The First Thanksgiving. Should AI Run the Government? Wrong Beliefs about the Afterlife. And the Demographic Crisis in the Western World

Summary

Breakpoint Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: Breakpoint
Date: November 28, 2025
Episode: The First Thanksgiving. Should AI Run the Government? Wrong Beliefs about the Afterlife. And the Demographic Crisis in the Western World
Hosts: Sarah Stonestreet & John Stonestreet

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Brief Overview

This Thanksgiving week, Sarah and John Stonestreet discuss pressing cultural issues from a Christian worldview. The episode examines misconceptions about the first Thanksgiving, the prospects (and dangers) of AI governance, muddled beliefs about the afterlife among Christians, and the stark demographic crisis facing the West. The Stonestreets weave historical insight, contemporary data, and theological reflection, prompting listeners to recognize gratitude, oppose reductionist narratives, and embrace their calling within family and society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The First Thanksgiving and the Forgotten History of Socialism in America

Timestamps: 01:01–11:48

• Misconceptions about Thanksgiving:
  Many only know a sanitized or one-dimensional narrative, missing key lessons about early settlements.

• Early American Socialism:

  • Plymouth and Jamestown failed at early forms of communal/socialist economics.
  • John:

    “It just doesn’t work because it’s not the way humans are. Humans were created to be innovative...” (02:52)

  • These settlements misunderstood human nature, expecting equal input without linking to individual incentive.
  • Human innovation, self-starter-ship, and the biblical call to subdue and steward creation are fundamentally at odds with socialism ("violates that at every single level." - 05:32)

• The Role of Women in Jamestown:

  • Jamestown initially excluded women for safety; men became lazy and unproductive.
  • Sarah:

    “It’s too dangerous to leave them out.” (07:23)

  • Bringing women over spurred settlement success, illustrating God’s wisdom: "It’s not good for men to be alone.” (07:42)

• Purpose of Thanksgiving:

  • Rooted in remembering both God’s providence and hard, learned lessons.
  • Sarah:

    “Thanksgiving was established so that we would remember these things, we would remember our story and where we came from.” (07:42)

  • The "thanks" is more than food, football, or shopping; it’s “an acknowledgment of the kind of creatures we are…we exist because of God. We're unnecessary. He's necessary.” (10:18)

• Challenging Critical Theory Narratives:

  • Popular “oppression” and “oppressed/oppressor” frameworks do not explain the full history.
  • John:

    “You can’t make the entire story one about oppression…that framework...becomes the only explanation.” (09:35)

  • The Christian worldview is big enough to hold gratitude and the reality of human fallenness.

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2. Should AI Run the Government? (Polling Young Voters)

Timestamps: 13:25–22:48

• Startling Poll:

  • 41% of voters aged 18–39 support giving AI government powers.
  • Sarah:

    “41% of young voters say they'd give AI government power. Help with that?” (13:25)

• Loss of Trust & Tech Optimism:

  • Frustration with human institutions and familiarity with tech drive this support.
  • AI already wields influence (e.g., airport security, facial recognition).
  • John:

    “We are a culture thoroughly used to computers doing the hard thinking and the hard work for us…” (17:05)

• Worldview Questions Underlying Tech Surrender:

  • Without a Christian view of human exceptionalism, why not let ‘better matter’ (AI) rule?
  • Naturalism, reductionism, and loss of intermediary institutions (family, church, schools) enable the tech solutionism mentality.
  • John:

    “All problems look like they can be solved by computers. Right? I mean that's a little bit of shorthand for what's happening, but you know, I think that's really part of it.” (21:53)

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3. Wrong Beliefs About the Afterlife Among Christians

Timestamps: 23:51–30:39

• Barna’s Worldview Survey:

  • Growing disconnect between professing Christians and doctrinal clarity.
  • One-third believe good people earn salvation; one-third believe in reincarnation; only 52% of Christians expect to spend eternity with God.
  • John:

    “I think what it shows is that there’s an awful lot of muddled thinking on this...they get world together.” (27:56)

• Authority Crisis:

  • Issue isn’t just what people believe, but where they get their beliefs (often feelings/experience over scripture).
  • John:

    “It’s a crisis of authority, not just what people believe, but the problem is people don’t know where they should get their beliefs as a Christian.” (29:05)

  • Sarah notes privatization of religion leads to relativism (“buffet approach”).

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4. The Demographic Crisis in the Western World

Timestamps: 30:39–41:41

• Staggering UK Data:

  • 1 in 3 pregnancies end in abortion.
  • Links to declining fertility in other Western nations and a broader “existential threat.”
  • John:

    “The greatest existential threat to the Western world...is the demographic winter.” (31:01)

• Root Causes & Consequences:

  • Secularism leads to devaluing marriage/children (anti-human worldview), undermining the future workforce and social structure.
  • Even Islamic countries’ birth rates fall when secularized.
  • Facing declining populations, Western societies turn to technological "solutions" (robotics, AI) which further depersonalize society.

• Celebrating Family & Countercultural Witness:

  • The message that marriage/children are beautiful must be taught actively.
  • Sarah:

    “Let’s encourage our listeners because that’s discouraging.” (36:14)

  • John:

    “The most important thing the church can do is to help young people get married and have babies. And it has to do with saving civilization.” (36:19)

  • Emphasizes that no other voices will teach this; culture will teach antinatalism.

• Happiness and Marriage:

  • Surveys say the happiest people are “middle aged, religious, married women with children.”
  • John:

    “We’ve lost the sense that marriage and babies are good...” (38:29)

  • Invokes Chesterton: “The most extraordinary thing is an ordinary woman, ordinary man, and ordinary kids…”

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5. Listener Q&A

Timestamps: 41:41–55:10

• On Christian Teachers in Public Schools:

  • Affirmation that being a Christian educator in public schools is a calling, despite the system’s failings.
  • John:

    “God doesn’t have wonderful believers in the public school system who are actively trying to be redemptive agents with individual lives.” (43:29)

  • Teachers can be “salt and light” but must walk a different path than the mainstream system.

