A big victory was that the Department of Defense issued a revised instruction entitled, “Religious Liberty in the Military Services.” This updated policy is grounded in the Constitution and recognizes one of our first liberties is the free exercise of our religious faith and includes the men and women who selfless serve our nation in the military.  It emphasizes that service members have the right to observe the tenets of their religion and may not be used as the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination, or denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment. That’s a great victory for religious liberty. 

However, we still need to be ready and prepared for upcoming battles in 2021 where there are those who will continue to assault our God-given and Constitution-protected liberty to live out our faith.  Being prepared and being ready are always on the minds of our men and women serving so faithfully in the military. There is not a day that goes by that they are not training.  They must be ready at a moment’s notice to answer the call.  They don’t have time to “get ready.” They need to “be ready.” And to “be ready,” they train, train, and train some more.  

Pray that our LCMS Ministry to the Armed Forces is always ready to defend religious liberty for all who wear the uniform of our nation.  We don’t know the future, but we do know that we live in a sin-sick world and that there will be those who try to infringe on our religious liberty.  In America we may not yet be hauled out of our places of worship, our homes, or our businesses by evil people who threaten our physical life, yet we do live in a “cancel” culture where people are losing their jobs, businesses, or positions simply for giving a defense of their faith and speaking out against issues that go contrary to their conscience and the Word of God. They want you to leave your faith at the door of the church and/or your home and not bring it out into the public square.

Please pray for wisdom and courage as we stand alongside our LCMS members serving in the military that we may encourage them and defend them against assaults on their religious liberty.   Please pray that we remain vigilant in our defense of religious liberty for those who sacrifice so much for all the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today. 

Finally, remind those whom you know who are currently serving in the military that they are in our prayers and they don’t have to leave their religious faith at home when they join the military.  We are here to help them.

The Rev. Craig G. Muehler is CAPT, CHC, USN, (Ret.) and director of LCMS Ministry to the Armed Forces.

Be Informed

Did you know that the New England Journal of Medicine is calling for the removal of sex from birth certificates? Learn more from Wesley Smith in a recent Issues, Etc. interview.

Be Equipped

The Hyde Amendment has saved some two million lives since 1976. Now some want to repeal it. 

Be Encouraged

“[T]the family is universal. Individuals meeting from different cultures do not have to explain to each other what a family is. The family lies at the quantum level of human society. Family life is deeply rooted in an area of mystery we do not fully understand. Like a tree, it is living, rooted, and nourished by the soil of the past and reaching up into the future. It is not manufactured. Although socially reinforced, it is not ‘socially constructed.’ It is a precious Gift.” –James M. Kushiner, The Fellowship of St. James, www.lutheransforlife.org

On that date, voters in a single state will determine whether the new 117^th U.S. Senate will have a majority of Democrats or Republicans.  The race includes Sen. Kelly Loeffler versus Raphael Warnock and Sen. David Perdue versus Jon Ossoff.

Because the U.S. Constitution says whomever is Vice President of the United States is also President of the U.S. Senate, and therefore can vote if he or she chooses to, especially on highly-controversial matters, it is possible that the Democrats could improve their voting total to 50 votes if they win both Georgia races, giving them a clear-majority when Kamala Harris, a current U.S. Senator from California, becomes Vice President.

If the Republicans win only one of those two contested Georgia senate seats, they would have a majority of 51 seats; had Vice President Mike Pence retained his office, the GOP would have 52 votes.

The House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats, but by the lowest margin since the early 2000s.

Here’s what all this means and why it is important. 

The best-case scenario for the Democrats would be to win both Georgia senate seats and have Kamala Harris become Vice President.

If a Senate dominated by Democrats decides to do away with the so-called filibuster – that is a fancy word for needing 60 votes to pass any important legislation – their likely wish-list of major new initiatives would make the new U.S. Senate the most consequential since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs were passed overwhelmingly in that upper legislative body in near-record time during the 1960s.

