The World and Everything in It: November 22, 2024

PREROLL: Over the last month listeners of The World and Everything in It have downloaded or streamed nearly 900,000 programs. Thank you for making us a part of your day! I’m Paul Butler. It’s the last Friday of the month, so we have a few listeners lined up with some questions, corrections, and feedback. Stay with us.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday, the conversation presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Junior is provoking and the pro-life concerns.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet will be along in just a few minutes, and we’ll talk about the bathroom controversy in Congress and the death of a progressive evangelical.

Also today, a round up of three new movies in theaters. Including the faith-based film on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

BONHOEFFR: The German Church must stand on God’s Word alone.

And later, your feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, November 22nd. 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, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump picks Bondi for AG after Gaetz withdraws » President-elect Donald Trump has nominated his second choice to serve as America's top law enforcement officer.

Trump picked former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi Thursday to serve as the nation's attorney general.

She’s a longtime Trump supporter and was one of his attorneys during his first impeachment trial.

BONDI: He's actually working very, very hard around the clock, nonstop to surround himself with the brightest and best people... 

That was Bondi in December 2016 when she was on Trump's transition team for his first term in office.

In a statement, Trump said Bondi will refocus the Department of Justice from prosecuting Republicans to its intended purpose of fighting crime.

She’s actually Trump's second pick for the job. His first, former Congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration yesterday.

Gaetz has been the focus of a House Ethics Investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. He said the momentum behind his nomination was strong, but he didn't want to become a distraction for the Trump-Vance transition.

Hegseth meets w/senators, battles to save nomination » Meantime, another embattled Trump nominee appears to be picking up support.

Pete Hegseth is up for defense secretary, and held a round of private meetings with senators Thursday, just as new details of the sexual assault allegations against him came to light.

In 2017, police in California investigated a woman’s claim that Hegseth took her phone, blocked her from leaving a hotel room, and assaulted her. On Thursday, Hegseth said…

HEGSETH: The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared.

Prosecutors did not file charges. Hegseth did pay the woman a settlement last year to head off a lawsuit.

It looks like several of the senators who would confirm Hegseth are rallying around him. John Barrasso, who will be the Senate’s number two leader next year, called Hegseth a strong candidate, and Roger Wicker, who’s expected to chair the Armed Services Committee, said he thinks he’ll be in pretty good shape.

Dems, GOP reach deal to confirm more Biden judicial nominees » Senate Democrats and Republicans have struck a deal almost certain to get about a dozen of President Biden’s judicial nominees confirmed before his term is up.

The move clears the way for votes on seven district judges next week and six more in December. But the deal excludes four appeals court nominees who Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says lacked the support to be confirmed.

Liberal groups are pressuring Democrats to confirm all pending nominees before the end of the year. Schumer says confirming judges is a top priority.

Netanyahu responds to ICC warrant » Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is condemning a global war crimes court for issuing a warrant for his arrest.

The International Criminal Court, or ICC, issued warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’s military chief… accusing each of crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s response…

NETANYAHU: Israel will not recognize the validity of this decision. We will continue to do everything we must do to defend our citizens and defend our state against Iran’s axis of terror.

The ICC claims there’s evidence Israel has used starvation as a method of warfare during its campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu denies that and says nothing is more just than the war Israel’s been waging in Gaza.

This is the first time a global court of justice has accused a major Western ally of war crimes.

PUTIN: [Speaking Russian]

Russia launches intermediate missile into Ukraine » That’s Russian leader Vladimir Putin talking about stepping up his country’s weaponry in its war on Ukraine.

Putin says Russia has fired an experimental, intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine. He says the missile flies at 10 times the speed of sound, and U.S. air defenses cannot stop it.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh…

SINGH: This was a new type of lethal capability that was employed on the battlefield, so that’s certainly of concern to us.

Putin maintains the move is in response to Ukraine attacking Russia with missiles provided by the U.S. and Britain earlier this week. He claims the new weapon can stop any Ukrainian ally who attacks Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his quote “crazy neighbor” showed again what he really is… and urged Western allies to counter with a tough response.

Brazil: Bolsinaro indicted for coup attempt » Dozens of suspects in Brazil, including the former president, have been indicted for an alleged coup attempt. WORLD's Travis Kircher has more.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: Brazil's federal police on Thursday announced the indictment of former President Jair Bolsonaro...along with 36 others.

