Volume V, Issue 1
THE CALL OF
CONSCIENCE How far would a university student go in her courageous stand for life?
What Is The Church’s Responsibility To The State? The Turning Of The Tide How My Child Taught Me To Do My ADF Homework
A ministry publication of the Alliance Defense Fund
Volume V, Issue 1
CONTENTS
non cullabo bea quasUniversity, aut voluptaque o RuthInLobo, on the renimo campuscori of Carleton Ottawa
“Sometimes we have to do hard things … ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ are not synonymous with ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”
The Call Of Conscience 8
– Ruth Lobo
Alliance Defense Fund Academy Nurtures Ever-Expanding Alliance
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“God’s purposes are not achieved when Christians sit idly by and watch culture change around them.”
“I can’t tell Rachel to listen to her teacher but not obey God.”
Alliance Defense Fund 15100 N. 90th Street Scottsdale, AZ 85260 [Phone] 800-Tell-ADF [Fax] 480-444-0025 www.TellADF.org
Editor Chuck Bolte
Senior Writer Chris Potts
Photography Bruce Ellefson
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“By being the church, you automatically bump up against the world and the state – and you have to push back.”
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How My Child Taught Me To Do My ADF Homework
What Is The Church’s Responsibility To The State?
Design Director Bruce Ellefson
Contributors Vicki Bailey, Tim Goeglein, Chris Potts, Alan Sears
Alliance Profile: Cathi Herrod “When we pull together as people of faith … we see the triumph of good over evil.”
The Alliance Defense Fund would enjoy hearing your comments on the stories and issues discussed in Truth &Triumph. Please direct comments/questions to info@TruthandTriumph.org, call 800-Tell-ADF, or write: Editor, Truth & Triumph, Alliance Defense Fund, 15100 N. 90th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260. © 2012, Alliance Defense Fund. All rights reserved.
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minutes with alan
The Turning Of The Tide by Alan Sears, President, CEO and General Counsel
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t’s so hard to explain to people how different things were, back in the mid-70s, when I was in law school … before the pro-life movement came alive. The legal cement was still hardening around the new Roe v. Wade decision. A few religious leaders were speaking out against this radical change in our laws and culture, but most kept silent. I actually heard some ministers tell their congregations that abortion was not an issue for Christians to focus on. That’s not to say that these leaders actually favored abortion – they just couldn’t grasp how widespread, how far-reaching, how profoundly evil the agenda of those pressing the abortion laws had become. Or how much worse things were going to get.
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ore than 53 million aborted children later, the awful reality of what our nation has done is still hard to fathom. So is the fact that the killing goes on, hour after hour, day after day. But recent events have borne witness to something few could have imagined, even a few years ago. The culture is turning. A new generation of young people is outraged and outspoken at this continuing assault on life. And, by His grace, more and more are finding the godly courage to stand for the truth in their communities and on their college and university campuses. (See story, p. 8.) What’s more, that same grace is enabling our Alliance Defense Fund attorneys and their allies to make increasing legal headway against abortion providers in courts around the country.
Gradually, groups like Planned Parenthood are being brought to their financial knees. Last summer, an appellate court ruled 3-0 that Arizona’s Abortion Consent Act is constitutional. The bill prohibits non-doctors from performing abortions, protects health care workers who refuse to help with abortions, and requires notarized parental consent for minors seeking abortions. (ADF attorneys had argued the case on behalf of several Arizona pro-life groups and organizations.) Following the court’s ruling, Planned Parenthood stopped offering abortions at seven of its state clinics. In two months, the number of abortions in Arizona had dropped by one-third from what it was just a year earlier. That’s just the beginning. A View a special message from Alan. growing number Visit www.TruthandTriumph.org of former Planned and click on “Watch the Video.” Parenthood employees are speaking out against the wrongs they’ve seen and done. Coast to coast, the winds are beginning to blow hard against the No. 1 sponsor of abortion in the country. Praise God for this victory – and many others, still to come. And I praise Him that I’ve lived to see a renewed sense of urgency, of courage, and of hope for the end of abortion in America. ★ John 15:5
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Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.
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Worship opens each morning session.
