The World and Everything in It: September 17, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like you. I’m Leo Briceno and I’m a reporter for WORLD’s Washington Bureau. Thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! It’s that time of year again where Washington quibbles over funding bills and engages in shutdown brinkmanship.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We have a report from our Washington bureau. Also today, a possible escalation of the war in Ukraine.

And you’ll meet a homeschool mom who helped jump start a movement that could change how we use public libraries.

AUDIO: That led me to the basements of whole huge library institutions where they had thousands of discarded books.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, September 17th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump attempt latest » The Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe is speaking out about the second assassination attempt in as many months against former President Donald Trump.

He described the events that unfolded on Sunday afternoon at the Trump International golf resort in Florida.

ROWE:  As former president Trump was moving through the fifth fairway across the course and out of sight of the sixth green, the agent who was visually sweeping the area of the sixth green saw the subject armed with what he perceived to be a rifle.

The agent opened fire on the gunman who never got a shot off at agents or Donald Trump. Rowe said the suspect never had a direct line of sight to the former president.

He added, “The Secret Service's protective methodologies work and they are sound, and we saw that yesterday.” He talked about the “layered” elements of protection.

ROWE:  You know, there was a front element, uh, it did its job in sweeping ahead of the president. That's what identified this individual who was in that wood line.

Continued reaction to Trump assassination attempt » But not everyone’s convinced that the Secret Service’s methods work as well as they should.

Will Snyder is the Sheriff of Martin County where the 58-year-old suspect was pulled from his vehicle and arrested. Snyder questioned …

SNYDER:  How does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the president, former president of the United States is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity?

And in an interview, former Secret Service agent Evy Poumouras remarked, “How did he get there, take that position for 12 hours and nobody saw that? Nobody did a perimeter sweep?”

GOP Congressman Mark Green is one of many lawmakers demanding answers.

GREEN:  I want to know where every secret service agent was that day and the week prior, you know, because they say we're constrained with resources. Well, tell me where all of your other resources were.

The Trump campaign asked the Secret Service on Monday to step up security. It was not immediately clear how the agency responded.

China pastor » An American pastor is finally free after more than 20 years behind bars in China. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: David Lin arrived in San Antonio on Sunday nearly two decades after Chinese authorities arrested him.

The government arrested the California pastor in 2006 and charged him with contract fraud.

Human rights group Dui Hua says the communist government frequently uses that particular charge to persecute Christians who raise funds to support house churches.

Lin reportedly entered China in 2006 to help an underground church build a place to worship.

He visited China regularly in the 1990s and began preaching the Gospel there in 1999, according to ChinaAid.

A Beijing court in 2009 sentenced him to life in prison, but his sentence was reduced three times.

He was due to be released in 2029, no word yet on why he was released earlier than that. 

American officials have been calling for his freedom for years.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Carolina weather tropical storm » Heavy rain and powerful winds pounded the Carolinas into the early morning hours today. Some areas saw wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour.

In Brunswick County, North Carolina, flooding reached waist high in areas around the courthouse. About 15 miles away in Carolina Beach, radar estimated up to 18 inches of rain fell in the area.

Despite all of that. the storm was known only to forecasters called it Potential Tropical Cyclone No. 8. It never was quite organized enough to become a named storm.

Titan submersible » More than a year after the Titan submersible imploded during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic, killing 5 people, investigators are still gathering facts.

The former lead engineer for the submersible told the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation …

NISSEN:  I stopped the 2019 Titanic dive because the data, the instrumentation that I put on it wasn't good and I was fired for it.

OceanGate's former engineering director, Tony Nissen testified at a hearing on Monday. Others have testified that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush ignored warnings and pushed ahead with the ill-fated expedition in June of 2023. Rush was among those killed during that dive.

The investigative board is still working to determine the exact cause of the implosion.

Tito Jackson obit » Tito Jackson, one of the brothers who made up the beloved pop group the Jackson 5, has died at age 70. Jackson was the third of nine children, including global superstars Michael and Janet.

In a 2017 interview, the skilled guitarist recalled an interaction as a child with his father Joe Jackson.

JACKSON: So his string was broke and he was so upset, who's, who's been playing my guitar. I started crying, so of course that told the story. After I got punished for it, he sat me down and said, show me what you know. He was so surprised that I was playing just as well as he did.

The Jackson 5 produced several No. 1 hits in the 1970s and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Fixing government funding. Plus, Rethinking libraries.

This is The World and Everything in It. 

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 17th of September.

