—or deface—the church to match Islamic styles. But now, reports from Turkey reveal that the building is ready to receive Muslim worshippers.

On opening day, Erdoğan will most likely be filmed entering the mosque and performing the Muslim prayer, thus declaring it for Islam, Allah, and Muhammad. Like the Ottoman invaders of Byzantine Constantinople, Erdoğan will enter as a hero for Islam.

What do Erdoğan’s actions reveal about Islam’s attitude towards non-Muslim houses of worship, particularly churches? Intolerance.

Muslims are free to build mosques in many non-Muslim countries, especially in the West. But Christians find huge difficulties in Muslim-majority lands. Churches are frequently assaulted, and Muslims often repeat the pattern of erasing Christian heritage from Muslim lands.

Yet many Western politicians and liberal thinkers keep telling the world that Islam is all about mutual respect and religious freedom. They insist that like any other religion, Islam is what you make of it. I often wonder if they have ever read any sacred Muslim text or whether they know anything about Muslim history. Too many Western leaders—knowingly or unknowingly—are naïve propagandists for Islam. And they are wrong.

President Erdoğan’s actions show that religious liberty in Islam is not for all—it is only for Muslims to elevate Islam and its influence.

I’m A. S. Ibrahim.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: yet another deadline looming this week to fund the government or else! What can Congress do to break out of the doom loop? We’ll talk about it on Washington Wednesday.

And, life after a church split. We’ll hear how a new congregation came together after leaving the United Methodist Church. 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: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” —John 1:6-8

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.