The World and Everything in It: October 16, 2024

PREROLL: Novelist Barbara Mertz once said money is the manure of politics. She’s right. It sometimes makes things grow, but it almost always stinks. I’m Leo Briceno. Today during Washington Wednesday, a report on political fundraising. Stay with us.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today, reading the smoke signals of political fundraising. And how abortion harms women.

AUDIO: I think reproductive freedom would look like a woman being told all of her options and choices.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also today, WORLD Tour. Later: a growing movement encouraging people to have more kids.

AUDIO: Pretty much every right leaning person in Silicon Valley would identify as a pronatalist.

Pro-natalism, a growing movement that’s pro-childbirth not necessarily pro-family.

REICHARD: And commentary from WORLD’s Janie B. Cheaney.

EICHER: It’s Wednesday, October 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Good morning!

EICHER: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: North Carolina, recovery, threats » Officials in North Carolina are still trying to determine the fate of almost a hundred people … after catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Helene. Gov. Roy Cooper:

COOPER: As of today, the task force number of accounted for people is 92.

More than 70 people are confirmed dead in the state from Helene … which is blamed for well over 200 deaths across six states.

Cooper also asserted that some people are spreading lies about a lack of rescue and response for storm victims in the Asheville area.

COOPER: This is happening in the middle of an election where candidates are using people's misery to sew chaos.

Cooper said he’s assigning law enforcement to guard federal and state responders … saying their safety has been threatened, but he wouldn't elaborate on what those threats were.

Florida Milton aftermath » Meantime, parts of Florida are still slowly returning to normal with power coming back online after Hurricane Milton knocked out service to millions last week.

Gov. Ron DeSantis praised the response of line crews for restoring power to more than 4-million homes and businesses.

DESANTIS: That is the fastest that's ever been done for that many accounts. We had over 50, 000 linemen. These folks really got to work. 

DeSantis also said the state is enforcing its zero-tolerance policy for crimes related to a major storm … including filing animal cruelty charges. He pointed to one case in which authorities rescued a dog left chained to a fence as the storm closed in.

DESANTIS:  This poor dog was left out there. Uh, we said that there would be justice for that. And we're going to nail you, uh, when we find out who did it. And that's exactly what they're doing here in Hillsborough County.

Prosecutors are also bringing charges for crimes including break-ins in evacuation areas … and dumping of debris on private property.

Israel » Israel is thanking the United States for its delivery of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, commonly known simply as a THAAD battery.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer:

MENCER: The THAAD missile defense system is a useful addition to seek to protect this country. And of course, it does show in, not just in words but in deeds as well, the U.S. willing to defend this country, As the U.S. itself says, its ironclad commitment to Israel's defense.

The THAAD system uses a combination of radar and interceptors to take out ballistic missiles.

The delivery comes two weeks after Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 missiles at Israel. Most were intercepted with minimal casualties...but Israel has vowed to retaliate.

GALLANT: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promises Israel's response will be precise, painful, and unexpected.

Presidential politics » We are now less than three weeks away from Election Day with early voting already underway in some places.

That includes the critical battleground state of Georgia where Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says officials have been working to reassure voters.

RAFFENSPERGER: Everything that we have done since 2019 has been to improve the process, to build trust, and to build your confidence in the election cycle.

In an average of recent Georgia polls, former President Donald Trump enjoys a narrow lead of less than 1 point in the state over Vice President Kamala Harris.

Youngkin vs DOJ » The Republican governor of Virginia is clashing with the Biden administration over voter registration.

Late last week, the Department of Justice sued to block a state program that purges voters who are unable to prove their U.S. citizenship.

The DOJ says the program violates federal laws prohibiting systemic efforts to remove voters within 90 days of an election.

But Gov. Glenn Youngkin says state law signed in 2006 requires the purge, adding that the Justice Department is suing Virginia …

YOUNGKIN: Because someone who self-identified as a non-citizen is being removed from the voter roll unless they prove they are a citizen and affirm so. It is just the next step in a pattern that truly undermines peoples' confidence in the election process.

But the DOJ maintains that the process of purging the voter roll should have been completed earlier.