Thanks for joining us 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.

Up first, the government funding deadline.

Last week, Congress returned from August recess with appropriations at the top of the to-do list. Here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson.

JOHNSON: We have two obligations right now, Congress has a lot of responsibilities, but two primary obligations: responsibly fund the government and make sure that our elections are free and fair and secure.

House Republicans had planned to pass a bill to extend current funding levels until after the election, but Johnson pulled the bill because it couldn’t pass.

REICHARD: As happens nearly every year, lawmakers have until the end of this month to fund the government and keep federal agencies open.

But some lawmakers are hoping to avoid these regular showdowns by extending the timeline for debating and approving spending from one year to two years.

Here’s WORLD’s Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno.

LEO BRICENO: Capitol Hill is once again hurdling towards a government shutdown at the end of the month. And once again, the most immediate solution would be to extend the government’s current spending levels. If it sounds familiar, that’s because that’s exactly what happened last year. And the year before that.

THOMAS MASSIE: We’ve seen it—I’ve been here 12 years; I’ve seen it 12 times.

That’s Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, protesting a bill that would temporarily prevent a government shutdown called a “continuing resolution”. The House hasn’t voted on it yet, but Massie thinks it's only a matter of time before one comes down the pipe, followed by an all-at-once spending bill known as omnibus package.

MASSIE: I’m going to call out both sides right here. We always get a CR in September and then we get an omnibus. Sometimes there’s a twist on that where we might get the omnibus before Christmas, but that’s what’s gonna happen. And in the meantime, it's political theater.

Massie and other conservatives on Capitol Hill want to return Congress to “regular order.” According to the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 separate bills that each fund a distinct area of government. And they are supposed to do that before October 1—the start of the new fiscal year. But that so-called “regular” order is extremely irregular. It’s only ever been done on time once, way back in 1996.

That’s why some Republicans, like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas believe Congress should do itself a favor and change the rules.

CHIP ROY: This is one of the reasons why I support a two-year budget, two-year appropriations cycle, it’s ridiculous. I think the years are past of us being able to get appropriations done in a single calendar year So, I think we should go to a two-year process, two-year budget, two-year appropriations. We would be able to get that done in a single Congress, hold that Congress accountable, vote, and do it again.

Changing the spending process from one year to two wouldn’t necessarily cut spending. To members like California Rep. Mike Garcia, the upside in other areas is obvious. He sits on the Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

MIKE GRACIA: The reality is that most countries around the planet, China is certainly looking at a 20-year paradigm when it comes to their spending. So, the fact that we’re looking at it through a fiscal year paradigm that doesn’t align to a calendar year which is also subject to the ebbs and flows of election years makes it, so these budget discussions become political rather than functioning.

Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas sits on the appropriations subcommittee for financial services and the general government. He says the Appropriations Committee did good work scrutinizing legislation this year, but…

MICHAEL CLOUD: It’s a pretty massive bureaucracy and getting into the details of are the dollars accomplishing what we’re supposed to – are we getting an ROI for the taxpayers? All these are questions that should be answered if we’re looking at funding things. You know, there’s just so much more to be done every single cycle.

On the other side of the coin, some Republicans worry that the gains of a two-year funding cycle would be outweighed by the drawback of reduced Congressional oversight.

Here’s Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar. Like Cloud, he also sits on the subcommittee for general government and financial services.

JOHN MOOLENAAR: In my view, the appropriations process allows that because you have ongoing committee hearings, oversight of different agencies, and the ability to ask questions on how funds were spent in the previous year, and it provides accountability. If you’re passing legislation every two years, I’d be concerned that you’re giving up some of the accountability that Congress has for oversight.

So, clearly, year-to-year oversight is a concern for lawmakers. But what does that mean, exactly?

David Ditch, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, explains.

DAVID DITCH: Year to year, if Congress doesn’t like a particular policy the administration is putting forward, they can put language in the appropriations bills to say, ‘no you can’t use tax dollars towards such and such purpose. If you do a two-year bill, and then the presidential administration does something underhanded or nefarious, Congress in many cases is going to have to wait until the next cycle to go after it because it can be very difficult to pass what they call ‘riders’ as their own separate piece of legislation.

Analysts expect the composition of Congress to change following this year’s election…but the margins will likely remain tight. Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro is a long-time member of the appropriations committee. She doubts Republicans would stick to a two-year spending deal—even if one could be struck. She pointed to current Republican efforts to cut spending when, two years ago, they promised to raise it slightly.