• On Transgender Ideology, the Cass Report, and Language:

  • Responds to critique about misrepresenting reports on gender therapy.
  • John:

    “[The] Cass report declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations. That's what the Cass report said.” (47:13)

  • Addresses “dog whistle” language: terms like “cisgender” are ideological inventions themselves; legitimacy of calling “transgenderism” an ideology.
  • John:

    “There’s not a movement in our lifetime that has made up more terms than the transgender movement...” (50:20)

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6. Recommendations & Closing

Timestamps: 55:10–end

• John’s Recommendation:
  • Honoring the end of the Strong Women podcast (hosted by Sarah); encourages listening to its extensive archive of interviews.
• Sarah’s Recommendation:
  • Intentionally connect with older generations; let your kids observe and learn from older couples and families.
  • Sarah:

    “Find some old people. Get to know them. Have your kids get to know them, ask them questions...” (56:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Socialism Failing in Early America:

  “All of us are bad people. So any of us trying it in any situation is going to lead to some level of failure.”
  – John (05:18)

• On Family and Work:

  “Maybe God knew what he was saying when he said it’s not good for man to be alone.”
  – John (07:42)

• On Thanksgiving’s Core:

  “Gratitude in and of itself is an acknowledgment of the kind of creatures we are, right? … We exist because of God. We're unnecessary. He's necessary.”
  – John (10:33)

• On Tech Solutionism:

  “To a post technological, materialistic, naturalistic, secular society, all problems look like they can be solved by computers.”
  – John (21:53)

• On Demographics:

  “This is an anti human worldview and it’s an anti human worldview with anti human results.”
  – John (34:11)

• On the Call of the Church:

  “The most important thing the church can do is to help young people get married and have babies. And it has to do with saving civilization.”
  – John (36:19)

• On Transgender Ideology:

  “There’s not a movement in our lifetime that has made up more terms than the transgender movement.”
  – John (50:20)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Early American Socialism & Thanksgiving: 01:01–11:48
• AI for Government? 13:25–22:48
• Afterlife Beliefs in Crisis: 23:51–30:39
• Demographic Winter: 30:39–41:41
• Listener Q&A (Teachers, Transgender Ideology): 41:41–55:10
• Recommendations & Farewell: 55:10–end

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Tone & Language

• Conversational, insightful, sometimes playful:
  The hosts tease each other but pivot quickly to substantive dialogue.
• Directly challenges prevailing cultural narratives but always returns to core Christian anthropology and hope.
• Emphasis on gratitude, memory, and intentional living runs throughout, echoing Thanksgiving’s purpose.

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Takeaways

• Remember the true story of Thanksgiving—one of providence, difficult lessons, and gratitude.
• Beware the reduction of human life and society to technocratic or critical theory frames.
• The authority for Christian belief is not culture, intuition, or preference, but scripture and historic faith.
• The Western world's demographic decline is a civilizational crisis, linked to philosophical and spiritual errors.
• Churches/families must actively encourage and celebrate marriage and childbearing as good gifts.

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For further exploration, check out the extensive archive of the Strong Women podcast and get to know multigenerational Christian families in your community.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to breakpoint this Week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview. Today, we're going to talk about the first Thanksgiving and the belief by many young voters that we should turn our government over to AI. Thanks for joining us this Thanksgiving week. We're so glad you're with us. Welcome to breakpoint this week, everyone. I am sitting in for Maria Bair. I'm Sarah Stonestreet. It is a special Thanksgiving edition of breakpoint this week. I'm here with my wonderful, amazing, very handsome, very attractive husband, John Stonestreet. Thanks for joining me, John.

[B]

I had to pay so much money for that introduction, so, so. Well, no, it's good to have you on. Maria is not feeling well. Hopefully she was able to recover in time to have a great Thanksgiving, as hopefully everybody else did as well. But we got a lot of stories to get to.

[A]

Yes, we do. Okay. You stole her line this time.

[B]

Did you like that?

[A]

She's gonna be so proud.

[B]

She always says we have so much, so many stories to get to.

[A]

I know. And you said it. You just couldn't help yourself. Okay, well, let's go. So it is Thanksgiving week, and there's a lot about Thanksgiving that we need to remember. There's great stories. There's ones we don't. We probably don't even know about. So shed some light on some of our stories that we should remember this Thanksgiving.

[B]

I've just been thinking a lot about some things about the story, not just of. Of Plymouth, but also Jamestown and some of the early settlements in the United States, which, of course, Thanksgiving has a very specific historical precedent in Plymouth, but given the growth of interest in socialism, again, as if, you know, talk about a zombie idea that should have died a long time ago. But with the election of Zoram Mamdani in New York City and kind of the numbers that we see of young people being attracted to socialism and the historical track record of socialism is so bad, particularly in the 20th century, whether as attempting to kind of orient an entire society in that sort of way or to just retreat to it as the economic engine behind a communist dictatorship or whatever, it just has never worked. And we have had socialist experiments in America prior to the United States, particularly in both Plymouth and in Jamestown. And so I've just been thinking a lot about that.

[A]

Well, and I feel like most people don't know that. So can you give a little bit more to that story?

[B]

Well, I mean, I think it's just, you know, you're trying Something new. The Plymouth settlement was made up of both Pilgrims and other people that were trying to have a new start and try a new economic venture. Jamestown was almost exclusively an economic venture, so it was more. It was less a settlement and more kind of a prospect of industry. But, you know, you're in a harsh place, you're in a new place, you don't have infrastructure. And so you think the best way to do it is just expect everyone to do their best and to share what they have. And it just doesn't work because it's not the way humans are. Humans were created to be innovative. We have the ability to not just consume the resources of a particular plot of land or a particular area, but also to create resources through innovation and to expand opportunity and to create industry and all kinds of other things that are at the heart of thinking about what it means to be human. And so, first of all, to just kind of assume that the number of people you have in your settlement or in your. Whatever math you're trying to do, whether it's a nation or something small, on a much, much smaller scale like this, it's just to consider them, oh, how do we best divide up all the food so that everyone can eat? And then, oh, then on the other side, we're going to expect everyone to work just as hard as they possibly can, no matter how much they're going to get from it, no matter how big the reward is. That misunderstands who humans are created to be in the image of God, that also understands that humans are fallen and if they know they're only going to get so much, they're going to be lazy. And there was a level at which the harsh winter almost undid the Plymouth Settlement. And they were preserved by, people would say, the grace of God through Squanto and through the Native American who provided that sort of assistance, but also was almost undone by this kind of bad idea. It just didn't work. And Jamestown was, I think, a much more dramatic example of that, where the socialist experiment almost led to dramatic starvation. Of course, you have other factors as well, disease and epidemics and things like that that go through. And, of course, just again, the harsh landscape and trying to break through in a new place. But I guess part of it, the reason I was thinking about it this week, it's a weird thing to be thinking about on Thanksgiving, I guess, but the part of the reason I was thinking about it is, A, there's so much talk to it, and B, there's so much. Well, it just hasn't really been tried. Socialism only fails because bad people tried it. And that's the point is all of us are bad people. So any of us trying it in any situation is going to lead to some level of failure. It's not going to bring about the encouragement and the flourishing and so on. That a level of freedom, a level of innovation, a level of self starter and self. Self startership, I guess, and reaping the rewards of your work. Understanding how we were made in God's image and what that relationship is between us and the created order, the ability to farm and to subdue and all the words that I think you can find in Genesis chapter one to describe how we're supposed to relate to the created order. So all that's there and socialism just violates that at every single level. There's also another kind of cool aspect of the Jamestown story in particular, which also has to do with how we were made and relationships. Not necessarily socialism, but it's a pretty funny story as well.