Bolsonaro is accused of taking part in a coup attempt to keep himself in office after his defeat in the 2022 elections.

The former president denies those claims.

Bolsonaro lost to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The indictments are expected to be handed over to Brazil's prosecutor general...who will then face a choice.

He can either agree with the charges and put the former president on trial...or toss the investigation.

For WORLD, I'm Travis Kircher.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: RFK Jr. has his supporters and his detractors. John Stonestreet weighs in on his strengths and weaknesses, today on Culture Friday.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 22nd of November, 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 John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, we’ve been talking quite a lot about cabinet picks for the new government coming in in January, and now that the Matt Gaetz nomination is out of the picture I’d like to get an overall sense from you one pick that I think easily crosses over into your beat, the cultural beat. And it’s Health and Human Services with the choice of Robert F. Kennedy Junior: I’m curious what you think.

STONESTREET: Well, it's been escalating quickly. Let's just put it that way. It's like every time we turn around, there's another one or two or five names that have been dropped. And clearly the president is trying to get ahead of what happened in 2016.

At one level, it underscores something that we said in the days leading up to the election, which is, you know, when you are electing a president, you're electing about 4,000 people. And we're also seeing that there's a kind of a cultural aspect to this. I mean, listen, RFK has started a national conversation about food, and that is a conversation that is vast. It goes to farming practices, it goes to pesticides, it goes to a whole variety of lifestyle issues. Goes to bad behavior on the part of what might be called big food, and that's going to be a fascinating discussion.

We're also going to be having this conversation at the very time when America is very skeptical of scientific and medical authorities—where we just don't believe, you know, what we have been told on things like vaccines and that aspect of health. And many people are starting to question this over specialization in medicine that tends to treat this symptom and that symptom and fails to see the human being as a unified whole.

What you're going to see emerge in this conversation on a worldview level, I think, is going to be fascinating. It's going to be super consequential. And it's already kind of taken the form of what kind of creatures are human beings, and so much of public policy and politics are rooted out of that question, what does it mean to be human?

One of the challenges here too is that RFK and some other advocates of his view do not see humans as necessarily exceptional, not something outside of the kind of normal categories of nature. So you hear, you know, people talking about human beings as if they're just another part of nature, and our inability to realize that has caused the environmental problems. And so it's a very kind of mystical, pantheistic way of thinking about the human being. The creation story puts a hierarchy to creation that, yes, we are part of the creation, but we're also made in God's image, and we also have been given an ability to impact and affect the world around us. And look, I mean the temptation here, also, without making this answer too long, I just think all of these things are going to be super worldview laden. We all got to pay attention.

EICHER: I don’t want to leave the RFK Junior question, though, to make sure we don’t gloss over this. You talked about how he’s starting a big conversation on health that we’ve not had before, but I don’t want to leave out the life issue. For some pro-lifers—not all, but some—it feels like there’s a bit of a rift.

And now, I’m not aware RFK has had a change of heart on abortion; he’s expressed very strong pro-abortion views, and H-H-S sets a lot of abortion policy in this country.

STONESTREET: Oh, it's a huge deal. It's absolutely significant.

I think it's, you know, part of what we think about on a worldview level, or that Christians should think about, is that a lot of Christians don't have a world view W, O, R, L, D, view form. It's more of a whirled W, H, I, R, L, E, D, all whirled up.

RFK's vision about food directly conflicts, and his trouble to figure out what humans are is in direct conflict with what he thinks about pre-born children. It's inconsistent, and it will create bad policy. And it also, too, is based on the fact, you know, listen until yesterday, he was a progressive in a lot of ways, and on the abortion issue, that's been clear.

It's going to have huge consequences, particularly because this position not only determines how do we think about our own health as Americans, but how do we export our help around the world? And you know, we have a bunch of policies that are like volleyballs from one administration to the next, like the Mexico City Policy, in which we export abortion around the world in a really damaging way under progressive administrations, and we pull that back under Republican administrations. So we'll see what happens on those.

BROWN: John, there’s another big issue that’s being tossed around: Men in women’s bathrooms. It’s no longer just at the state level, It's made its way to Congress thanks to the election of a confused congressman who goes by the name Sarah McBride. McBride is the first openly so-called transgender member of Congress.