North Korea blasts roads into SoKo » North Korean forces today blew up portions of two roads that connect the country with South Korea amid growing tensions on the peninsula. WORLD’s Mary Muncy has more.

MARY MUNCY: The move comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to end relations with the South and abandon any efforts to reunify the peninsula peacefully.

The roads have not been in use for years. Destroying them is symbolic.

BYOUNGSAM: The government strongly condemns today's explosion of Gyeongui and Donghae inter-Korean roads by North Korea.

A representative of the South Korean Unification Ministry condemned the explosions, calling it more provocative behavior by the North.

Officials in Pyongyang last week threatened to sever all road and rail connections with the South.

North Korea claims that Seoul flew drones over its capital and dropped anti-North leaflets.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: abortion’s empty promises and congressional fundraising on today’s Washington Wednesday. Plus, a family who believes a large family is the solution to a lot of society’s problems.

This is The World and Everything in It. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 16th of October.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, we’ll talk to women who regret their abortions and respond to campaign promises of “reproductive freedom.”

But first, an update on campaign fundraising.

EICHER: While the presidential race draws the most attention and money, there are hundreds of races that will determine the balance of power in Congress. One way many in the media gauge the strength of a campaign is how much money it’s brought in.

But what do these numbers really tell?

WORLD’s Leo Briceno has the story.

MONTAGE: [FUNDRAISING APPEALS / POLITICAL ADS]

LEO BRICENO: When it comes to congressional races, there’s really no way around it: money talks. The more donations a candidate brings in, the more staff, ads, and buses they can use to make their case to voters. That’s why fundraising is now U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s number one priority.

JOHNSON: I’ve so far been in over 220 cities and 40 states sharing this message of our vision for unified government…

Johnson heard there in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania…urging voters to support Rep. Scott Perry. Perry is one of the nineteen Republican incumbents in tight races to keep their seats this year.

Political commentators frequently use fundraising as a proxy to gauge how much support a candidate has.

DEMOCRATS FUNDING CLIP: The fundraising for down-ballot candidates continues to set new records. NBC news reports that House and Senate Democrats are pulling in record campaign cash…

Right now, Democrats have the edge. In donations made directly to candidates, Democrats have outraised Republicans by 35 percent in this year’s 70 most competitive districts.

But those figures can also be deceptive: In Congressional elections, an impressive war chest isn’t always an indicator of just how competitive that race is. What candidates can raise often says more about the givers than the race.

JACLYN KETTLER: Wouldn’t we expect all the top, you know, fundraising races to be the competitive ones? Actually no.

Jaclyn Kettler is a political science professor at Boise State University. She’s writing a book on the relationship between congressional candidates and fundraising.

KETTLER: In it we have a table where we look at, for the 2022 House races, the top fundraising races and then the most competitive races—and they don’t match up that great!

There are some notable examples from recent elections. 

AMY McGRATH: I’m Amy McGrath and I approve this message. Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace…

Amy McGrath is a former Democratic Senate candidate in Kentucky. In 2020, she campaigned to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—and amassed more than 96 million dollars to do that. That stunning warchest was funded mostly by grassroots donors rather than party contributions. But despite relentless ad campaigns, McGrath lost that race by nearly 20 percent.

KETTLER: Sometimes a candidate can fundraise a lot of money from grassroots and not end up being very competitive.

While money may not be the best indicator of a candidate’s likelihood of success, it is still a way new candidates can prove their viability to leadership. If they can start fundraising operations on their own, it can signal that they’re worth further investment.

GREEN: Any candidate, for example, who hasn’t raised $100,000 in a close district isn’t really taking the charge seriously.

That’s Donald Green, professor of political science at Columbia University. He studies voting behavior and campaign finance. He says party leaders often look at fundraising to see if new candidates have staying power.

If party leaders start funneling dollars towards a certain race, that’s often a signal that they really believe in that candidate.

GREEN: What’s interesting about the leadership-type donations is that they would not be giving anything if they did not think that the candidates were credible enough to be a part of an elite set of recipients.

That scenario is playing out right now in Colorado’s eighth congressional district.