If the Democrats become the majority in the senate, and former Vice President Biden becomes the new President of the United States, here are the ten most important legislative proposals to watch for:

+   statehood proposals for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.  This would give the Democratic Party a probable added four new seats in the U.S. Senate because both Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are overwhelmingly Democratic;

+   some version of graduated amnesty for millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.  This number could be as high as 15 million and as low as 11 million;

+   the end of the filibuster.  This voting-protocol has been a fundamental tool to give strong representation and input to the minority party; without it, and especially on all controversial matters, the majority opinion would always prevail.  This is decidedly not what our Founders wanted or envisioned;

+   the end of the Electoral College. The ramifications of ending the Electoral College are immense and would constitute one of the most radical changes in American history.  The Founders designed it as a stop-gap to allowing the largest states by population to have an outsize influence on the governing of the country. They were wise in its design. Abolishing the electoral college would be a mistake of enormous proportions;

+   creating a larger public option for health care in America.  What this would amount to would be the eventual abolition of private insurance and the building a single-payer health care system much like Western Europe’s socialized medical systems.  Most progressives see this as the logical next-step after ObamaCare;

+   the provision of monetary reparations for slavery. Many members of the present House and Senate favor this idea and are keen to begin its design and implementation;

+  major tax increases. Vice President Biden and Senator Harris, in their primary bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, and during their summer political convention, promised substantial increases in several sectors of American life totaling into the trillions of dollars;

+   codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law and abolishing the Hyde Amendment.  Democrats have long been uncomfortable with the possible chipping-away at the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision imposing abortion in all 50 states up to and including the ninth month of pregnancy.  Both Biden and Harris favor transforming the abortion decision into standing federal law. Similarly, the Hyde Amendment has banned federal funding of abortion successfully Congress after Congress.  The Democrats strongly favor taxpayer-funded abortion, and the toppling and ultimate repealing of Hyde is a major goal;

+   expanding the Supreme Court by up to three seats.  The U.S. Constitution does not mandate the number of justices, but the present nine-member model has been the standard for over a century.  Packing the court to add more liberal justices is an idea that Vice President Biden would strongly consider, and has promised to convene a new national advisory counsel likely to recommend new seats on America’s highest court;

+   voiding religious exemptions from various federal laws. Currently, the cornerstone protection of religious liberty and conscience protections at the federal level – congruent with the Constitution itself – are provisions in federal law that rightly give churches and religious institutions broad leeway.  Biden and Harris are uncomfortable with that latitude and, for instance, strongly favor punishing the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious groups by removing foundational protections.  We would see much more of that anti-Little Sisters model in a new senate; and finally,

+   elements of the Green New Deal would be proposed and enacted; as with most major environmental legislation, the ramifications for families and communities would be directive and burdensome.  Also, population control and mandates on suburban, exurban, and rural America would be an essential element of long-term environmentalism.  The vague nature of the Green New Deal is seen by its strongest proponents as a plus so that potential opponents or critics are kept in the dark until the last moment.

A sage once observed that “elections have consequences.”  Perhaps none as consequential as the pending 117 United States Congress depending on how those elections in Georgia transpire.

Timothy S. Goeglein is vice president of External and Government Relations for Focus on the Family, Washington, D.C.

Be Informed

Identity politics are popping up everywhere, even at places like the Smithsonian Museum. Learn more from Joy Pullman in a recent Issues, Etc. interview.

Be Equipped

Did you know that Planned Parenthood aborted some 1,500 babies each day in 2018? The numbers from their annual reports will horrify you. Click here to read more.

Be Encouraged

“As this New Year begins and you make resolutions of things to do for yourself, consider ways in which you could spend one hour a week helping someone in need—at a crisis pregnancy center, a hospice house, a nursing home, etc.” –Rev. Scott Licht, National Director of Lutherans For Life, www.lutheransforlife.org

The primary value behind the label “pro-choice” is the ability to will. My desires must be gratified, even at the expense of another. Friedrich Nietzsche, that prophet par excellence of our age, insisted that all of life is reducible to the will to power. This assertion that individual will is primary means considerations of justice or goodness or rightness must either fall away or be subsumed under “choice.” The absolute rightness of choice is thus elevated as the single and unimpeachable principle; if the essence of a human being is nothing other than the capacity to choose, this elevation is entirely reasonable. What is forgotten in the euphoria of choice is a helpless human being. Abortion advocates must either deny the humanity of the unborn (a position that is increasingly difficult to maintain) or bite the Nietzschean bullet and acknowledge that abortion is at its core the exercise of power—the strong eliminating those who impede their freedom.