[A]

So. Has to do with.

[B]

It has to do with women.

[A]

Women.

[B]

It has to do with women. No, that's true. So the Jamestown Experiment. It's interesting. I was reading Glenn Sunshine had a really neat historical summary on his substack of what are the facts of the Thanksgiving story, particularly of plain Plymouth. There was some debate when the Pilgrims and others were leaving the Netherlands whether or not to bring women because of the safety and so on. The Jamestown settlement was almost exclusively a business venture, as we said before. And so at that settlement, the decision was made initially to not have women. And there's a couple historical sources that talk about this, but the men just got lazy, you know, and that was the report back after a year that they're just hanging out, they're not doing their work. And so the fear initially was that it was too dangerous for women. It was too dangerous for wives and daughters to be there. But then it was decided that's the only way to get these dudes to work.

[A]

It's too dangerous to leave them out.

[B]

Right? Yeah. So they brought them over and then that actually is. It ended up bringing success to that, to that settlement. It's just a funny development, but it tells you a little bit too about, you know, maybe. Right, right. Maybe God knew what he was saying when he said it's not good for men to be alone.

[A]

Right. Well. And one thing I want to highlight about what you're just talking about is that we're forgetful about our. Our history. We're forgetful about who we are as Image bearers and our tendencies. And so. So this story highlights that for me, like, socialism was tried. It failed. It failed over and over throughout all of human history, like you said. But then, like, where did our roots come from with Thanksgiving? Like, Thanksgiving was established so that we would remember these things. We would remember our story and where we came from. And so, like, it's important to rehash these. So I'm glad we got to spend this time and learn. Probably for some of us, this is the first time we're learning that, like, socialism was tried in America at the beginning. So.

[B]

Well, yeah, there's that, but there's also the narrative that's been superimposed on the backside, which is a reflection of the critical theory mood of our day, which I know I think a lot of people think that the Trump administration eliminated all that. They didn't. I mean, there are ways in which the dominant ways in educational institutions, many educational institutions, that this story is being told is a story of oppression. It's a story of disease being brought to the Native Americans and so on. And there are aspects of that story that are true, but that's not all. The aspect is you can't make the entire story one about oppression and the oppressed, particularly because of this historical account of the very first Thanksgiving, which we associate this holiday with, where there was assistance both ways. That relationship, the friendly relationship between the settlers there in the Plymouth Colony and the Indians there went on. Went on for decades and was mutual. It had a lot to do with faith. It had a lot to do with God's providence. And to acknowledge that is important. You can't make. That's the thing about the critical theory framework, is that it becomes the explanation for everything. It becomes the only explanation. Everything else is. Has to be understood through that explanation. And the oppressed oppressor narrative isn't big enough to explain the details of that first story and then everything that came along afterwards.

[A]

But the Christian worldview once again is. It's big enough to hold that. It's big enough to hold that tension of what we're grateful for and the things that, like, we're still fallen and is able to hold that tension.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's a good thing to remember. I think it's a good thing to look back on this week. Thanksgiving is an odd holiday. For many people, it's just a kickoff of the shopping season. For others, it's just a day about football and food, and it's good to celebrate. I think celebration is a wonderful way to offer thanks. But Just don't forget the thanks part. It's that dependency that's the gratitude that is the core of the Christian virtues because it's a reflection of the kind of. I guess it's an acknowledgment. Gratitude in and of itself is an acknowledgment of the kind of creatures we are, right? Both unnecessary in the sense of first, first things. This is, you know, God is the only necessary being. In other words, the world would still be the world without any of us, but the world would not even exist without God. So we exist because of God. We're unnecessary. He's necessary. So that's the first inherent acknowledgment of a posture of thanksgiving and of gratitude. And then when you think about the unlikeliness that this project would succeed, the amount of countries that come into existence get some resemblance of freedom and squander it and lose it and fade into the history in one way or another, that certainly is a quite possible future that we have as well. So anyway, I think gratitude is also a Christian virtue in and of itself because of what it reflects about us.

[A]

So true.

[B]

Hi friends and listeners of breakpoint, this is John Stonestreet. You know, every single Wednesday morning, after an entire week of exchanging numerous emails about various stories of things happening in our culture, we get together as an editorial team and wrestle with the stories that we need to talk about. From what some have called call to vibe shift to AI to IVF to even what's now known as assassination culture, this is a moment that is moving fast. It's hard to make sense of it, much less know how to respond. And that's been the strength of the daily breakpoint commentaries ever since Chuck Colson founded it over 34 years ago. We offer listeners a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of truth that never changes. The goal has never been about just providing content. It's about providing clarity. And that's why our breakpoint team wins. Not when we say something clever or deliver some really cool hot take. But it's when something that we say and provide equips a Christian with the clarity, confidence and courage they need to live out their calling in the cultural moment where God has placed them. If you're one of those who've been impacted by this decades long ministry of the Colson center, would you please make a gift to the Colson center to support this work between now and December 31st? Thanks to a generous $500,000 challenge, every single gift given before December 31st will be doubled in impact. So please make your gift [e-mail] November that's colsoncenter.org November okay, we're back on Breakpoint this week.