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o a casual bystander, the annual summer gathering known as the Alliance Defense Fund Academy looks for all the world like an especially congenial class reunion – lots of lively greetings and laughing around tables and plenty of stirring speeches and presentations. But across 15 years, the event has grown beyond its original conception as a time for legal training, making new friends and growing a fledgling legal ministry. Today, the Academy has become a vibrant microcosm for the Alliance Defense Fund of exactly what that first word, Alliance, really means – and how it’s bringing together an increasingly varied array of gifted Christians to advance and defend religious freedom all over the world. In the beginning, the event was designed solely for attorneys, and they still come in large numbers to brush up on new cases, new regulations, and new strategies for preserving life, marriage, and religious liberty. Through the Academy, ADF has trained more than 1,500 lawyers from all 50 states and from 31 other
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nations, who have gone on to offer more than $133.8 million worth of combined pro bono/dedicated legal service to the Body of Christ.
“I learned more about constitutional law during the one-week legal academy than I did in three years of law school,” says Mark Warnick, an ADF allied attorney who describes the Academy as “the finest legal training program I have attended in nearly 22 years of practice.” A few years ago, the Academy added an Ambassadors track for special Ministry Friends of ADF. These men and women,
charged with informing and recruiting thousands of other potential Ministry Friends in living rooms, restaurants, and church dining halls coast to coast, received special training at the Academy designed to help them better communicate the mission of ADF and understand the basic constitutional underpinnings from which the ministry operates.
results in pastors boldly speaking to their own congregations and sharing what they’ve learned with other pastors. The ripple effect of the Academy training has exceeded our expectations each year.”
For most, the Academy proves to be both a thrilling and sobering look at what’s happening on the scrimmage lines of the law, and their first real exposure to the people whose hard work drives the ADF objective. “It’s kind of stunning to see how well-spoken everybody is,” says Rich Neuland, an ADF Ambassador from Rancho Santa Margarita, California. “This is a group of people who are clearly gifted in every way – intellectually, in the way they express themselves, and especially spiritually. God is a big part of their lives … evident in the way they talk and the subject matter of their talk. Just being here elevates what my expectations are of myself.”
The 2011 Academy, meanwhile, saw the summer event expanded to include yet another track – one especially designed to expose media professionals already friendly to ADF ideals and objectives to more of the ministry’s activities and objectives in the year ahead.
For many, presentations from ADF attorneys are a highlight of the Academy sessions.
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wo years ago, recognizing the increasing legal challenges facing America’s churches, ADF began offering a new track at the Academy specifically designed to acquaint church leaders with ADF issues and with the legal resources available to them at no charge. “Many pastors either aren’t aware of the laws protecting their right to engage all aspects of our culture, or don’t fully appreciate how vital church participation in civic discourse is
Visit www.TruthandTriumph.org for more on what ADF is doing to build an effective legal alliance defending life, marriage, and religious freedom, and to learn how you or a friend can be involved in this year’s Alliance Defense Fund Academy. to our form of government,” says Kevin Theriot, ADF Senior Counsel, who helps lead the pastor track sessions. “Once the awareness is generated,” he says, “we’ve seen tremendous
“They were bowled over by the amount of work and the kinds of work ADF is doing,” says Tim Goeglein, who interacts extensively with media for Focus on the Family (See story, p. 18). Goeglein, who took part in last year’s media track, says, “The most common refrain I’ve heard is, ‘I had no idea ADF did all those things, or that the problems were so extensive.’” Whatever the track, “the Academy offers everyone who participates a satellite image of a legal battlefield that has no boundaries. It crosses oceans and continents,” says Bruce Smith, ADF Senior Vice President for Media Relations, who notes that 19 nations were represented at last year’s event. “This is why the work that ADF does matters … because ADF is making a global difference.” “I can’t think of any one single event that better epitomizes who we are as an alliance,” says ADF President Alan Sears, “and what we as an alliance are trying to accomplish in the legal system, in the culture, and in the courtroom of public opinion, than the ADF Academy.” ★
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Eric Metaxas
German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.*
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ric Metaxas is the New York Times best-selling author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. His work has been published in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, Regeneration Quarterly, Christianity Today, National Review Online, Beliefnet, and First Things. He’s also been featured on CNN, The Fox News Channel, and National Public Radio. He lives with his family in Manhattan. Last fall, Metaxas’ newest book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy, became a New York Times No. 1 bestseller. In the book, Metaxas explores what happened when the German theologian’s profound faith convictions ran up against a Nazi regime determined to co-opt, corrupt, and then neutralize the voice of the church in Germany. Why is the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer of particular significance for Christians today? There are a number of parallels that, in reading about him and about that time, you immediately recognize. It’s astounding. The fact, for instance, that people tend not to be prepared
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for what’s coming. If the church is really being the church, they will see what is going on in the culture around them. But if they are sort of playing at being the church – just going through the motions – they’ll be blindsided. That’s precisely what happened in Bonhoeffer’s generation.
