When The Culture War Comes For Your Kids            

In the October edition of The Atlantic, there is a fascinating and revealing long-form essay by George Packer titled "When the Culture War Comes for the Kids." Packer, who appears to be an old-school liberal with a few progressive sympathies, writes about his family's decision to remove his son from an elite private school and send him to a public school in New York City, where he will be exposed to more diversity and give the family a chance to participate in a community. For the first several years, he writes, they were happy with their choice--until, around 2014, the school community began to be seized by wokeness.

The first sign of this was the school's attempt to do away with traditional grading systems as well as test-taking. Test-taking, the parents were told, was too stressful for children and often discriminatory towards minority students (the racism of low expectations present in this surge of sympathy, as always, went unnoticed). Soon, the staff were actively discouraging parents from permitting their children to take tests, and there was enormous pressure to get with the new political program. 

Additionally, Packer says, identity--sexuality, race, disability, etc.--became such a focus that Packer grew concerned that the school was entrenching differences rather than reducing them. In fact, he wrote, several other schools in New York "had taken to dividing their students by race into consciousness-raising 'affinity groups,'" which caused several mixed-race families to transfer their kids out because they were sick of the focus on race. They didn't need their children to start with the identity politics at such a young age.

And then, Packer writes, the "bathroom crisis hit our school...A girl in second grade had switched to using male pronouns, adopted the initial Q as a first name, and begun dressing in boy's clothes. Q also used the boys' bathroom, which led to problems with other boys."  The school began searching for a solution, but instead of simply creating a single-stall bathroom (one already existed), they decided to "get rid of boys' and girls' bathrooms altogether." This, they presumed, would handily eliminate any confusion, and the problem would be solved, and "within two years, almost every bathroom, from kindergarten through fifth grade, had become gender-neutral."

Every previous generation could have predicted that this would end in disaster, but with minds addled by wokeness and identity politics, the school staff somehow forgot some very fundamental facts about children--and human beings in general. Packer's description of the confusion experienced by the school children as a direct result of the decisions of deluded adults is genuinely sad to read: Where signs had once said boys and girls, they now said students. Kids would be conditioned to the new norm at such a young age that they would become the first cohort in history for whom gender had nothing to do with whether they sat or stood to pee. All that biology entailed--curiosity, fear, shame, aggression, pubescence, the thing between the legs--was erased or wished away...The school didn't inform parents of this sudden end to an age-old custom, as if there were nothing to discuss. 

Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage: Boys were using the former boys' rooms, girls the former girls' rooms. 

This return to the familiar was what politicians call a "commonsense solution." It was also kind of heartbreaking. As children, they didn't think to challenge the new adult rules, the new adult ideas of justice. Instead, they found a way around this difficulty that the grown-ups had introduced into their lives. It was a quiet plea to be left alone.

Fortunately, at least some of the parents were outraged when they discovered what had taken place, and a crowd of them showed up at a PTA meeting to protest this policy, where they faced off with parents who proposed a series of profoundly stupid ideological solutions to the problem:

The parents in one camp declared that the school had betrayed their trust, and a woman threatened to pull her daughter out of the school. The parents in the other camp argued that gender labels--and not just on the bathroom doors--led to bullying and that the real problem was the patriarchy. One called for the elimination of urinals. It was a minor drama of a major cultural upheaval. The principal, who seemed to care more about the testing opt-out movement than the bathroom issue, explained her financial constraints and urged the formation of a parent-teacher committee to resolve the matter. After six months of stalemate, the Department of Education intervened: One bathroom would be gender-neutral.

It is interesting to note that it is again students--in this case children--who are pushing back against the delusions that adults are imposing on them. As I reported back in April, teenage girls have staged school walkouts to protest biological males identifying as females being permitted into their bathrooms. 

In Sussex, England recently, a large crowd of female students protested outside their high school, furious that the staff was enforcing a change to "gender neutral" uniforms and eliminating the traditional--and feminine--skirts. In Alberta, Canada, students rebelled against a gender-neutral bathroom policy and started a petition to demand a return to the old system. "I don't know whose idea this was," one student remarked bitterly, "but it wasn't a very good one." I sometimes wonder if the adults creating and imposing these policies remember anything at all about growing up, going through puberty, or being a teenager. Would they have wanted to sit in the bathroom stall next to the girl they had a crush on? Or vice versa? Would they have wanted to use the same change rooms as awkward teens from the opposite gender, just as their bodies were changing and they were trying to make sense of everything? 

Did they not stop to consider that essentially eliminating privacy for boys and girls--or pretending, with brazen asininity, that there is no difference between the two--would make difficult years even harder? Obviously the ideologues do not remember such things, or perhaps they have forgotten them. But perhaps it will be children and teens who will be forced, out of embarrassment and necessity, to lead the pushback. It is possible, after all, to force your ideology on to other people. But it is not possible to conform the natural world to your will, no matter how hard you try.