I want you to listen to this Q&A between Representative Nancy Mace and a network reporter. Mace is defending her proposed bathroom bill.

REP. MACE: This is not okay. I'm a survivor of rape, I'm a survivor of sexual abuse, and I'm not going to allow any man in any female private spaces. Speaker, end of story. And by the way, I'm getting death threats from men pretending to be women. Why is it that these crazy people, the insanity of the radical left, are willing to kill women over a man's right to be in a women's restroom?

ABC: Speaker Johnson has said he wants to treat every new member with the words dignity and respect. Forcing this congressperson to go into a male restroom, is that dignity and respect?

MACE: Forcing women to share private spaces with men is not dignity and not respect. I'm absolutely going to stand in the way of anyone who thinks it's okay for a man to be in our locker room, in our changing rooms, in our dressing rooms and women's bathrooms. And in fact, if you agree with that, you're crazy, because that's not okay. It's not okay.

John, Could she have been any clearer? What do you think?

STONESTREET: Well, you know, at some level, this reminds me of a conversation we had last week about the spiral of silence.

I'm not sure just a couple years ago whether we would have seen the same sort of pushback from even the Republicans on this, maybe some, but not across the board. This has been, you know, very clear, very true, and it needs to be said out loud.

I think another important part of this is, as all this gets reported on, that even headlines are worldview-loaded. Right? Whether this is a transgender woman who's being discriminated against, or a man who claims to be a woman, you know, claiming to be discriminated against. I mean, that's just a few words' difference, but it's all the difference in the world in terms of meaning.

And I think a big part of this, I'm grateful for Ryan Anderson's clarity on this. He's the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He's like, you know, we gotta use the right words. And I think that's a subtle but important way that the rest of us can live not by lies in the same way that in this case, Nancy Mace is. Good for her for being clear. And I also think it's important to know this is an issue that is losing steam, so backing off now, while still not being, you know, disrespectful, or, you know, anything like that to individuals, I think is really important.

EICHER: Tony Campolo died this week at the age of 89. He was a sociologist, a pastor, and prominent voice in progressive evangelicalism. He founded the so-called “Red Letter Christianity” movement—which Campolo himself admitted roughly five years ago that it had run aground due to finances, an inability to get its message out, and, basically, biblical illiteracy on the part of the progressives drawn to the movement. For his part, Campolo became very widely known in the 1990s as a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton and got lots of attention again when Campolo famously endorsed same-sex marriage shortly before the Supreme Court ruling in 20-15.

But I would suggest he was a liberal evangelical that many conservatives liked personally. What do you say?

STONESTREET: Tony Campolo was a man of very strong convictions. But he did actually treat those on the other side—as wrong as he often was, in my view—with a great deal of respect. I appreciated, a friend of mine noted, too, just what a fantastic public speaker he was. I mean, he had to respect the guy could just hold an audience in kind of rapt attention. He was really, really, funny, and in that way, he was a force to be reckoned with.

You know, it's hard for me, though, to talk about some of these folks who were the fountainheads of a progressive Christianity that we've really seen come to fruition in the decades since. And listen, I didn't know Tony Campolo, never had this conversation with him. But I've often wondered about individuals like him, who were so formidable and trying to push evangelicalism in a particular direction—whether they were always happy with the success, whether they were always happy with how far it went, whether they were always happy with what you ended up seeing in terms of the full on kind of woke, progressive way of talking about things, especially in the area of sexuality.

I wish I would have had an opportunity to ask that, because, you know, it really gets to the heart of something, that whenever somebody brings it up, it's accused of being a fallacy, and that's the slippery slope idea, and it's called a slippery slope fallacy: It's not necessary that once you slide down the slope, you'll keep sliding. But the problem is, in reality, that's the way it works.

And when you saw that with progressive Christianity, starting to question, you know, Did God really say? Is the Bible really where God said it? And ending with, did God even really make us, or are we self made, at least in our identity and sexuality? So it really went a long way, and it did so in a hurry. And that's the question I would ask if I could.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both!

COLLIN GARBARINO: It’s been almost 25 years since the original Gladiator starring Russell Crowe captivated audiences and conquered the Oscars. And for a certain kind of male movie lover, Gladiator remains the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. So, of course, Hollywood, in its quest to exploit every bit of nostalgia to the maximus, decided to make a sequel.