[A]

And John, a new poll from heartland Rasmussen. 41% of young voters say they'd give AI government power. Help with that?

[B]

Well, yeah, it's an interesting suggestion, right? I mean, it's also an interesting question. Would we give up the government of ourselves to machines? I mean, maybe the answer is these are voters aged 18 to 39. So they came just at the end of the Matrix movie. So they haven't really been sufficiently warned about how bad of an idea this is. I think. No, I think the reality is a couple things, right? I mean, why are we open to driverless cars? Because I think most of us think, especially if you drive in Colorado more than. Or Florida, I'll put those two out there for more than 20 minutes. You realize that maybe artificial intelligence can do better than humans, right? You think about the lack of trust in government institutions. You know, that's why they would, I think, maybe support giving. And the headline is Sweeping Government Powers Now. You know, exactly. You know, what that means is, you know, or what the poll, the people who are being polled understand that that means, I think is pretty interesting. They had to do with things like AI making policy, AI determining which rights that citizens have, AI controlling the military. That was more than a third of young voters. It's an astonishing sort of thing.

[A]

Well, is it connected, too, with Mom, Donnie? Because it's like we're willing to try anything new.

[B]

Well, that's a good question. I mean, I do think that there's a level of frustration. I also think, by the way, there's also a level here where AI has already been given a wide range of power. I know we kind of think of it as just kind of performing mundane tasks, but you think about the role that AI increasingly has in airport security. Right. I know the joke is, is I always bring this back to tsa, but, you know, it's not real people screening your bags anymore. It's machines, and they're better at it than the real people.

[A]

Right, but that's not hard to.

[B]

No. Well, I mean, for 10 years, they tested the TSA's ability to find, you know, dangerous and banned items, and they failed at, I mean, sometimes 90% of the time, they failed. I haven't seen the test of whether they have tested the effectiveness of these kind of smart scanning machines to actually find these things. Now, of course, once they identify them, then it goes to a real person to search through your bag. In my own personal experience, five out of seven times they pull my bag. The real person looks at the screen, never even opens my bag, and just hands it back to me. So my breakpoint microphone is the problem. Apparently that over and over and over and over that I travel with. So it's just a weird thing. But you have AI then doing that job. You have AI doing facial recognition now it's working in tandem with someone. But that's government power, that search and seizure. It has to do with all that. So I think this thing reveals an awful lot of realities on the ground. We are a culture thoroughly used to computers doing the hard thinking and the hard work for us already. We are a culture that does not trust institutions, do not trust authorities, particularly government authorities. And we also have, you know, young voters who apparently need to read more of the science fiction of the Gen Xers and the boomers. We're all. We were warned about all of this, right? But at the heart of everything, the heart of everything goes back to anthropology. Do we know what makes humans distinct? Only when you know what it means to be human can, you know, kind of where we fit in the hierarchy of things. We have a culture that has taught for what, 150 years that there is no hierarchy to things. Matter is. Matter is. Matter is matter, right? It's not created. So basically, you have things kind of coming together. There's no inherent value there. You have New Agey and Eastern kind of religious thought, which is that the physical is not really real anyway. We have kind of our sexual worldview which tells us that what we do with our bodies isn't really important or what kind of bodies we have even aren't important. It's just what we feel. So that's kind of a Gnostic view that takes out any sort of hierarchy in the world. And then, you know, the Darwinian vision, which is matter is matter is matter is matter. And it just happened to accidentally combine into certain forms. And we happen to be the intelligent ones until we're not. So why wouldn't, you know, if you don't have that sort of view of human exceptionalism and you don't have trust in humans as is, and by the way, humans oftentimes earn that distrust. I guess there's some level where this is shocking and there's some level where it's not right.

[A]

And if you don't believe that humans have a responsibility to steward and to. To make this Earth something, then that doesn't make Sense. But I would love for you to walk through for our listeners is that sphere sovereignty stuff, because I think that also impacts this.

[B]

In what way?

[A]

Well, like without those inter. You you talk a lot about how there's the intermittent intermediary things like family and church and schools and things like that. Well, you've taken all that away. Don't you think that fits in this conversation?

[B]

Well, you know, maybe. I mean, I think that more and more things belong to the state and then more and more and more things are understood to be technical problems with technical solutions or technological problems with technological solutions.

[A]

And then it's failing. So.

[B]

Right. So one of those things kind of reflects, I think, a failure of the imagination of the sort of maybe the loss of memory that we talked about in the last segment. Especially like when you think about de Tocqueville seeing that really what made the American situation so unique was this flourishing of non. Of the non individualistic and the non government parts of life, particularly American society in the middle. The institutions like family and churches, the voluntary groups and the state, the local government. In other words, you don't wait for the king to come save your, you know, solve your problems, you solve it yourself. That's the Tocqueville thought that was really an incredible thing. And it was an incredible thing and it was really unique. And it did kind of give the fuel for the kind of representative democracy that America was designed to be. And you have to have those kind of cultural realities in order to make that, I think possible. But that has gone away. The bigger government gets, the more it wants to eat up and the less middle there is. So there is a lack of a middle, I think. So maybe that's a pre existing condition for this sort of thing. But there's also just that technological instinct, right. That we become technological creatures. We see problems as not being problems of. If you think, for example, that were just fundamentally matter, organized matter and that really we're matter, looking at matter, trying to organize matter. Right. Which is kind of how all that comes together. Well, then more advanced matter can do a better job than we can. You're just asking a limited number of questions. If you go back to the book on worldview making sense of your world, which I had the opportunity to be a co author on the second edition, but this language was in the first edition. I've always thought this was one of the most brilliant things that were added by Gary Phillips and Bill Brown in the worldview analysis is calling naturalism, the reductionistic view of everything down to just nature. Or matter just that observation that this is a limited perspective because we think about worldviews as those beliefs we see through which they are. We don't oftentimes take seriously how worldviews can be blinders, you know, like you would put on a horse so that they can't look to the side. And that's what a worldview can do. It limits our purview so we only see one part of it. And then to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a post technological, materialistic, naturalistic, secular society. All problems look like they can be solved by computers. Right? I mean that's a little bit of shorthand for what's happening, but you know, I think that's really part of it.