GABE EVANS: It's a national top 10 battleground seat.

Gabe Evans is a former police officer and state representative. He’s running as a Republican to unseat freshman Democratic incumbent Yadira Caravello. Speaker Johnson’s fundraising committee, known as The House Leadership Fund, has put $25,000 in advertising behind Evans’ race. So far, his opponent has out fundraised him 3 to 1. But where the money race is no contest, polling by Emerson College shows the campaigns are neck and neck…tied at 44 percent each, with the remaining 12 percent of voters undecided.

Ultimately, what ends up in a candidate’s coffers often says more about the donors than it does about the competition. Here’s Kettler again, the professor from Boise State University.

KETTLER: One of our arguments that we make is that some individual donors may be so driven by this idea of negative-partisanship or the dislike of the opposing party that you’re investing or sending money to candidates that—first of all might not even be your district. And also may not be competitive at all.

That’s particularly true of the loudest voices in both parties.  

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: The Democrats ripped open our borders, and allowed millions of illegal immigrants to pour in, driving up the cost of housing and health care while slashing American wages and eliminating jobs…

That’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican out of Georgia at this year’s Republican National Convention. She’s a firebrand conservative who isn’t shy about setting the party’s tone on a national level. And though Greene represents a deep red House district that Democrats were unlikely to flip, she accumulated $12 million dollars from conservatives all across the country…and went on to win reelection in 2022 by a 30% landslide.

The same thing happened with New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She raised more than 12 million dollars from grassroots donors and won her midterm race by a 43% margin.

Donald Green, the professor from Columbia University, says examples like these make it tempting to see money as a direct indicator of support. But Green warns that when voters hear stories about big-dollar races and candidate momentum, they should be taken with a pinch of skepticism.

GREEN: It shouldn’t be conflated with direct measures of public opinion.

The best measure of public opinion will be at the ballot box.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

REICHARD: Meanwhile, back at the top of the ticket Vice President Kamala Harris continues her fundraising and campaigning. In Arizona over the weekend, she returned to her signature issue, so-called reproductive freedom.

HARRIS: Freedom from the government making decisions about a person’s body, a woman’s body. Freedom to just be.

But what do women who have had abortions have to say about it?

BROWNING: Abortion hurts women. Abortion hurt me, and it hurt the others of us you’ll hear from today.

EICHER: In Washington on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people gathered for a prayer and fasting event dubbed the Esther Call on the Mall.

On the sidelines, WORLD’s Harrison Watters met with some women who shared their abortion stories.

STEPHANIE JACOBSON: I had two abortions when I was still in my teens.

Stephanie Jacobson is from Florida. She finds it ironic that many Democrats say decisions about abortion ought to be between a woman and her doctor.

JACOBSON: I never saw or discussed my pregnancy benefits, risks or alternatives of either abortion with any doctor.

She’s not the only one. Here’s Mayella Banks from Texas.

MAYELLA BANKS: I did not meet the doctor or get to ask any questions before my abortion. I don't even know who performed my abortion.

Banks and others experienced another broken promise as well.

BANKS: I was told that if I paid $200 I wouldn't feel any pain. The truth is that pain never left.

REICHARD: Jacobson and Banks are among thousands of women who have submitted their stories in friend of the court briefs with the help of an organization called The Justice Foundation.

ALLAN PARKER: Twenty-four years ago in the year 2000, the Lord called me to collect the testimonies of women and take them back to the Supreme Court.

REICHARD: Allan Parker is an attorney and former law professor in Texas. He previously represented the plaintiffs in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in their attempts to overturn the cases that legalized abortion nationwide. Later, Parker filed a friend of the court brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health…the case that returned the issue of abortion to the states.

PARKER: And there were millions of people praying for the end of Roe v. Wade. That's why I often said, Yes, I think it can really happen. Millions of people have stopped praying for the end of abortion.

EICHER: As for Vice President Kamala Harris’s abortion theme “freedom,” many women in D.C. last week said their experiences were hardly liberating.

MARY BROWNING: There's no freedom from the grief, there's no freedom from the regret… There's no freedom from serial relationship troubles. There's really no freedom.