The Germans had gotten a few things slightly wrong, but it didn’t seem like a big deal until the “perfect storm” of the Third Reich came and challenged them – and they weren’t prepared. Many in the church didn’t see the problem. But Bonhoeffer did – he saw that for the church to be the church, the church cannot be dictated to by the state. His prophetic voice went unheeded in the ‘30s, but today his voice and what he had to say may be the thing that saves us. I hope it is.
What would Bonhoeffer consider the correct relationship between the church and the state? Bonhoeffer saw that the state was trying to encroach on the boundaries of the church. He was able to say, “Wait a second, we’ve got to assert ourselves. We’ve got to be the church.” If the church is being the church, [it] will naturally be sensitive to those encroachments and will understand that we have to be bold to exist. But it’s very easy for the church not to be the church … or to be the church in name only. [Because], by being the church, you automatically bump up against the world and the state – and you have to push back. To know how to push back, as a Christian … it’s a complicated thing.
When, for Bonhoeffer, does ‘a government to be wary of ’ become ‘a government to oppose’? [Bonhoeffer] says that the church has three functions. First, to challenge the government to be the government. In other words, to fulfill God’s idea of “What is the state?” Second, when the state is going wrong, abusing its power, [the church must] stand against it … in a helpful way. We must exhibit tough love. “We are here to help you be a good state. But when it goes wrong, we are going to point that out.” Third, if the state is not behaving appropriately – if it is oppressing a certain group, for instance – then, the church must stand up and say, “We’re going to help those victims.” Even if “those victims” are not Christians or members of the church, it is our job to help them. Bonhoeffer says that’s what agape love is: to love those who are unlovable … who are different. To stand up for them.
Visit www.TruthandTriumph.org to watch a video interview with Eric Metaxas and learn what ADF is doing to protect the religious freedom of pastors in today’s legal culture. Then, finally, Bonhoeffer said if the state is victimizing people [like the Jews of his era], it’s not good enough for us to just bandage up the wounds of the victims. The church must actually try to stop the state from perpetrating whatever evil it is perpetrating. Bonhoeffer felt that to be
a Christian during the Third Reich, in the end, was to directly oppose the state – not to oppose the nation of Germany but this false state, this tyranny, which really was anti-Germany. That’s a very dramatic difference from where we are in a culture today. But it’s instructive.
“By being the church, you automatically
bump up against the world and the state – and you have to push back.” –Eric Metaxas
Today, many pastors insist politics has no place in the pulpit. What would Bonhoeffer say? There’s no question that there is a temptation to make an idol of politics. At the same time, there’s a temptation on the opposite side to make an idol of a kind of personal piety that does not engage with the world. Both are counterfeits for God. To avoid politics entirely is to say to the unborn, to the slave, to anybody who is a victim, “You know what? We really don’t care about you that much. We care about our own personal piety, and God is in charge of you.” As if God is requiring nothing of me. The Christian faith is an active faith. It’s completely different from this sort of “playing defense,” religiosity kind of thing. If you’re fear-based, you’re not worshiping Jesus. We need the church of Jesus to be the church of Jesus, Bonhoeffer said. If the church will be the church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But if we’re just playing at religion … then we fail. ★ *Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the Christian classic, The Cost Of Discipleship. In 1945, he was executed in a German prison camp for his opposition to the Third Reich. Alliance Defense Fund
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“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” – Benjamin Franklin
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he trouble with tyranny is that it always comes clothed as legitimate authority.
