Guest Column: Jesus Would Have Baked the Cake

Mar 18, 2026John StonestreetLGBTLGBT, Same-Sex Marriage

. . . and other nonsense Jesus would not have done.

On a Saturday morning in 2012, sitting on my porch reading an actual newspaper, I first learned of a Denver baker named Jack Phillips. A gay couple, having been “married in a different state,” asked Jack, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, to custom design a cake for their same-sex “wedding” celebration. Jack offered them service and any cake in his store that was already made. What he could not do, he said, was use his creative talent to communicate a message that violated his conscience and said what he knew to be untrue.

To say that a lot has happened since is, to put it mildly, an understatement. He was harassed by the state of Colorado, specifically the Civil Rights Commission. He was slandered online and subjected to death threats against him and his family. He was sued, not only by the state but also by a man—who claimed to be a woman—who repeatedly asked him to bake perverted and disgusting cakes. In the end, his case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, has been pivotal in advancing the rights of conscience, suppressing state hostility to religion, and attracting many to Christ.

But I also remember the chorus of voices, many of them Christian leaders, saying at the time, “Just bake the cake.” Or even, “Jesus would’ve baked the cake.” Jack was accused of hate, intolerance, and bigotry. But he stood courageously, even in the face of great criticism from brothers and sisters in Christ.

Thank God he did. Recently, at an event hosted by Colorado Christian University and featuring the brilliant Ayaan Hirsi Ali—one of those who was inspired by Jack’s story—I asked Jack, and Kristen Waggoner, Jack’s attorney and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom what he thinks now as he looks back on the past decade and a half.

Here’s Jack:

God tells us to live by a truth. He says we need to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. Jesus is the Truth, and we just have to know Him. And we get to know Him better and more clearly through His Word, through good teaching, and by spending time with Him. The more time you spend with Him, the better you know Him, and you don’t want to disappoint somebody you know well.

It would have been a huge disappointment to Jesus if I’d have [baked the cake] when He’s given us the power to live by what He says. And people want good news. There are tons of people who I’ve talked to who have been encouraged by this story. I think if I had made the cake . . . I don’t know because we’ve had so many things that have just happened that have been so good. Tonight is one of them.

Kristin Waggoner added more context:

In Jack’s situation, Jack modeled tolerance, and the other side did not. And so, it’s not about refusing to serve, because Jack serves everyone. Everybody. But when the government can compel you to speak messages and affirm lies that violate your conscience, then there is no limit to the government’s power. . .. So that’s really what that was about—it was “the message” that Jack was being asked to communicate.

I can tell you, having talked to hundreds of people over the last 10 years, that they have said that courage begets courage. And they’ve modeled that because they heard of Jack’s story, and it caused them to consider Christ and come to salvation. But it also caused them to be courageous in their moment.

One example that comes to mind is Sher Lori from Downtown Hope Center. She runs a homeless shelter in Alaska, and a man who identifies as a woman wanted to come into that shelter sleeping three feet away from the women in the shelter. As she’s coming down the stairs, she knows that the man is at the door wanting to come in. He had a reputation that would suggest that would not be a good thing. Even aside from the fact that he’s a man, he had violent tendencies and things like that. And what goes through her mind is, remember the baker. So, she gives that man cab money to go to the hospital to get his wounds cared for because he was in a fight earlier. But she does not let him in. She keeps that safe space for those women. So that’s what I think of; all the people who were inspired by Jack as well.

Praise God. The entire conversation, preceded by a stunning and brilliant speech by Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, is now available on YouTube. And, of course, the stories of Jack Phillips and Ayaan Hirsi-Ali are told in Truth Rising: The Study and the Truth Rising documentary. Learn more at colsoncenter.org/truth.

Western Civilization is Worth Defending: Guest Column

Mar 2, 2026John StonestreetCurrent EventsCurrent Events, Western Civilization

Marco Rubio has made a name, and a meme, for himself as the indispensable figure in the American government. Last week, the Secretary of State added to his reputation at the Munich Security Conference, offering a statesman-like defense of the West, emphasizing the historic and religious foundations shared by America and Europe. He also critiqued a false and misleading view of civilizational history.

The fall of the Soviet Union, Rubio said, led to the dangerous delusion,

that we had entered, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order—an overused term—would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.

Here, Rubio referenced, without naming, political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis. Fukuyama adopted G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophy of “History,” as the record of inevitable human advancement from one age to the next.

Though Fukuyama’s view helps explain why progressive politicians constantly claim to be on “the right side of history,” Rubio soundly rejected such thinking as “a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and . . . the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.” Such thinking, Rubio added, “has cost us dearly.”

Like Winston Churchill’s 1941 appeal to the United States—where he rallied the New World to partner with the Old World amid World War II—Rubio grounded a similar call in our shared heritage:

The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

We are part of one civilization—Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir . . .

We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.

Rubio’s speech appealed to a different understanding of civilizational history and stressed two key points. First, civilizations decline if they are not stewarded and protected. They must be protected from threats from within. Second, civilizations conflict with other civilizations that are built on alternative visions. Thus, they must be defended from threats from without.

In response to Rubio’s speech, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated that Western culture has a “thin” foundation, and that culture itself is an “evolving thing that is a response to the conditions that we live in.” Instead, it is “material, class-based” interests which should prevail.