The 'Fastest Growing Church' in the World Is 'Spreading Like a Wildfire' in Iran: New Documentary

Large numbers of Iranian Muslims are walking away from Islam and toward Christianity, a new documentary says. According to the Frontier Alliance International Studios’ Sheep Among Wolves Volume II documentary, inside of Iran — a country where the majority of the citizens are Muslim — the “fastest-growing church” in the world is blossoming underground. 

One unidentified Iranian church leader even went as far as to say that “Islam is dead” in Iran. The church leader — who remained anonymous for their protection — asked, “What if I told you Islam is dead? What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran? What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? Would you believe me?” “This is exactly what is happening inside of Iran. God is moving powerfully inside of Iran,” the church leader asserted.

The church leader also shared that they believe that Ayatollah Khomeini is “the best evangelist for Jesus.”  “The ayatollahs brought the true face of Islam to light and people discovered it was a lie ... After 40 years under Islamic law — a utopia according to them — they’ve had the worst devastation in the 5,000-year history of Iran,” the leader said.

According to Fox News, the church is without buildings, property or central leadership, but still, it is steadily growing. The movement's aim is not to plant churches, but to grow discipleship. “The seismic shift that’s happened in the church of Iran is, when all these church planters found out that converts run away from persecution, but disciples would die for the Lord in persecution,” the church leader said.

"Disciples forsake the world and cling to Jesus 'till he comes. Converts don't. Disciples aren't engaged in a culture war. Converts are. Disciples cherish, obey, and share the word of God. Converts don't. Disciples choose Jesus over anything and everything else. Converts don't. Converts run when the fire comes. Disciples don't," the leader asserted.

The underground movement — which is pro-Israel and is largely led by women — is being dubbed by film director Dalton Thomas, the “Iranian Awakening.” One believer said in the video that they understand the danger of participating in the Iranian Awakening, but it is a risk they must take. “We know that if they get us, the first thing they will do to us as a woman is rape us and then they will beat us and ultimately they will kill us. “This is the decision we have made that we want to offer our bodies as sacrifices. Because I have this thought when I wake up, that when I leave, that door I might not come back."

Ransom Paid, but Kidnapped Pastor's Wife Is Killed in North-Central Nigeria

Muslim Fulani herdsmen this month kidnapped and killed a pastor’s wife in north-central Nigeria’s Kaduna state three days after suspected herdsmen killed a Baptist pastor in another part of the state, sources said.

Unaware that Esther Ishaku Katung had been killed after being kidnapped in Bagoma, 122 kilometers (75 miles) west of Kaduna City on Sept. 14, her family paid a 250,000 naira (US$690) ransom before discovering her body, said the Rev. Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Kaduna state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

Her husband, the Rev. Ishaku Katung of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) congregation in Bagoma, escaped but was wounded by gunfire when the herdsmen broke into their home on church premises at 11:30 p.m. as they slept, Pastor Hayab said.

“Information we got from some of the kidnapped victims who escaped from the herdsmen’s enclave shows that Esther Katung and two other victims had escaped from the herdsmen’s captivity, but she was recaptured by them,” Pastor Hayab told Morning Star News. “She attempted to escape with two others after they were kidnapped by the herdsmen; this infuriated the herdsmen, leading them to kill her. They broke her legs in order to prevent her from escaping and smashed her head too. This led to her death.”

The kidnappers dumped her corpse in the bush, he said.

“After they had killed her, they were still demanding the ransom without telling her family that they had killed her,” Pastor Hayab said. “It was only after the ransom was paid that it was found by her family that she had been killed by her abductors.” 

Baptist Pastor Slain 

In Jema’a County some 230 kilometers (142 miles) south of Kaduna City, suspected Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot a Baptist pastor dead on Sept. 11, sources said.

The Rev. Alhamdu Mangadus, pastor of Nasara Baptist Church in Asso, was killed while working on his farm at about 1 p.m., said the Rev. Danladi Boyis Hassan of the ECWA church in the Ungwan Kadara area of Kaduna City.

Given the high level of killings and kidnappings by Muslim Fulani herdsmen in southern Kaduna in recent years, Christian leaders suspect herdsmen killed the pastor. Pastor Hassan, a native of the slain pastor’s village, visited the area after the killing and was told that the assailants were Muslim Fulani herdsmen.

“Pray along with the church and family as they mourn the barbaric act by Fulani terrorists,” Pastor Hassan told Morning Star News.

Pastor Hayab of the CAN also said Fulani herdsmen were behind the killing.

“He was shot dead on his farm, and the attackers injured another fellow from Tanda,” he said. “The corpse of the pastor was taken away by the Fulani herdsmen but was eventually recovered in the bush after a frantic search by our brethren in the area.”

Pastor Hayab said the killing of the pastor was one too many for Christians in violence-wracked Kaduna state.

“We are going back to the era of senseless killings. When will people be safe to go out and seek food to feed their families?” he said.

Nigeria ranked 12^th on Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution.