John Stonestreet – Page 3

From One Clinic to Millions of Aborted Babies: Guest Column

Oct 31, 2025John StonestreetAbortionAbortion, Life, Planned Parenthood, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

On this day in 1916, the first birth control clinic in America was opened in Brooklyn, New York. Margaret Sanger, a nurse who worked among the poor on the Lower East Side, founded the Brownsville Clinic, which was later renamed after her. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, the organization that would lead America into an era of child killing. An estimated 64.5 million babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in 1973. Though the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, abortion had already, as Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis argued in their book, poisoned nearly every aspect of our culture.

At the heart of Sanger’s views was a deep, insipient racism that continues to express in the work of the organization she founded. An avowed advocate of eugenics, Sanger famously launched “The Negro Project” to reduce or eliminate the Black population by encouraging sterilization and birth control. Though the context of her words is debated, Sanger once described the project by saying:

We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Sanger’s legacy is straightforward. While African Americans make up about 14% of the U.S. population, as of 2021, 28% of all abortions are from black women, compared to 6.4% of white women. Black moms are somewhere between three and five times more likely to have an abortion than white moms. In New York City, thousands more black babies are aborted than are born each year.

In the book How to be an Anti-Racist, which was on The New York Times Bestseller list for 45 straight weeks, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi defined racism as anything that “produces or sustains racial inequity.” According to Kendi, intention does not matter. Only outcomes matter.

Ironically, Kendi and other progressives center abortion rights in the cultural agenda for diversity, equality, and inclusion. However, according to his own (flawed) definition of racism, there is no more racist practice than abortion, and there is no cultural institution more racist than Planned Parenthood. Over 19 million more African-American people would be in the world today if not for legalized abortion and Planned Parenthood. Even more, Planned Parenthood’s business model directly targets black and other minority women. A 2017 Protecting Black Life study found that 22 of 25 abortion mega-centers were located within walking distance of black communities.

The idea of “systemic” or “institutional racism” is controversial. Often, the concepts are used to subvert debate and condemn political opponents. However, it should not be theologically controversial to suggest that sin can take systemic and structural forms. There are examples throughout Scripture and human history. For example, prior to the flood, God described the evil of man as “great in the earth, and … every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5 ESV).

Systems and structures can operate, with either intention or inertia, in ways that harm certain groups. This does not alleviate individual responsibility for evil. Rather, it is what happens because evil corrupts hearts and minds, people and nations, and individuals and systems.

There is no greater example of systemic racism in an organization than Planned Parenthood. Proponents of eugenics, like Sanger, wanted wealthy, healthy and strong people to have more babies, and poor, sick, disabled, and minority people to have fewer (or no) babies. Of course, the women who walk into a Planned Parenthood today are not thinking about Margaret Sanger or her racist views. They are in crisis and looking for help. Many are in poverty. Way too many are being pressured to abort. Many are scared. Black mothers are nearly three times as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth as white mothers. All have been raised in a society in which abortion has been normalized.

Years ago, Planned Parenthood of New York removed Sanger’s name from its clinic. They even appealed to the city to change the name “Margaret Sanger Square.” Distancing from Sanger does not lessen the evil of her views or life’s work. Nor does it redeem the racist foundations upon which Planned Parenthood has been built and still operates.

Bringing Back the Bible: Guest Column

Oct 20, 2025John StonestreetReligious FreedomReleased Time, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

The Bible has been the book that has held together the fabric of Western Civilization. … The civilization we possess could not come into existence and could not have been sustained without it. – H.G. Wells

This quote opens a new documentary, Off School Property, which premieres in theaters on October 23. The film aims to correct the record on one of the most misunderstood aspects of America’s storied history: the separation of church and state. Specifically, the film attempts to convince Americans that it is not illegal to teach the Bible to public school kids.

Off School Property was produced by the team at LifeWise Academy and highlights something many Americans do not know. As the film website states:

[W]hile the Bible was being removed, an obscure 1952 Supreme Court ruling paved the way to bring it back. This solution has been sitting right under our noses for 70 years, and it allows students to study the Bible—legally—during the public school day.

The goal of LifeWise Academy is to expand Bible instruction to as many of America’s 50 million public school kids as possible, using a network of buses, off-site class space, and a growing number of trained teachers. In addition to the logistical challenge, the most difficult task is to correct the false assumption that there is no place for God or the Bible in government-run schools. It is an assumption based on the enduring myth that the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment is really freedom from religion.