LUCIUS: Strength and honor.

The action picks up 20 years after the original. Paul Mescal plays Lucius … the grandson of Marcus Aurelius … and he’s now living in exile in North Africa. A pair of despotic twins now rule Rome, and after the Roman army, led by Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius, destroys Lucius’ home and sells him into slavery, Lucius vows revenge. He’s aided in his quest by a slave master played by Denzel Washington.

MACRINUS: Whose head could I give you that would satisfy this fury?

LUCIUS: The entire Roman army’s.

MACRINUS: Too much.

In the original Gladiator, director Ridley Scott took certain liberties with the historical record, but with this sequel, he shows an utter disdain for anything resembling accuracy. This film isn’t so much historical fiction as it is historically inspired fantasy. He pushes the storyline, sets, costumes, and action sequences beyond reality into the bizarrely grotesque.

It’s all very silly, but I’m sure some old Gladiator fans will still appreciate the spectacle. The movie has an R rating, but it’s solely based on bloody violence—very little sensuality or bad language.

While Gladiator II hopes to capture the attention of the manly men, the other big film of the weekend appeals to a different demographic.

Wicked is a Broadway favorite, and now it’s been given an over-the-top silver-screen adaptation.

This musical tells the supposed true story of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. Serious-minded Elphaba is a green-skinned girl who goes off to school and meets the bubbly Glinda. The two would-be witches don’t get off on the right foot, but after being forced to room together they become friends.

GLINDA: Oh. I saved you some space by the way.

ELPHABA: Do you really think this is fair?

GLINDA: I do not. I was promised a private suite. But thanks for asking.

Not everything is right in the Land of Oz, and Elphaba uncovers a plot that will lead to her being rejected by society.

I’m philosophically opposed to these kinds of stories in which bad guys get recast as the good guys. Cruella, Maleficent, those movies with the dreamy vampire boyfriend… But… I have to admit this is an entertaining musical. Director Jon M. Chu takes us on a zany romp through Oz. The singing and dancing take place within beautiful magical settings.

And the PG movie is fairly family friendly. But you need to be prepared for the worst thing about the movie… the runtime. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, you’re going to be sitting in those theater seats for a long time. And you won’t even get the full story. This is just Act I. You’ll have to wait a year to get the rest of the story.

THE WIZARD: The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.

This weekend, theaters even have something for fans of Christian stories with the debut of Angel Studios’ Bonhoeffer.

BONHOEFFER: The church should be a place of refuge, a place of sanctuary, not a place of power.

Hollywood veteran Todd Komarnicki writes and directs Bonhoeffer, a film that pays tribute to the martyred pastor who stood up to Hitler during WWII. As with many of Angel Studios’ other films, this movie has high production values. German actors play the principal characters. And the sets, costuming, cinematography, and lighting capture the beauty and the horror of the 1930s and ’40s.

Bonhoeffer nails the atmospherics, so it’s a shame the script fails to do justice to this complicated hero. We jump from childhood to his last days in prison then back to his time as a young man studying in New York then forward to Germany where he must stand against the Nazis, help form a breakaway evangelical church, and become a spy who smuggles Jews to safety. It’s a dizzying tour of a life with the barest bit of insight into Bonhoeffer’s motivation holding it together.

And while a biopic will necessarily rely on imaginative scenes, the bare historical facts ought to be respected. Komarnicki attempts to heighten the film’s dramatic tension by exaggerating Bonhoeffer’s role in the assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944. This exaggeration of his espionage work comes at the expense of getting a real sense of role as a pastor.

BONHOEFFER: The German Church must stand on God’s word alone. Not any man’s word. And especially not a Führer’s word.

This biopic has its inspiring moments, and it might capture the extraordinary busyness of Bonhoeffer’s fight against Nazism. But it feels rushed when depicting his calling as a minister. I would have liked to see something of the man who penned The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. But other than learning that he cares about the marginalized, we don’t get much of a glimpse into the theological thinking that motivated this remarkable life.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, November 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Listener Feedback. We begin with a few of corrections:

Two days ago, we highlighted the story of a missionary family in Mozambique and the unjust imprisonment of missionary pilot Ryan Koher. In the telling of that story we got a date wrong, saying he was placed in solitary confinement in 2023, when in fact it was 2022.

Also this week twice we misspoke the age of murder victim Laken Riley, saying she was 26. She lived a little over a month past her 22nd birthday.

BROWN: Listener Russ Stevens from North Carolina had this comment on our review last week of the play, The Horse and His Boy.

RUSS STEVENS: Bekah McCallum did an excellent review of the Horse and His Boy, with one exception. She commented that Logo's Theater cornered the market on Christian theater excellence. I certainly don't want to demean the production she reviewed, but before she makes such a sweeping statement, she needs to go see one of the productions by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts. They are … right up there with almost anything else I've seen. Thanks for the great reviews.

Well, thank you and we have indeed reviewed productions from the Fellowship for the Performing Arts and—agreed!—they are very good.

EICHER: Now for some feedback on the return of Doubletake. And, first we need to acknowledge we had to fix a production problem, and the repaired episode is online, but this listener, despite the glitch, said she was enthusiastic about the topic.

SARAH: Hi! My name is Sarah [undistinguishable] and…I really enjoyed it. And I’m glad that WORLD is taking a look at the evils of feminism. Feminism is poison and so glad you’re talking about that.

Next, Dale Fenwick from beautiful Mount Dora, Florida, had this feedback after our recent story on the pro-life ballot initiative approved in Nebraska that protects the unborn after the first trimester.

DALE FENWICK: I have to agree with the activists there…in really not being fully supportive…of the 12 week strategy to put that in their constitution. And here’s the reason. Leah says in the article that since many abortions are performed during the first trimester. He was opposed to this. Well, that’s right… when you realize 94% happened during the first trimester that means what Nebraska did was successfully save 6% of the babies. Now obviously 6% is better than 0%, but it’s a long way from even say 50% cuz I believe less than 50% abortions happen during the first 6 weeks, which is the cutoff here in Florida. Other than that keep up the good work. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much.

BROWN: Dan Bullock from Lafayette, Indiana, was one of many listeners who were disappointed with a detail we left out of a story about presidential candidate concession speeches.

DAN BULLOCK: I agree that the concession speech is a very important part of our country and our democracy and transition of power, but it was disappointed that you guys didn’t kind of talk about the elephant in the room…that that in 2020 and Donald Trump did not concede and I think that was really been a black mark on him and just wish you guys would have mentioned it. Thank you very much. Bye.

EICHER: This listener was one among many, with some going much further, suggesting we were trying to rewrite history or hide facts. Well, at the risk of sounding defensive, we did consider including in the story Trump’s non-concession, but concluded that if we were going to mention it, we’d need to spend time on the reasons why. But that wasn’t the purpose of the piece.

What we should’ve done, and what we wish in retrospect we had done was make reference to it in the setup. I know right where we could’ve put it and made everybody happy. Missed opportunity. Sorry about that, but there’s no rewriting history, and we’d never do that.

BROWN: Finally today, many listeners called and wrote in to thank us for the election week scriptures and prayers. This comment is characteristic of the many messages we received.

Hi, this is Steven Hubsher. I want to thank you for putting together the the prayers for the election. I'm still getting caught up listening to them. But they've really been helpful to me and I was wondering if you would consider putting all of them together in a single file and releasing them perhaps on a Saturday,, so we could download them and just listen to them continue it more just as one stream. And that would be my request. Well, thank you. God bless you guys. Bye bye.

We’ve got some good news for all of you who made similar requests. Our producer is putting them together into one extended segment and we’ll release it this weekend on your program feed and our website. We’ll also include a text version of all the submissions. Thanks for the suggestion.

EICHER: And thanks to everyone who wrote and called this month. We’re grateful for the time you give to listen each day and for your feedback.

If you have a comment to share you can email editor@wng.org. You can include an audio file attachment to your email and we’ll consider it for air. You can even phone it in at 202-709-9595.

And that’s this month’s Listener Feedback!

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, Caleb Welde, Lindsay Mast, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Nathan Finns, Leo Briceno, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Oduah, Daniel Darling, Addie Offereins, Anna Johansen Brown, Emma Perley, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Lynde Langdon, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

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

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producers are Paul Butler, Kristen Flavin, and Harrison Watters with assistance from Lauren Dunn and Benj Eicher.

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 scriptures say: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” —Ephesians 3:20, 21

Be sure and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s Day! And, Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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