[A]

Yeah, that's true.

[B]

And we have a reckoning with AI. We're going to give it too much credit. You're going to have a generation that's used to getting all of their answers from smartphones like this, don't remember a world prior to that. And they're going to look, quote, more intelligent smartphones, I guess, for all the answers to their problems. And we all feel like there's a lot of problems with government, so why wouldn't we look there? So I think maybe it's not as surprising a result as possible, but good.

[A]

Heavens, definitely concerning result.

[B]

I mean, just another disappointment for why those Matrix movies got worse and worse and worse. Like the first one was great and then they all fell apart by the end. And you're like, we really need those things now to warn young Mamdani voters not to turn government over to Siri.

[A]

Right? So true.

[B]

Hi Breakpoint listeners. Time is running out to save up to 50% on registration for the 2026 Colson Center National Conference happening May 29 to 31, 2026. Be sure to sign up before November 29th to take advantage of early bird pricing. You can secure your seat [e-mail] and we're excited to announce that both Carl Truman and Frank Turek are joining our fantastic speaker lineup for the conference. They'll help us consider the theme. You are here thinking about what looks like to step into our calling as God's people in this time and place. We hope to see you there again. You can claim your seat today before prices go [e-mail].

[A]

And we're back with Breakpoint this week. John New research has been done by George Barna about how Christians don't really have a Christian worldview and especially when it comes to thoughts about after death Experiences.

[B]

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. So the American Worldview Inventory is an ongoing project by George Barna at Arizona Christian University. And he's been tracking this even back when he founded the Barna Group, before the Barna Group became a separate organization and entity. But just basically saying, look, do Christians, people who claim to be born again Christians who have track record of, you know, church attendance or, you know, you know, that would at least identify as Christians, do their beliefs align with that? And the answer has just been increasing increasingly no. And you know, we hear about this research a lot at the Colson Center. People ask us about it, people ask us about the, about, you know, you know, what's the legitimacy of this study? Surely it couldn't be, you know, that bad and so on. And listen, I think it's always important to look at methods. I think it's always important to look at things like sample size. I mean, we hear the sciences settled all the time on things like same sex parenting. And then you look at the studies and it's not legitimate. BARN is a trustworthy source. And the American Worldview Inventory has developed baselines and has continued to track it. What's interesting about this is that this kind of points to what Christians or people who claim to be Christians think about what happens after you die, which is becoming an increasingly important topic in a culture that is more and more interested in that topic. Right? So that's one of the things guys like Rod Dreher and others are writing about right now. Ross Douthit, the New York Times opinion writer, is talking about this in his new book about believing and the return to Belief. You know, we talk about the quiet revival in the uk, young people coming back to church. What are they finding? Just a few weeks ago we had some young folks over, some new believers, some intrigued, you know, by other denominations or other religious beliefs. And that question of what happens after you die came up. Right. I mean, it's not a, it's not an unimportant question when it comes to worldview. In the summary of what the American Worldview Inventory found most recently about how Christians understand life after death, one third of Americans who call themselves born again believe good people earn salvation. One third still believe in reincarnation. Half of Americans believe they can earn their way to heaven by being generally good or doing enough good deeds. Only 39% of all adults, just 52% of self identified Christians expect to spend eternity in the presence of God. A minority of Gen Z said embracing Jesus as savior is very important for the Eternal outcome or eternal destiny of the soul. And among those calling themselves Christians, the views of the afterlife, what the afterlife consists of residing in the presence of God, just 52% experiencing a period of purification. So I'm guessing that's more like the Catholic view of purgatory. 13%, eternal peace without the presence of any divine being, which I guess is the floating on the cloud angel view, which is. That's just 12%. So, you know, you're always going to have outliers, right? People that have adopted beliefs. But I think what it shows is that there's an awful lot of muddled thinking on this, right? There's all kinds of views. People are all over the place. And that points to something which is, where are people getting this information? And the answer is they're getting it from themselves. Like, in other words, these sorts of things. Even though we have this kind of return to an interest in spiritual things and in many cases even a return to going to church. And that's not the same thing as returning to scripture or church teaching or theological clarity as the authority, right, for what we believe about these things. So you're still going to have this kind of muddled worldview, or as our friend Kevin Bywater used to put it, worldview. W H I R L E D that people just have a mix of beliefs and they get world together. And this is why discipleship remains kind of a central task of the church, I think.

[A]

Yeah, well, and there's so many voices out there, and it's so easy to just, you know, get your information from social media, from some, you know, somebody posting a video or whatever. But it really does. We just have to do the hard work. But also, folks, I feel like now is a great time to say that this is the importance of the Colson center, because the Colson center is a place where you can find clarity, confidence and courage in your worldview. And it's more important than ever right now. So there you go. We'll accept donations, too.

[B]

Well, we do actually have a $500,000 matching grant active right now because of kind donors. But, you know, listen, that's actually what it's about. And there's the fundamental question. There's a handful of fundamental questions about worldview. It's not just what you believe, but where do you get those beliefs? And in other words, it's a question of authority. And a culture that has taken religious things and privatized them is a culture that has multiplied the understanding of authority. Who do we trust? Who do we count on and nine times out of 10 people are going to count on how they feel, their own experience in a culture like this. I think this is why we have seen the results on issues like abortion or euthanasia, in other words, where people are like, well, I don't really like that, but I don't want to make it illegal for everyone. I want everyone. We have this authority crisis. And I think if there's one thing that the American worldview inventory continues to point to is the crisis of authority, not just what people believe, but the problem is people don't know where they should get their beliefs. As a Christian.

[A]

Well, yeah, and there's something there too of like Christianity is true whether we believe it or not. Right. But there's, there's a lot of Christians understanding is like this is one of the choices instead of this is actually reality.

[B]

Yeah. Kind of a buffet approach.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Yeah. And that's what I meant earlier by the idea of worldview. Right. People are gonna get their beliefs from a lot of different sources.

[A]

Okay, let's move on to the new report in the UK that says about a third of all babies are aborted.

