Civil Religion in America and Its Foundation in Christianity - BreakPoint This Week
Breakpoint
Colson Center
4.8 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2021
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When President Biden quoted St. Augustine and Scripture in his inaugural address, he was doing what almost every President before him has done: drawing on America's Christian tradition. Today on "BreakPoint This week," John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss America's "civil religion," the shared values of liberty and the dignity of all--but firmly rooted in Christianity. Ironically enough, even those vehemently opposed to Christianity in the public square (or opposed to causes Christians feel passionately about, such as protecting the unborn) profess these values, even though they are nonsensical outside of a Christian understanding of God's created order.
Also on today's episode: The rise in deaths from despair and acts of desperation; the plague of pornography; and the thinning of civil society,
As for their recommendations of the week, Shane slips into a Southern twang as he sings the praises of the folk group The Arcadian Wild and their decidedly Christian themes.
And John invites us all to join in with the Colson Center every Wednesday morning through March 31st for a time of guided prayer for our nation, informed by the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Colson Center Podcast Network. |
| 0:03.0 | This is Breakpoint this week, a weekly briefing on faith, culture, worldview, and mission with John Stone Street, president of the Colson Center for Christian World View. |
| 0:14.0 | Welcome to Breakpoint this week. I'm Shane Morris. I'm here with John Stone Street talking about the stories of the week from a Christian worldview perspective. You can find links to all of these stories by visiting |
| 0:24.5 | breakpoint.org and clicking on this program. John, as of now, we have a new president, and I |
| 0:31.4 | watch the, you know, amid the day's work, I watched the swearing in and the inauguration speech. |
| 0:39.4 | And there were some references that, |
| 0:44.8 | you know, newly inaugurated President Biden made that were really surprising to me, things that you or I might say in the same circumstance. He quoted St. Augustine talking about the idea of common loves |
| 0:51.2 | and a people's common loves and values. And then he made reference also to |
| 0:55.1 | scripture, to where it says that to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to |
| 0:59.0 | reap, a time to sew, a time to heal. And it's very interesting to me, John, because so much |
| 1:03.9 | of the last four years has been focused on this issue of what the president says. You know, |
| 1:09.5 | what does it mean when the president speaks and how does |
| 1:12.3 | it affect the nation as a whole? How powerful are his words? And then how do his words comport with |
| 1:17.4 | his policies and his actions? And this is the sort of question that arises as in many ways we see |
| 1:22.6 | a president come in who's sort of the opposite of the last one in a lot of issues where the words sound |
| 1:28.2 | really great. He's talking about unity. He's talking about being president for all Americans. He's |
| 1:32.9 | quoting Christian saints and the scriptures. And yet there are a number of policy issues on which |
| 1:37.3 | I don't think you or I make any secrets of the fact that we would be vehemently in disagreement |
| 1:42.3 | with this president and his party. |
| 1:44.9 | They're in their stated platform. |
| 1:46.0 | So I want to open up the show here and talk about the implications of a new presidency, |
| 1:50.3 | how we should be viewing this in light of all we've said about culture being usually upstream |
... |
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