Silhouetted against an azure sky and the towering backdrop of Pikes Peak, Focus on the Family’s picturesque Colorado Springs campus was teeming with activity this past Friday, day two of a three-day festival celebrating the 1000th episode of our award-winning children’s radio drama, “Adventures in Odyssey.”
Silhouetted against an azure sky and the towering backdrop of Pikes Peak, Focus on the Family’s picturesque Colorado Springs campus was teeming with activity this past Friday, day two of a three-day festival celebrating the 1000th episode of our award-winning children’s radio drama, “Adventures in Odyssey.”
Debuting on airwaves in 1987, the fantastical program has enjoyed a legion of fans over the years. Even its earliest supporters within the ministry weren’t convinced they’d find an audience.
“We weren’t even sure we’d make fifty episodes, let alone one thousand,” said Chuck Bolte, its one-time executive producer. “We knew it was well done, but there wasn’t anything really like it at the time.”
Over 37 years later, some things haven’t changed. The “One Grand Party” weekend kicked off on Thursday with a “Night at the Soda Shoppe” dinner.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, there’s been discussion and debate within the pro-life movement over how best to protect preborn children.
Should pro-life advocates advance laws on just the state level? Or should there be a federal prohibition on abortion, protecting babies nationwide after they reach a certain week of gestation, or even at conception?
Many pro-life organizations, including Focus on the Family, affirm that babies deserve to be protected nationwide via federal abortion legislation, in addition to state protections.
Whether a preborn baby gets a chance at life should not be determined by their zip code, or what state they live in.
The panel at SoConCon 2024, “Federal Rights for the Unborn,” featured remarks from several experts on the life issue, including Professor O. Carter Snead, Charles E. Rice professor of law at the University of Notre Dame; Stephen Billy, vice president of state affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America; Frank Cannon, chief political strategist at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America; and Autumn Christensen, vice president of public policy at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Legal Analysis
Professor Snead asserted that the pro-life movement is at an inflection point following the Dobbs decision.
In an Olympics characterized by blasphemy, forced veganism, televised domestic violence and swimming in sewage — women’s rugby sensation Ilona Maher is an undeniably wholesome highlight.
The bubbly athlete, who led the Americans to a bronze medal in Paris, is a budding social media star. Millions of people follow Maher on Instagram and TikTok for her relatable humor and positivity. She routinely uses her platform to remind women that strength and femininity aren’t mutually exclusive.
So, naturally, millions of social media users felt compelled to call her a man on X (formerly Twitter).
While inexcusable, the cyberbullying didn’t surprise me so much as the number of people who seemed to believe mocking Maher, a biological woman, somehow contributed to the fight against gender ideology.
In reality, Maher illustrates the foundational argument against gender ideology: that sex is biological, not socially constructed.
Let’s break it down.
The slew of hurtful comments began with an innocuous post of Maher dancing before the opening ceremonies, captioned, “Olympics athlete Ilona Maher is being compared to 80s Brooke Shields.”
It is a basic and irrefutable truth: There is no tomorrow without babies today. No laughter, no giving, no receiving, no learning, no caring, no hope, no progress — no society.
Sadly, birth rates are declining dramatically all around the world and fertility in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.
Increasingly, younger women are opting to not have children.
The Pew Research Center just released a major survey and analysis examining the reasons men and women give for remaining childless.
But an interesting angle in Pew’s report is they examined views and perspectives of those over and under 50 years of age. The differences found are intriguing and notable.
Here’s what was striking: The share of U.S. childless adults under age 50 who say it is unlikely they will ever have kids rose a solid 10 percentage points from 2018 to 2023 (37 to 47% respectively).
Their likelihood of having children declined by 11 percentage points, from 61% in 2018 to just 50% in 2023. That is a very dire societal trend line, moving in precisely the wrong direction for a healthy future.
One of the starkest findings relative to age category was that 57% of adults under 50 who say it is unlikely they will ever have kids stated it was simply because they “just don’t want to” while only 31% of those over 50 gave this reason for never having children.
On the elite stage of the Olympics, top-rated, trained, disciplined and talented athletes compete in their events to bring home the gold that each has been training years to achieve. But what happens when they aren’t fueled well?
This might be the case in the 2024 Olympics with the organization deciding to choose a vegan route with “fake meat meals and non-dairy options.” Because Olympians were upset about the “Vegan Olympics,” as they called it, more than “700kg of eggs and a tonne of extra meat” has been called in for the athletes to eat.
The Australian noted that the Paris Olympic Games organizers ordered “60 percent of food at all Olympic venues be vegan to reduce carbon footprint of dairy, meat, and cheese.”
With some Olympians divided between fueling themselves well and fretting over the release of carbon emissions into the world, Christians could be asking some of the same questions.
Should believers be vegetarian and/or vegan? Does it really matter?
Focus on the Family has previously written about this.
According to Focus, many believers hold different opinions, and there is no right answer. The Bible does not explicitly tell a believer what the right way is to eat — that is where free will comes in. The International Olympic Committee made that decision for the athletes, thinking they knew what was best.
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