[B]

Yeah, it's a crazy number. It's been making the rounds. First of all, as also revealed, including among our own editorial team, I won't name same names, but I was the one, having looked at a quick headline and didn't look at it closely, that we don't know how to do math as Americans because anyway, because there was one X poster who put it up. And if you're just looking at first glance, you would think that the number is half, but it wasn't. Anyway, the whole point is a third of babies, according to this data in the uk, a third of all are aborted. First of all, just the commitment to things like quote, unquote, sexual freedom, the divorce of marriage and family from childbirth, you know, the horrific results of this narrative of sexual autonomy. All that's there, of course, but this is still part of the larger conversation that that needs to be had in the west, which is the greatest existential threat to the Western world. And now of course at its rude, it's bad ideas, but the greatest existential threat to the Western world For the last 20 years we've been told it's climate change. And climate change has not had any sort anywhere near the threat level that the demographic winter has. In the sense of we simply are not having enough children. We are declining in population at astounding rates throughout the last probably five or six years. The news reports will Pop a story about a particular nation, Norway or Belgium or Germany or South Korea or Japan, and something along. What was its fertility rate? Fertility rate being the average number of children per woman of age. You can't fall below really 2.1 according to the numbers and maintain the population, you fall below 1.7, 1.6. Now you're in cliff territory where the low numbers create further low numbers and you can't get back ahead in terms of that. Particularly when you throw in manufactured gender control like we, you know, countries that tend to prefer boys as opposed to girls. In other words, you're just creating this nightmare of a demographic situation where there's not enough citizens. And if you don't have enough citizens, you don't have enough workers, you don't have enough workers, you don't have enough taxes, you don't have enough finance money to, to cover the social safety net that you're creating. And you're creating then a situation where of course we're going to look, for example, to technological solutions like artificial intelligence and robots to do all of our work while we sit around fat and happy. And then that violates who we are.

[A]

Islam, the birth rate is way up.

[B]

Well, well, it is now. They're actually, it's way higher.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The birth rate in most Islamic countries has come down pretty dramatically as well. And that's because in those places where they have secularized, it's interesting, you bring secularism to a community, along with that comes a particular understanding of sex and a particular understanding of human dignity and therefore particular understanding of babies. And then the net result is your population drops. It's an anti human worldview and it's an anti human worldview with anti human results. And that's kind of what's emerged in those nations. So you see every once in a while, one of these numbers from a particular nation pop and it's kind of like, oh, that's how bad it is. And this was one of those where of all the children conceived in Britain, one third of them are just being killed, by the way. That's not considering the numbers of excess embryos, for example, and in vitro fertilization, which would make that even worse. This is just flat out based on the number of abortions or medical abortions that are had. It's an astonishing number. But more than that, it represents an unsustainable future. The chaos is the immediate loss of life. Obviously that's the worst part of it. But you need to understand that you can't do this to a civilization and not have long term results on the backside. And this is why I think a lot of people saw that number and immediately posted Britain is lost because you can't sustain that level of dehumanization in a nation and then think you're okay. As one person put it, Britain is in a phase of self euthanization.

[A]

So that's devastating. This whole idea of, you know, convenience and children and all that has crept into the church as well. And I feel like. Let's talk to our listeners about this idea of the beauty of family, the beauty of children is not going to be caught in our civilization right now. We have to actually talk to our kids about the beauty of all that. Let's, let's encourage our listeners because that's discouraging.

[B]

Yes, dear. No, I will talk about that since you told me to. Now, I think there has been a number of occasions, number of headlines, number of stories like this where it seems to me that the most important thing the church can do is to help young people get married and have babies. And it has to do with saving civilization. And I know people are going to be like, no one's responsible for that. People should just live their own lives. What? Where do you get that idea? Genesis 2 tells you that we're responsible for all that and people don't just live their own lives or people will say, well, you shouldn't tell people how to. The church makes an idol of marriage. I'm like, really? The church makes an idol of marriage? Maybe the church doesn't do a great job figuring out how to include singles. I get that. But please take me to the church that's made in idol of marriage. You know, I'd love to see this up close and personal and what that looks like. The fact that you say that marriage is a normative experience of human beings that God created in his image. Because God's plan for us is not just to go to heaven, but to be image bearers here to take care of the creation that he created and loves and is going to restore like all of that vision for the Christian life is big. And that is the thing that most people have lost. It's the greatest example of disconnection from who they are, the identity crisis. And I think that it's seen in what Charlie Kirk called the Lost boys of the West. I think it's seen in young women who seem to be less interested in marriage and family than young men are, according to many surveys. And I think that's probably true, at least in certain parts of the country. And We've lost the sense that marriage and babies are good. To your point, if we don't teach this explicitly. Not just kind of the sexual ethics of don't have sex until you're married, but this is what marriage is for. This is what sexuality is for. This is how God designed it. And by the way, it's good, and it's good within this context and it's good for this purpose. It's not just that they're not going to get that from other sources. It's that what they're going to get from other sources is an antinatalism. It's that children are bad. It's that marriage is an impediment to human happiness. I mean, I just saw two more articles this morning about the young women who are basically just quietly quitting their own marriages, but they, but the economic pressures are too great for them to get divorced. So they're just quietly quitting and celebrating this as a kind of a show of self. Yeah. Of authenticity and self expression. This is devastating. It's devastating for the overall happiness because you are happy. I am so happy.

[A]

So you're welcome.

[B]

I have been blessed. But actually the surveys tell, like, like it's. I have real problems with the happiness studies that everyone seems fascinated by, but I think that they're also really interesting. Like, I think, you know, the questions you ask are really important on this. I think Arthur Brooks does a great job at, at Harvard, but the happiest people on the planet according to surveys, are middle aged, religious, married women with children.

[A]

It's me.

[B]

It's you.

[A]

You're the happiest. I'm so happy.

[B]

Yeah. It's not just me. It's happy. We're happy.

[A]

We are so happy. All right. Okay. It wasn't it just to close this out, Wasn't it GK Chesterton who said the most extraordinary thing is an ordinary woman, ordinary man, ordinary woman, and an ordinary man raising ordinary kids or something along those lines.

[B]

It sounds like Chesterton.

[A]

Yeah, we'll just say that. You can look it up. I'm sure I quoted something wrong there.