This interpretation relies on a phrase from Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists, the first reference to “a wall of separation between Church & State.” But this interpretation of The First Amendment and Jefferson’s letter is exactly backwards. In the vision of America’s Founders, religious freedom is not about keeping religion out of government but keeping government out of religion.

By the mid-twentieth century, this interpretation was replaced by hostility for religion. People were expected to leave their faith outside the voting booth, outside the courtroom, and, most notably, outside the schoolhouse door. When Madalyn Murray O’Hair pushed for Bibles to be removed from public schools, she did not appeal to “neutrality.” Rather, she declared, “We are Atheists. As such, we are foes of any and all religions. We want the Bible out of school because we do not accept it as being either holy or an accurate historical document.”

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. American students have been told for generations that life has no meaning, that truth is an illusion, that moral claims are impositions of power, that they are animals, and that God is a matter of personal preference. In the Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis argued against this approach to education, which he called making “men without chests”:

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Off School Property corrects the record about the separation of church and state as applied to America’s government-run schools. In 1952, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that teaching the Bible during the school day was, in fact, legal, if it was privately funded, conducted off school property, and done with parental permission. LifeWise Academy has built a national model of launching and resourcing Bible education to public school students during school hours. The LifeWise model is “plug and play” and has been implemented in over 150 school districts across the country.

Off School Property premiers in theaters October 23. Visit lifewise.org/offschoolproperty for more information and to find a theater near you that will be airing the film.

The Quiet Revival of Gen Z: Guest Column

Oct 3, 2025John StonestreetChristianityChristianity

Back in April, The Bible Society of the U.K. issued a report describing a “quiet revival” across England and Wales. “Church decline in England and Wales has not only stopped,” read the subheading, “but the Church is growing, as Gen Z leads an exciting turnaround in church attendance.” Though the report has its fair share of critics, it launched an essential conversation.

Last Sunday, James Marriott continued that conversation with an article in the U.K. publication The Times entitled “Full-fat faith: the young Christian converts filling our churches.” Marriott, who labels himself “a dry and desiccated materialist,” described what he called “a comeback for Christianity.” At least part of this comeback is, Marriott thinks, due to a widespread and growing disenchantment with atheism. Once, he wrote:

[I]t was widely held that the world was soaring ineluctably along an arc of enlightened progress. We were all destined to become richer, more democratic, more just, more rational and more secular. But those optimistic beliefs have been sorely tested in difficult recent years. Anyone tempted to simply dismiss the idea that religion could ever revive may not grasp how dramatically the cultural and economic landscape inhabited by young people has changed.

Instead of the utopia that was promised, the post-9/11 reality included economic disruption, Covid, wokeness, and thought police. As a result, many young people are rebelling to a more traditional form of the Christian faith. According to Marriott:

If you’re young, the establishment is obviously secular. Nowadays, it is precisely Christianity’s marginal status that lends it glamour and charisma, comparable perhaps to the appeal of exotic-seeming eastern religions in the 1960s. 

Last week, I spoke about the “quiet revival” in the U.K. with podcaster, author, and apologist Justin Brierley. He was among the first to identify what he called “the surprising rebirth of belief in God.” For example, according to a recent poll of non-Christian, Gen-Z students, 75% said they’d consider attending church if invited. And though church attendance is typically higher on Easter, this past Resurrection Sunday broke records all over Europe. According to one poll, the number of 16– to 24-year-olds in the U.K. attending church at least once a month jumped from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024.

There’s still much to learn about this phenomenon, and it remains to be seen how sticky this new-found faith will be for these young people raised in such highly secular environments. It’s fascinating how, merely a decade ago, we were focused on the rise of “the Nones,” who often claimed the church had let them down. Today, we are talking about the rise of the religious who were let down by secularism.

One more factor worth mentioning, as Marriott put it (perhaps channeling John Calvin)— humans are inescapably religious:

I suspect the supernatural side of life—not much catered for in secular rationalist democracies—is a constant of human nature, even if only for a minority. It has more room for expression now. If man is a religious animal, God may never really be banished.

Indeed, secularism as a worldview is simply not big enough for the God-shaped hole in the human heart. As more young people realize this, the Church has an incredible opportunity to help them find the One who can. You can hear my entire conversation with Justin Brierley about the “quiet revival” on a special bonus episode of the Breakpoint podcast.