ROSA DELAURO: Look, we had a two-year deal on the Fiscal Responsibility Act. One percent increase for defense and one percent increase for the non-defense. They don’t hold to the bargain.

Ditch from Heritage says he’s not in favor of the idea of switching to a two-year funding cycle, but he’s not strongly opposed to it either, because he’s focused on a larger problem : the nation’s deficit.

DITCH: I fundamentally think this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The solution isn't between do we do these spending bills every year or every other year? The solution is the thing that, unfortunately, most members of Congress don't have the courage to really go after, which is we need to make the federal government substantially smaller. There are far too many programs. There are far too many bureaucracies for a couple 100 members of Congress and their staff to really stay on top of.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington, D.C.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: U.S. aid to Ukraine.

ZELENSKYY: ​​[Speaking Ukrainian] 

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought a green light to launch long-range strikes on Russia.

Meanwhile, President Biden met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington.

BIDEN: The United States is committed to standing with you to help Ukraine as a defense against Russia's onslaught of aggression. Clear that Putin will not ... make it clear that Putin will not prevail in this war.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Going into the meeting, Biden hinted that he might approve Ukraine’s request for Western missiles to strike Russia. The meeting ended with no commitment one way or the other.

But if there were such an escalation … would it hasten an end to the war … or just make it worse?

WORLD Radio’s Paul Butler has the story.

PAUL BUTLER: Since Russia rolled into Ukraine in 2022, military experts in the United States have debated how much support should be given to Ukraine.

JOHN HARDIE: I think the administration has always been trying to balance what they see as competing objectives…

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia program for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

HARDIE: So one is supporting Ukraine and helping it defeat Russia's unprovoked invasion, and the other is preventing escalation. So over time, you've seen the administration sort of shift what it views as too risky.

In the beginning, America’s aid for Ukraine included largely humanitarian relief, financial aid, and defensive weapons. The U.S. was reluctant to give lethal weapons, for fear that Russia would retaliate. But so far it hasn’t.

ROBERT PETERS: Every time the Russians put out a red line, and we would do something, there was no real response, right?

Robert Peters researches nuclear deterrence and missile defense for the Heritage Foundation.

PETERS: We gave them Bradley's fighting vehicles, and there was no response. We gave them M1 Abrams tanks, no response. We gave them F-16s, and there was no cost that was imposed upon the United States by the Russians. And so it became, well, look, I guess they're not serious.

Even after Ukraine invaded the Russian region of Kursk, the Kremlin opted not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. John Hardie sees that as a sign that Russia’s rhetoric should not be taken seriously…and a reason to support more military aid to Ukraine.

HARDIE: I think at this point, there's very little risk that attack and strikes against legitimate military targets in Russia would lead to major escalation.

Hardie says supplying Ukraine with weapons like Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, doesn’t pose as much of a threat to Russia as it might have earlier in the war.

HARDIE: That is because Russia has shifted a lot of its warplanes out of ATACMS range, out of the range of the Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles provided by the British and French…

But Robert Peters is skeptical about giving Ukraine more powerful weapons while ignoring Russia’s warnings.

PETERS: While the Russians have been frankly dumb in crying wolf for two years and desensitized us to those threats, there may come a day when we wake up and they actually do use and they say, we've we've told you this, that we were going down this route, and you guys have been ignoring us. And then what do we do?

If Russia is serious about its newest threats, Peters says the NATO Alliance would have to answer a more difficult set of questions.

PETERS: Is Ukraine worth fighting a nuclear war over? No way. Is Ukraine worth fighting a conventional war with Russia over? Um, I would be very hesitant to say to any American president, whoever was in the White House, that Ukraine is worth fighting a conventional war over in which it was direct American forces and NATO allied forces directly engaging in combat with Russia.

Avoiding a direct war with Russia is one thing, but the more immediate issue is charting a course for ending Russia’s war with Ukraine.

On the campaign trail Donald Trump has said he would sit the two sides down to make a deal. But Hardie says Russia is in no position to negotiate in good faith.

HARDIE: Putin is still making maximalist claims, demanding that Ukraine agree to give up even more territory than is already occupied, let alone recognizing Russian occupation of that territory before they even start talking. And so obviously that's a non-starter.

He says it’s likely Ukraine and Russia will end up with a “frozen conflict,” where neither side achieves victory. And if there were to be a ceasefire, he believes that would eventually end in another war.

Robert Peters says that may be the case, but believes it’s time for the U.S. to shift its focus.