[B]

It's important to note, too. I mean, we're just. Again, this is just the latest number of a single country, one that matters. Right. Because it was the home, in many ways, the center of the Western world for a long time. It was the source of the religiosity of America, you know, from the first Great Awakening and so on. And it's also clearly less religious. Right? So being less religious has consequences of understanding less. Who God made you to be and how you should relate to others and these sacred things about how God made us. But this is just the uk. Look, every Western nation is in demographic decline and every Western nation is in big trouble. Some are even in bigger trouble than the uk. And when I first started looking at this, which is probably 15, almost 20 years ago, literally looking at the demographic rate, I somehow came across these numbers and like, why is no one talking about this? And they've just gotten worse and worse. The US has got worse and worse because when I was first looking at it, the US was meeting the minimum of replacement. They really weren't. But they were, according to the un. The UN had a low number. They rounded up. Okay, fine. We're not anywhere in the ballpark. We're now down in the middle of the pack. In Western nations, we've fallen below in many ways, European nations, and not all of them, but a handful of them, particularly those. It's interesting, those nations that are getting more religious, you're seeing an uptick in that. So we'll see if part of the quote unquote Charlie Kirk effect or the great quiet revival in the UK does any sort of reversal. But these are, these are real numbers and none of people are talking about it.

[A]

Yeah, we have several listeners who wrote in with some questions, so I want to make sure we get to those. To start with, a listener says, I don't always feel celebrated as a public school teacher in the Breakpoint commentary. So let's address that.

[B]

Yeah, well, you know, we've been writing a lot about education. We've been writing a lot about and thinking and speaking a lot about education, the opportunity for Christian education right now. And by that we're talking about a structure of state run education which I think has largely failed. It has been considered the status quo. There's a great level of dissatisfaction and to some degree I actually want to feed that because I think the reality on the ground really is a problem. I really do. I think that by and large the system is set up to separate kids from their parents, to not understand the purpose of learning, and to initially and eventually lead people away from who God really created them to be. Now that does not mean, and I have said it in the past, but I don't say it enough, that God doesn't have wonderful believers in the public school system who are actively trying to be redemptive agents with individual lives. And I see their work kind of as the people who go into war torn areas and try to rescue, you know, victims, you Know, it's one thing to say we should pull our own kids out of state run schools if at all possible. It's another thing to say if we're not able to do that, then there's an additional level of responsibility which I think Christian parents have. But that's not the same thing as saying that adults, many adults are called to go in and can be salt and light there and they need to be salt and light there. Now I think some people will scoff and say, well, they can't be because they're stuck by this. No, I've met incredible number of public school teachers who love Jesus and who do things differently. They have figured out how to point people to Christ. They have figured out how to help students learn. They have figured out how to help students that are in crisis families or crisis situations. Some of them are coaches, some of them are teachers, some of them are administrators. Some of them have the luxury of being protected in kind of regions of the country where you don't have the state barreling down. There's a difference between the way schools are managed and controlled and some rural parts of the south, for example, and how they are here in Colorado where there's just an oppressive state that continues to force things down and continue to try to reclaim the ground that the state lost in education here. California is worse, Massachusetts is worse. I mean, we can name all these things. So I do want to affirm that it is a sacred and wonderful calling for, for Christians who have been called into those arenas. It was interesting. I didn't include this and it's fine. I wanted to make sure to address this because I want public school teachers who are followers of Christ to know a. I believe it's a calling. But I think Christianity describes going into some of these difficult areas as a calling, but also to say you can't do it the same way everybody else does. I mean, to live out your calling as a Christian means as a public school teacher, you got to do it differently.

[A]

Right?

[B]

You know, but it was interesting. We got another handful of comments from public school teachers who said, everything you say about the public school is exactly right. You know, it's as bad. In fact, it's worse. And let me give you three examples. And you know, that was one thing. So I don't want to, you know, I didn't want to bring that up, you know, and go into it in depth because I don't want to undermine the calling. But it is important. But world, the worldview crisis, the worldview battle is alive and well, yeah, in, in, in education.

[A]

And we want to hear from you listeners. Thanks for writing in. We want to hear how we can support you in that because you, you shouldn't do it alone either. And we, you know, that's kind of what we do, is come up with resources for, so that you can live with clarity, confidence and courage. Right. But seriously, we do want to hear from you. Let us know what you're wrestling with and how we can help. All right. The next listener wrote in and said, this misrepresents what the cast report said. Everyone should read it for themselves. The cast report recommends caution. It recommends holistic treatment. It recommends a team approach. It recommends further study. These are all good common sense recommendations that anyone would make. I feel like maybe we should say recommendations a couple more times.

[B]

Now, we got this comment, by the way, in response to a commentary, a breakpoint commentary on a second report put out by the Department of Health and Human Services about so called transgender treatments. And I, I didn't understand the question or the, the comment that we misrepresented with the cast report set. So I'm going to read exactly what I said about this. Second transgender ideology was sold to us as science, a lie that has now fully collapsed. Then we go on to talk about how this collapse started or how the collapse happened. Started with last year. All right, the cast report out of the UK declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations. That's a quote. Because that's what the cast report said. The cast report did not fully say that this needs to stop. The HHS report did. And the second HHS report, which is what created the cause for this. And there's a whole lot of other medical organizations that did. And not only that, but then in the meantime, we found out the wpath was a completely made up, fabricated, self appointed experts that really didn't have any sort of medical foundation for all the claims that they were making. They were making it on the grounds that they were medical experts about these things to which they weren't. So the whole thing was built on shaky foundations. The cast report merely pointed that direction. The cast report was also the very first one from a government sponsored study to do anything less than fully affirm the heck out of these treatments that included puberty blockers, hormone therapy, quote unquote therapy, even surgical intervention of some kind, amputation of breasts or, you know, whatever. So what we said is the cast report declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations. The comment that came in, it was just odd. Said that that misrepresented what the cast report said. It doesn't. That's exactly what the cast report said. Since then, a whole lot more things have said way more than the cast report said, which is what we said in the commentary. And now the best science tells us that there's no medical legitimacy whatsoever, especially when it comes to minors, to halting puberty, because the medical experts say that the vast majority of kids in puberty will resolve with the. With their bodies. It tells us that the treatments, quote, unquote, treatments have permanent damage that are caused, and certainly the surgical interventions do, and that there's not medical backing to say that this is what we should do with kids who experience gender dysphoria. Understand, the cast report was the first one to push back and say we ought not immediately do this to every single kid who questions that they were born into the wrong body. They were putting brakes on what the Tavistock Clinic was the first one to realize. Like, we are basically rushing these kids through this stuff without medical backing for what we're doing. It was a social experiment. The cast report acknowledged that you're right, that it didn't call for. It did recommend caution. That's the point. It recommended caution for the first time because everyone else was saying, hit the gas, and there was no reason to do that. So I don't think we misrepresented it at all. I think I don't know what this particular person is asking.