Read more from Dr. Veith by clicking here.

Be Informed

Is there a connection between fatherlessness and the street violence that occurred in 2020? Mary Eberstadt, author of Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, explains in a recent interview with Issues, Etc.

Be Equipped

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently that Texas can remove Planned Parenthood facilities from its Medicaid program.  Learn more from KFUO.org.

Be Encouraged

“Will you be without loved ones this holiday season? Will you be struggling with illness or discouragement? Will you feel the pressure to make the holiday season great? You are not alone. You are not on your own. Read John 10, a great chapter about a Good Shepherd. Listen to His voice comfort and strengthen you.” –Rev. John Boeder, Martin Luther College

Help support our efforts to contend for the freedom to proclaim the faith. Click here to learn more or to donate.

But there is also a place for communal repentance, which we do as congregations, as church bodies, and even as nations.  Look around you, fellow Americans, and tell me what you see.  What have you grown accustomed to?  For half a century, abortion has been the law of the land, and the lives of some sixty million little ones have been taken, by the most brutal of means.   No doubt, Satan is at work among us.  First he came for the children, but then also for natural marriage, the blessed union of one man and one woman, written into creation.   Divorce and cohabitation are far too common among us, hardly arousing even the blink of an eye.  Same-sex marriage and homosexuality are not only tolerated among us, but now they are even celebrated, promoted with pride and parades. 

And yet, we as Christians have been all too silent.  The apostles were told to teach us to observe all things whatsoever our Lord commanded.   Christ warned us that if we are ashamed of Him and His words, so also will He be ashamed of us on the day of judgement.  This is not about moral issues, as if we were breaking some sort of civil code or regulation.  This is about fidelity to the God who created us and to the Lord who as a Bridegroom laid down His life for us.

Now, one may be tempted to say that they are not engaging in unnatural relationship and have loved their children.  But the problem runs deeper, for we shall be judged not only for things done, but for things left undone.  In the face of the lies that swirl around our children, we are called to speak the truth about the value of children, the sanctity of natural marriage, and, yes, now, the truth of male and female.  This world has become a fearful place for Christians.  Now I think of the baker, the photographer, the florist who have come under fire for operating their businesses according to the truth revealed in sacred Scripture. I think of Christian adoption agencies and schools endangered simply for operating under the assumption that children need a mother and a father.   And then I think of all the Christians who have remained silent, who have not come to the defense of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Make no mistake, our nation is in crisis.  The secular world threatens to overwhelm us, even as we find it more and more difficult to do something so simple as to attend church weekly, with mundane matters like youth sports, or perhaps plain laziness, get in the way.   What can we do in all this?  Simply this.  Repent.  Put on the sack cloth and ashes.  Bend the knee and bow the head.  Sing a song of sorrow over our sin.  Pray that the Lord would have mercy on us, wretched ones that we are.  Pray that He would deliver us from this body of sin, that He would create a new heart in us, so that we might learn to value His words over the siren songs and deceptions of those who opinion we value far too highly.  Pray that forgiven, we might turn away from evil, fight for that which is good, speak the truth in season and out, and at the end, hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The Rev. Dr. Peter Scaer is the chairman and professor of Exegetical Theology and director of the M.A. Program at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Be Informed

“The Supreme Court handed a partial victory to a California church arguing that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions on the number of worshippers allowed at a service violate its religious freedom on Thursday.” Read more here.  

Be Equipped

Did you know that a record number of pro-life women were elected to the U.S. Senate and House this year? Learn more from Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List.

Be Encouraged

“Let us remember that Christ’s coming into the world began with an unexpected pregnancy. Mary of Nazareth was unmarried and certainly had reason to be confused and afraid when she was asked to carry the Son of God. But she courageously let God’s plan unfold for her and her Child and brought our Savior into this world, despite her uncertain circumstances.” –Right to Life of Michigan

Help support our efforts to contend for the freedom to proclaim the faith. Click here to learn more or to donate.