PETERS: We spent $174 billion on the Defense of Ukraine. So that is about as much as we spend on the U.S. Army every year. And the fact of the matter is that Russia is nowhere near the threat that China is to American interest.

There is no equivalent to the NATO alliance in the Pacific…and without the U.S., nations like Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines would be no match against China.

PETERS: Yeah, there's a war going on in Europe today, but the threat to American interests is far, far greater in the western Pacific than it is in Europe. And European nations are far more capable to deter that threat than our friends and allies in the western Pacific are.

But Hardie says it’s possible to do both…particularly since Ukraine and Taiwan are requesting different kinds of weapons.

HARDIE: I think that we can definitely walk and chew gum at the same time.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler. Harrison Watters wrote and reported this story.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The world has a new star!

CHILD: Wow! [Laughter, zoo keeper speaking Thai, more laughter]

This is from a zoo in Thailand, visitors oohing and awwwing over an adorable baby pygmy hippopotamus.

Her name’s Moo Deng. That’s Thai for “bouncy pig.” Or bouncy pork, you know, from the menu. But the name is very accurate and bouncy. She’s gone viral, Moo Deng has, with millions of fans following her every move. She’s even inspired women to mimic her naturally pink cheeks with makeup of the same color.

She’s just two months old … so she stays close to momma while she gnaws on the knees of the zoo keeper during her daily shower.

The crowds are so big she needs a security detail seems like the bouncy pig just needs a bouncer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 17th. 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: Lending Libraries, part two!

Last week we heard from families in Tennessee about their journey into the lending library movement.

Today, our coverage continues in Alabama. WORLD’s Myrna Brown introduces us to two more lending library families and the homeschool pioneer many believe started it all.

KAREN LAUGHLIN: We had consistent librarians. They were super friendly. They knew the kids' names. They were excited to serve homeschoolers. We would check out 50 books at a time.

MYRNA BROWN: When Karen Laughlin, her husband, and two children relocated to their 30-acre-home four years ago, their biggest challenge was the local public library.

LAUGHLIN: Though I found here, when I started using the public library, they seemed to be inconvenienced by me taking out that many books.

Eventually the books became an issue.

LAUGHLIN: Well, I mean, they mostly fit into two categories. One was political activism type things in baby board books. And then just the LGBTQ movement.

Laughlin says she took her complaints and ideas to the library’s director.

LAUGHLIN: And it was just no, no, no. So, the only other step at that point was school board or starting my own.

BROWN: What did you know about starting your own library?

LAUGHLIN: Nothing. I thought it was a revolutionary idea. Little did I know it’s been going on for years and years.

At least 30!

Michelle Howard is a librarian, curriculum writer and columnist. She’s also considered a pioneer in the private lending library movement. In the mid-1990’s Howard was a book-loving, homeschool mom of two boys.

MICHELLE HOWARD: At the time the American Library Association did not want a non-fiction book sitting on the shelf for more than two years and you were pushing it to have a fiction book on the shelf for five years. That stunned me because I thought of libraries as being archival of the best that was ever written.

Books written during the Golden Age of youth literature.

HOWARD: Which is basically like the late 1930s through the mid 1960s to the early 1970s.

Howard says she and a friend started stumbling upon these books at yard sales. From there Howard discovered an even deeper literary treasure trove.

HOWARD: That led me to the basement of whole huge library institutions where they had tens and tens of thousands of discarded books that they couldn’t sell at the time because this was before the internet.

She started buying the books in bulk. What happened next, she says, just came naturally. She started lending them out to other families.

HOWARD: And just at that time, friends of ours with a very large home were going to make a major two year travel around the United States and so they let us set up the library in their home. We had to add floor jacks below the floors to carry the weight and that library as you know is almost 30 years old now.

Howard lives in Florida now and runs a 42-thousand living books lending library. She predicts the lending library movement will only get bigger.

HOWARD: I believe that there are maybe 80 or so that are operating around the country. There’s one in Australia, one that I know of in England. But there are probably two to four hundred that are in development.

SOUND: [HAMMERING]

Or in Karen Laughlin’s case, re-development. It's been almost a year since she opened her tiny, three-thousand-book lending library in their new house. Now, they’re making renovations on the space.

LAUGHLIN: This gym will become a library and we’ll double our space.

PAYTON’S SON: Why is the cat in the hat orange? Why is his bowtie orange? Match his hat.

Fellow homeschool mom, Elsa Payton can’t wait to get her hands on more books that will occupy bigger shelves. Payton and her two sons were Laughlin’s first patrons.