Mary Browning is a family law attorney in Missouri and legal adviser for the Justice Foundation.

BROWNING: I think reproductive freedom…would look like a woman being supported, a woman being told all of her options and choices, and many of the women, myself included, no one discussed with us what all the options were, what it would look like to carry the baby to term, which is what our bodies were designed for.

Right now, Browning is concerned about abortion measures on the ballots in 10 states…including Missouri.

BROWNING: Missouri's is a full page long. And most of them are one paragraph.

REICHARD: The amendment would enshrine a right to abortion into the state’s constitution and remove restrictions on state funds going to so-called reproductive freedom options. And legal scholars say the way it’s written it’s likely to wipe away parental involvement laws and empower the transgender movement.

BROWNING: We have elected officials that we believe have enacted laws that coincide with our values, but what the public is not aware of, is that all the protections that we've had in place for years stand to be eroded in one vote.

EICHER: Election Day is less than three weeks away, and Browning is hoping to turn the pro-abortion tide.

BROWNING: You'd be doing women a favor, women and girls a favor, if you vote in a way that protects them from the abuses of the abortion industry.

REICHARD: That’s it for Washington Wednesday.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on the World and Everything in It, WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Oduah.

SOUND: [Protest music]

ONIZE ODUAH: Today’s global roundup kicks off in Kenya’s coastal Kilifi County … where protesters opposed plans for the country’s first nuclear plant.

Kenyan authorities are trying to reduce the country’s dependence on hydroelectric and fossil fuels by 2034.

But many of the residents earn a living from fishing and ecotourism.

Timothy Nyawa is one of the concerned fishermen who has worked in the waters for 20 years.

AUDIO: [Speaking Swahili]

He says here that he fears a nuclear plant could destroy fish breeding sites. Residents are also wary of how authorities will handle displacing some residents and compensating landowners.

Kenya’s Nuclear Power and Energy Agency has insisted the plant will not harm residents or their livelihoods. Authorities plan to begin construction on the plant in three years … and it could start operating by 2034.

AUDIO: [Protest chants]

Argentina protest — Heading now to Argentina, student protesters have returned to the streets after lawmakers failed to pass a public university funding increase. The president opposed the measure—insisting that universities must comply with budget restrictions.

So when a bill arrived at his desk…seeking to increase the salaries of university teachers and other staff over rising inflation, President Javier Milei vetoed it. Lawmakers narrowly upheld his veto in a vote last week.

Valentina Grispo is a 20-year-old student who attended the protest.

AUDIO: [Speaking Spanish]

She says here that the budget tightening doesn’t seem necessary when the majority of the youth depend on public universities.

Authorities at the University of Buenos Aires say staff salaries have lost 40 percent of their purchasing power this year alone due to inflation.

The budget restrictions are part of President Milei’s ongoing austerity measures focused on reducing public spending … which have also brought changes to the health and pension sectors.

SOUND: [Street noise]

Nobel prize reaction — In Japan, many welcome this year’s Nobel Peace Prize award given to a grassroots group advocating for a nuclear weapons ban.

Members of Nihon Hidankyo include survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions. Both bombs together killed about 214,000 people … triggering Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it awarded the group for using eyewitness accounts to demonstrate why nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Susumu Ogawa is an 84-year-old in Hiroshima. The bomb killed his mother, aunt, and grandparents.

AUDIO: [Speaking Japanese]

He says the peace award feels like they were finally rewarded. Japan still has more than 106,000 atomic bomb survivors.

SOUND: [Crowd noise]

Berlin Festival of Lights — And finally, we end on the streets of Berlin, Germany, where thousands of people filled the streets to see the Festival of Lights.

The annual fall festival celebrates freedom and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It features light displays on some of the most famous buildings across Berlin. This year marked the 20th anniversary of lighting up the capital.

Philipp Böhm is a 40-year-old Berlin resident.

AUDIO: [Speaking German]

He says he attended the event with his entire family … calling it one of the few activities families can enjoy together.

The 10-day festival ended on Sunday.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: You know, Frank Sinatra had a great song about second place … here’s to the losers, he sang / bless ’em all.