Ocasio-Cortez’s views of social Darwinism and neo-Marxism also adopt a Hegelian philosophy of “History.” All is explained by the economic class struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. After stumbling around a good bit, the Congresswoman advocated a rehashed form of Critical Theory, which radically misunderstands human nature and historical facts. For quick reference to the terror, torture, famine, massacres, and atrocities that result when history and culture are reduced to class struggle, see The Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University.

In contrast, Rubio spoke to why America was committed to defending Western Civilization. Because doing so was defending “a way of life” that provided more freedom and opportunity than any other civilization in history. While not perfect, Western civilization “. . . has every reason to be proud of its history,” Rubio said.

Even more, it is the choices we make, not blind historical trends, that will shape the future. According to Rubio, “our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make . . ..[W]e in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.”

Christians should be the first to defend and promote what is good and worthy of preserving. We should also reject the delusion that blind historical forces canbring inevitable progress to the world. As Os Guinness and others articulated in the recent documentary Truth Rising, Western civilization is at a critical moment. How will we respond?

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico.

The Epstein Files, Pagan History, and Christian Morality: Guest Column

Feb 24, 2026John StonestreetSexChristianity, Church Ambassador Network, Ethics, Sex-Trafficking, Sexual Indecency

Years ago, before Epstein, the #MeToo movement, or even same-sex “marriage,” talk show host and Jewish theologian Dennis Prager wrote a fascinating article called “Judaism’s Sexual Revolution.” In it, he described how the pagan world was a sexual free-for-all that debased women and children in the service of male lust. Nearly every aspect of life was sexualized. The pagan gods engaged in no-holds-barred sex, and so did the people. As philosopher Martha Nussbaum, quoted by Prager, wrote, children and women were “very often treated interchangeably as [simple] objects of [male] desire.”

The very same awful treatment of God’s image bearers is on display again in the revelations emerging from the Epstein files. An incredible number of victims were trafficked and abused. An incredible number of evildoers were involved. A bunch of powerful people worked to keep it all hidden. That so much evil could have continued for so long staggers the imagination.

A remarkable difference today is that, unlike pre-Christian pagan societies, such behavior is considered evil rather than normal. That’s because the claim that God created sex only for a man and a woman in marriage was so revolutionary. As Prager wrote,

This revolution forced the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, it heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and it began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.

As Christianity, which shared the Genesis account of creation, grew and expanded in influence, it collided with Roman paganism, which also victimized women and children. Except for some in the elite class, Roman women were often treated worse than Roman cattle. Even upper-class women were little more than possessions, and when it came to sexuality, they were at their husband’s beck and call and could be disposed of at will.

Slave women, who were a full third of Rome’s female population, could expect beatings and rape. The “fortunate” ones were sold into prostitution. Unwanted girls were left to die of exposure.

Into that world came Christianity, specifically the writings of St. Paul. As historian Sarah Ruden wrote in her 2010 book, Paul Among the People, to call Paul an “oppressor of women,” as modern scholars do, could “hardly be more wrong.”:

It is profoundly ignorant to think of the Apostle Paul as a dour proto-Puritan descending upon happy-go-lucky pagan hippies, ordering them to stop having fun.” On the contrary, “Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time . . .

Christianity “worked a cultural revolution,” Ruden wrote, “restraining and channeling the male Eros, elevating the status of both women and of the human body, and infusing marriage—and marital sexuality—with love.” In Ruden’s words, Christian ideas about marriage were “as different from anything before or since as the command to turn the other cheek.”

“No wonder,” Prager wrote, that the “improvement of the condition of women has only occurred in Western civilization.” It is also no wonder that biblical sexual morality was so despised by the ancient pagans in power. Not because it robbed them of “fun,” but because they could no longer rationalize their predations.

Of course, modern pagans also despise Christian sexual morality, but they are also forced to borrow from it as they condemn the kind of horrific treatment of women and children revealed in the Epstein files. The “uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations,” as Paul Anleitnerposted on X, is that…

We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity.

Before the spread of Christianity, “civilized” Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage s*x slaves. This was normal. Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy. We’ve heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.

That is why it’s so tragic when Christians abandon the clear, life-giving vision of human sexuality that liberated the pagan world. Yet that’s what many have done, even thinking themselves “loving” and “tolerant” in the process. It is, in fact, cruel—not loving—to withhold truth from broken people in a confused culture.

And that is not our only betrayal. To protect churches, Christian institutions, and favored leaders, Christians have often turned a blind eye to, or even covered up abuse, harassment, or worse happening within. That’s a betrayal of people made in the image of God, as well as of the Truth that can set them—and us—free.

In other words, the correct response to our failure to live up to the biblical vision of human dignity is not to pat ourselves on the back for that vision. Rather, it is to confess our own hypocrisy and to repent of our own sins. No matter who is implicated in this horror, we should pray that, as Jesus said, “there is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.”

We should also pray that the long, continued, evil efforts to keep these files hidden will fail, and that God will bring justice that is long overdue. Finally, we should, as professor Paul deHart posted on X, “Thank God that pagan morality was overthrown.” If it had not been, there would be no movement to reveal this evil, punish the evildoers, and offer the victims justice.

Photo Credit: Geoff Livingston from DC, USA, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.