ELSA PAYTON: I was like, I’m so excited. It wasn’t open yet at that time and I waited maybe a year.

Payton is part of a homeschool co-op and teaches history there. She’ll use each of the twenty books she’s checking out today in her lectures.

BROWN: How many in the co-op?

ELSA PAYTON: All together? Probably about fifty kids. We go all the way from preschool up to 13 and 14 year olds.

SOUND: [LAUGHLIN TAKING PICTURES OF BOOKS]

Laughlin pulls out her phone and starts taking pictures of the books going home with Payton.

LAUGHLIN: Right now we don’t have a scanning system and so I take pictures of everything and then when everyone leaves, I go ahead and enter them into my database by hand.

Laughlin calls it a labor of lending library love.

LAUGHLIN: When you’re a public library and you have tons of employees and funds and everything. That’s one thing. But when you’re alone and you’re homeschooling or working and you know making dinner and all these things, you’re never ready. But it doesn’t matter because you have some kind of resource that someone else can use.

AUDIO: I think your mama’s ready to go…

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Grand Bay, Alabama

AUDIO: We’re going home… yeah.. You’re ready….

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 17th. 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: the Bible in public schools.

A curriculum in Texas includes Bible stories and other religious materials and that’s raised a controversy.

State lawmakers grilled the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency in a public hearing last month.

REP. JAMES TALARICO: There is a difference between teaching and preaching. These passages which appear at length throughout the curriculum…in my reading they are preaching.

Are the concerns warranted? WORLD commentator Daniel Darling doesn’t think so.

DAN DARLING: The usual suspects are up in arms over a proposed public school curriculum in Texas. One education publication features this breathless headline: “Bible-infused curriculum sparks Texas-sized controversy over Christianity in the classroom.” From the ominous reports, one would think that classrooms in the Lone Star State are being converted into Sunday schools. One Democratic state representative calls it “egregious.” But the reality is different.

The Texas Education Agency posted the educational curriculum in May. It’s still subject to approval by the Texas Board of Education. The materials are not mandatory, though there are incentives for school districts that opt in.

A cursory reading of the materials shows that while the curriculum features many stories rooted in the Bible, they are also joined by lessons from other religions. What’s more, there are connections between history and Christianity: such as Esther’s heroic advocacy for the Jewish people in Persia and contemporary anti-Semitism, analysis of the religious content in Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” and an explanation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting.

Here’s an extended quote from Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath in The Washington Post, “There is content, where relevant, that provides information on various religious traditions. For example, as students learn about Ancient Greece, they will also learn about the religion of the Greeks. Students will learn about aspects of most major world religions. Content does not include religious lessons as one would find in a religious school, and instead is designed to provide background knowledge and vocabulary to ensure our students can reach high levels of academic proficiency and comprehend great literature.” 

What should American Christians think about Biblical teaching in state schools? On one hand, it would be a violation of the First Amendment establishment clause for the government to mandate compulsory Christian education at the expense of other religions. And we should be wary of a state that is empowered to decide and teach right and wrong religion.

The former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Richard Land said it well: “The last thing any devout follower of Jesus should want is government control of religion. The government will always get it wrong and pious followers of Christ will have their consciences violated.”

It is the job of the Church and parents to teach Christian doctrine, not the job of the state or its agencies.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that there is no such thing as a neutral public square. The hyperbolic reaction to any mention of Christianity or any reference to the Bible is also at odds with the American experiment.

America is not a secular nation. We are a country informed, in part, by Christian ideals. Consider George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” in which he stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” He goes on to say, “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

This idea has been repeated throughout American history by leaders from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. This is why G.K. Chesterton observed that America had “the soul of a church.”

Even the Supreme Court justices who rightly struck down mandated school prayer in state institutions issued a warning against a secularizing hostility toward religion.

In recent years, the court has clawed back some of this hostility to religion, including discrimination against religious involvement in social work such as foster care and adoption as well as allowing volunteer, teacher-lead prayer in schools.

Optional curriculum—like we see in Texas—is in keeping with the wisdom of the American founders and our constitutional tradition. It doesn’t violate the conscience and honors the sacred, yet different, roles of church and state.

I’m Daniel Darling.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: It’s more than Trump versus Harris at stake in November. We’ll have an overview of some of the big ballot issues voters will be deciding. That’s Washington Wednesday. And attending to the mental health of astronauts on long-term missions. 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 records that, “{Now} before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” John 13:1

Go now in grace and peace.

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