In Southern California an artist and an academic did old blue eyes one better, putting up a monument to the unelected. It’s a political display that celebrates presidential candidates who fell short.

The artist had special yard signs made up for more recent losers like John McCain, Al Gore, and Bob Dole.

John Spiak runs the art center at Cal State Fullerton. Audio from Spectrum News.

JOHN SPIAK: It’s a history lesson and always an interesting process in the United States.

The signs are pretty funny, too, especially the older ones, because, well, obviously Aaron Burr didn’t have yard signs—nor did Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, or Herbert Hoover for that matter.

But they do plan to keep things current.

SPIAK: So we have a Harris and we have a Trump one and whichever individual loses we’ll place that sign on the lawn.

So the most expensive campaign in presidential history comes down to a competition over who can get off this guy’s lawn!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Babies. Americans are having fewer of them than ever before. But there’s a movement to try to turn that around.

REICHARD: It’s called “pronatalism.” People having lots of children and encouraging others to go and do likewise. But there are ethical questions.

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire drove to Pennsylvania to meet the Collins family and find out what it means to be a pronatalist parent.

EMMA FREIRE: Malcolm and Simone Collins already have four children. But they are hoping for more. A lot more.

SIMONE: Minimum, seven, maximum, as much as fate allows. Really, I'm like, we will keep having kids until I can physically no longer have kids.

MALCOLM: As providence allows, yeah.

SIMONE: So basically, if we have six kids, and I lose my uterus. I have a hysterectomy after something goes terribly wrong during a C section, because I can only have C sections now, then we may consider getting a surrogate to have a kid, for example, which I really don’t want to do.

During our interview, we sit around the kitchen table of their 1790’s farmhouse. The children play upstairs, but there are plenty of interruptions.

SIMONE: Our entire - I do like your turtle, Good job buddy! – our entire governmental system…

Malcolm and Simone are “pronatalists.”

MALCOLM: Pronatalism is a movement that is attempting to draw attention to the rapid decline in fertility rates across the world, not just the developed world, and the long term social, economic and political consequences of this. I think that the biggest misconception about pronatalism is: pronatalism is not a movement that is trying to stop population collapse, specifically, that is impossible now. If we are on the Titanic, we are going to hit the iceberg every time.

They are still having as many kids as they can and they encourage others to do the same. The hope is to mitigate the worst impact. Malcolm had his ‘aha’ moment about the impending demographic disaster when he was working as a venture capitalist in South Korea.

MALCOLM: One of the partners at my firm, they were like, Why don't you sort of plot out where you think the Korean economy is going to be in 50, 100 years? And so I ran the numbers.

Based on the trends, he concluded there won’t be a South Korean economy in 50 to 100 years. He thinks America is only about 20 years behind South Korea.

SIMONE: Our entire governmental system, our city infrastructure, our taxes, our social services, even our economy. These things are all predicated on this expectation of population growth, and it's fine for us to figure out how to do with leveling off population or even a smaller one, but right now, none of our systems are prepared for that.

Malcolm and Simone spread their message via their podcast, several books they co-authored, a conference, and a foundation. They’ve gotten a lot of attention but also a lot of backlash. People have called child protective services on them and they’ve received death threats. But their movement has the backing of Elon Musk, who’s the father of at least 12 children.

MALCOLM: Pretty much every right leaning person in Silicon Valley would identify as a pronatalist. And pretty much the entire new right is pronatalist. It's a group of people who typically have moved from atheist stances to more religious stances. They're a group of people who typically worked in venture capital, worked in Silicon Valley. We have overlapping ideologies. And the new right is really becoming, I think it's going to be a very powerful force in American politics moving forwards.

Malcolm and Simone used to be atheists but now say they believe in some parts of the Bible. They are building a community with other pronatalist families. Within that community, they want to revive the traditional practice of “sending out” their kids—meaning, extended stays with other families.

MALCOLM: It teaches them about a different way of life, a different set of rules. This was done by the early Puritans in America. The early Puritans actually did it during kids' teenage years, because kids would act out less when they were sent out.

Malcolm and Simone hope to one day use this community to facilitate arranged marriages.