[A]

On the same topic, why do you use a dog whistle term and imply being trans is some sort of ideology when it's not? Why use made up terms?

[B]

I just saw this part of the question from a listener, and it was about. About the same thing. And I just thought, what does that mean? A dog whistle term imply being trans is some sort of ideology? And then why use made up terms? So it seems to me like this question is coming from someone who thinks that transgenderism reflects reality of who people really are, and it shouldn't be dismissed as if it's an ideology. So it seems to come from somebody who's advocating for transgender identity. So I want to go in reverse order of the two questions that are asked. The first question was, why use made up terms? There's not a movement in our lifetime that has made up more terms than the transgender movement. We have a word called cisgender. Cisgender means those who continue to identify with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. That's the official definition. In the definition of this made up term is another made up Idea that sex is assigned at birth, as if it's just based on the whims of a doctor who's like, hmm, what should this one be? Let's flip a coin. Cisgender refers to the vast majority of people who have ever lived in the history of the world. And then there are those who aren't just kind of like the vast majority of the people who lived in the history of the world have two arms and two legs. There are, of course, children born without arms and without legs. We don't have a word for those who are born with two arms and two legs, because that is the norm, that is the natural, that is the way humans are. And because we know the way humans are, then we can actually identify a disability, a loss of some kind of a function, an ability, a limb, an organ or something like that. But it's because we have an understanding of the whole. Cisgender is a completely made up and unnecessary word. And there's about six others that we could look to. Preferred pronouns, which, and I thought Neil Ferguson in the Truth Rising films did a great job. He said, it's just, what a weird social innovation to announce your pronouns at the beginning of a meeting and so on. So I thought that was an interesting thing. It's like there's never been more made up terms from any source in the history of the world than those who are advancing transgender ideology. And it is an ideology. It's an ideology with a very clear history. To say that it's an ideology is not an insult. To say that it's an ideology is not to make something up. To say that it's an ideology is not to say that there are not individuals, real people who struggle with gender dysphoria or who think that they were born into the wrong body. Ideology says that those people who were born into the wrong body are always right. They're never wrong. Ideology is how we got to the point where we said that if a four year old says, mommy, I'm a boy, not a girl, then we should immediately start this protocol to take a four year old and trust the voice inside her head to take her into this direction, away from her body, which will involve amputation of healthy body parts and stopping puberty and in other words, violating natural and normal development, which goes back to the invention of terms. Because the only reason you invent terms is to undermine the sense that there is a natural and there is a normal and that both are equal options that we can actually take. That's an ideological position. So it's not an insult to say that. It's just pointing out what it is. Our ideologies are ways that we attempt to explain the reality that we see, which is why some ideologies are really wrong. Some ideologies prevent us from seeing reality. And there's not been a better example in the last 20 years of an ideology that has prevented an entire group of people from either recognizing reality or pointing out that they recognize reality than transgenderism. It is an ism. There's a heritage to this ideology. There's a current state of this ideology. There are adherents of this ideology. There are those who punish anyone who dissents from the ideology. To say that it's not an ideology is just honestly silly. And people are victims of ideologies. The worse the ideology is, the further it takes us from reality, the more the victims are. So, yeah, there are real people who struggle with trans identity. They're the victims of the trans ideology. Nobody's. That. That's a. That's a term that is describing what's there, as opposed to a term like cisgender, which comes from transgender ideology, which describes nothing.

[A]

Terms. Yeah. All right, time for recommendations. You want to go first?

[B]

You want me to go first, or.

[A]

Do you want me to go first?

[B]

I'll go first.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I want to recommend. And I did this a couple. Couple weeks ago, but you sent out an announcement, put it on Facebook, that we are bringing the Strong Women podcast, at least for now, to an end. It has had a good run. How many years?

[A]

Five and a half.

[B]

Wow. It's five and a half. So how many shows? How many programs?

[A]

There are 357.

[B]

There are 357 interviews with strong women. Well, some of them are men who talk about strong women. But the point is, is that these are wonderful, wonderful things. And it's been cool to get on Facebook and after you made the announcement, to see the raving fans post comments about what it meant to them and how the conversations have encouraged them. It has been a frequent occurrence for me to show up and speak somewhere and somebody go, is Sarah here? I want to see her. And they didn't care that I was there at all because they were fans of the program. And so I want to, you know, to give you a chance to say something about that, but also just to acknowledge that these things aren't disappearing, and they're really wonderful interviews. You're a great interviewer, as people have just experienced, and this has been a wonderful resource.

[A]

Well, thank you. Yeah. I have had the best time I've learned so much, and I'm really thankful that I got to do it. And. And I'm thankful for all the listeners. I'm really thankful to the Colson center because they made it possible, and I'm glad that they'll be out there forever, at least for the foreseeable future. But I have a different recommendation. Can I.

[B]

You may.

[A]

Go for it. Okay. I was thinking about our conversation, about talking to our kids about the beauty of family and the beauty of marriage, the beauty of children. And so here's my recommendation. Find some old people. Get to know them. Have your kids get to know them, ask them questions, talk about the way they love each other. It's messy because we're messy, but that's also part of the beauty. And help your kids learn to observe and watch those families around you that are in the next season and learn from them. And surround your kids with marriages that are fundamentally at the heart, the same. You know, loving Jesus and being committed to each other, but that play themselves out differently, because I think that helps them see that we're all unique and that marriage can look different in the way it's expressed, but fundamentally, you know, it's grounded on something bigger. So that's my recommendation.

[B]

Good one.

[A]

Well, that's all the time we have, John. I know you could talk to me all day long as I could you.

[B]

I do talk to you all day long.

[A]

Yes, you do, and I'm so thankful for that. But, listeners, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week.