MALCOLM: When we talk about arranged marriage with Gen Alpha, they're like, sign me up. I think that we may miss what a literal hellscape the dating market is for Gen Alpha. So it's not an arranged marriage where we're going to set them up with someone and they're not going to have a choice at all. It's an arranged marriage where we will help you find a partner.

But there’s a lot about the Collins’s beliefs that most Christians cannot support. All of their children were conceived via IVF because they can’t conceive naturally. And they strongly support others using artificial reproductive technology and not only for a married mother and father. They also see it as a way for LGBTQ individuals to have children.

They have around 40 frozen embryos - all of which they hope to implant.

MALCOLM: As you get older, you're losing about maybe two per attempt, three per attempt.

While they continue to build the pronatalist movement, Malcolm and Simone are enjoying their time with their children.

MALCOLM: I don't know how I'm gonna handle the day we stop being able to have toddlers in the house, like this idea that it would be the last time I'm interacting with one of our kids.

SIMONE: Well, the plan is, by the time that happens, then we get our first grandchild.

MALCOLM: Well, that’s the hope if nothing goes wrong. But this is why we pay attention to stuff like making sure we can do the implantations.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney reflects on the education choices she made long ago for her family.

JANIE B CHEANEY: As a young mom, I thought of homeschooling as a good option for other people, but my aspirations led in another direction. I looked forward to the day when my youngest would be in school all day, so I could pursue my writing career. But a funny thing happened when the kids were gone from 8 to 3: I missed them. The house was too quiet, the writing hours unproductive, and the other hours hard to fill. Worst of all, when the kids came home they weren’t interested in spending time with me. After being cooped up in a classroom all day they couldn’t wait to rustle up some friends and create mayhem.

My journey began when I ordered a book after hearing about it on Dr. Dobson’s program…Home Grown Kids: A Practical Handbook for Teaching Your Kids at Home, by Dr. Raymond Moore. It was intended as a gift for a relative, but instead the message came home to me. While obsessively turning pages and highlighting paragraphs, I thought: “this is what we must do.” Since that day I’ve often told friends that homeschooling was the one thing I recall God specifically telling me to do—after, of course—“repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

At first, I was just going to do it for a few years, to give our children a better grounding in faith and basic skills.

Twelve years later our son received a hand printed diploma in the first graduation ceremony of our local homeschool group.

Homeschooling has become almost commonplace, as opposed to the days when we were encouraged to keep a low profile during school hours. These days, Christians tend to get more defensive about public schooling. On a Gospel Coalition podcast last year, Bible teacher Jen Wilken laid out her family’s reasons for putting six children (now grown) through public education. More recently, in Christianity Today, theology editor Stephani McDade cited those reasons and more for leaning toward the same decision for her preschool daughter.

Jen valued the diversity of backgrounds and beliefs her children were exposed to, and the lively discussions they brought back home. Stephani looked back on her own checkered school experience as a training ground where she learned to defend her faith. She writes, “Let [your children] wrestle with worldly counternarratives to God’s truth while they’re still under your care,” rather than sheltering them at home. Good points, though intentional homeschool families have found both of those experiences for their students in other ways.

“Sheltering” is too often the main reason parents choose to homeschool. But Fortress Family is no cure for what ails the sinful heart. Though, neither is carefully-monitored public or private education. Whatever educational choice Christian parents make, they should keep one difficult truth in mind. We parents who have overcome our mistakes the hard way (by repeatedly making them) can still underestimate the seductive power of sin on our children. Homeschooled kids are no less susceptible than others—I’ve known plenty who have walked away from the Lord, temporarily or permanently.

It's a privilege to have choices, and I’ve never regretted mine. But the main resource for parenting is the same it’s always been: fervent prayer…no matter what you feel God is encouraging you to do.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a new anti-discrimination law in Australia threatens anyone who speaks openly about Biblical convictions. We’ll hear what’s being done about it.

And, we’ll hear from one Christian school in North Carolina on what it’s doing to get back to normal—while helping neighbors in need. 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 Psalmist writes: Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. —Psalm 98:1, 2

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.