No one ever said, in their time, that Nero wasn’t truly Caesar, George III wasn’t really king, Bull Connor wasn’t within his legal rights turning on the fire hoses in Montgomery. They all had legitimate authority – they were just wrong. Wrong in a way no one with clear eye and keen conscience could fail to see … and stand against. Looking back, it’s easy to understand that, and to recognize the heroism of those who challenged their brutal decrees. Rebellion looks wise and appropriate and courageous, a few years after the fact. Especially when the rebel writes like the Apostle Paul, speaks like Patrick Henry, radiates simple righteousness as clearly as Rosa Parks. It’s harder to know tyrants when they stand right before us in our own age, our own communities – wielding not lions or swords or police dogs, but regulations, closeddoor meetings, clipboards. Harder, too, to recognize heroes, especially when they’re young, and still finding their eloquence. When the voice of their protest, like the voice of their conscience, is a little
louder than we’d like ... when the rebellion takes a form we might not have chosen ... when the confrontations make us nervous, uncomfortable. Most of us, after all, were raised to respect authority. And from a distance, the line between legitimate authority and tyranny can sometimes look awfully thin. This is a story of some young people who met tyranny up close – and recognized it when they saw it. For each of them, it was simple faith in God – not some innate, restless teenage defiance – that urged them to face that tyranny. Conscience, more than courage, drove them to stand. Standing, though, they learned that tyrants have weapons, as well as agendas ... and that they’re willing to use them.
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eing arrested is awkward, embarrassing – scary. A man bigger than you are, stronger than you are, spins you around, snaps metal on your wrists, and pushes you into the back of a police van. And in that moment, for that moment, it doesn’t really matter that what you’re doing is right, that there are reasons … that the most important beliefs of your life are at stake. What matters is that
Lifeline members (from left) James Shaw, Nicholas McLeod, Kelsey Graham, and Ruth Lobo share a relaxed moment off campus. you’re nervous, helpless, uncomfortable. People are staring. You realize, now, that this will be on your record forever, as you apply for jobs and other opportunities. You know that soon you’re going to have to make phone calls to people you care about, explaining why you did what you did – and some of them won’t understand. All those things went through Ruth Lobo’s mind, one chilly October morning in 2010, as she sat in the back of a police van on the campus of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Through the rear windows, she watched as her friends – fellow students who trusted her leadership – were turned, handcuffed, and pushed into other vehicles, for doing what she’d encouraged them to do. She watched, and somewhere amid the roaring maelstrom of emotions flickered an understanding that all of this – all of this – came out of the hard choices made by another frightened, determined young woman on the other side of the world, 25 years before.
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uth has never met her birth parents. All she knows is that, in India, at 19, her unmarried mother became pregnant.
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Poor and alone, she wound up at a convent known for reaching out to women in her situation. There, she put up her child for adoption and walked away. Ten months later, a Canadian couple found Ruth there and carried her to the other side of the world. “That my mother would do that says something to me about her character,” Ruth says. “She had most likely been ostracized from her family because she was pregnant. It could not have been easy for her. I feel as though I have courage kind of ingrained into my being, because of her courage in that situation. I guess that’s the emotional backing that I have when I defend the prolife view.” It also affected her decision to major in human rights at Carleton. “I have a heart for those who are marginalized in society,” she says. “I want other children to have the opportunities that I’ve had. Adoption is something that needs to happen a lot more.” A few years ago, those feelings led Ruth and other students to reignite the dormant embers of a pro-life club called Lifeline, which had existed off and on at Carleton for years. The club sponsored a debate between the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) and Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood fared poorly, and the debate received a lot of attention. Soon after, the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) – the governing authority for student activities – announced that Carleton was a pro-choice university. In other words, says Albertos Polizogopoulos, the Alliance Defense Fund-allied attorney whom Ruth contacted in the wake of that announcement, CUSA “would not fund, certify, assist, or help any student or student group [seeking] to remove a woman’s right to choose her options in cases of pregnancy.” With that decision, Lifeline lost its club accreditation. CUSA – though funded by student fees – would no longer provide money for Lifeline; allow its members to use campus printing, copying, or mailing facilities; or have a designated meeting area on campus. Of course, all those privileges could be restored, provided Lifeline renounced its pro-life philosophy (and reason for existence). With Polizogopoulos’ help, Lifeline challenged the CUSA ruling. The case drew wide attention on both Canadian and U.S. campuses. In time, CUSA caved – not changing its policy, but accrediting Lifeline anyway. The club was re-accredited for sev-
eral semesters, until September 2010, when a new CUSA executive council once more denied it, for all the same old reasons.
ness Project (GAP), an imposing display of 6’ x 8’ signs showing past atrocities – slavery, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Cambodian genocide – that are “comparable to abortion,” Nicholas says.
and “disturbing.” Instead, they offered Lifeline space in the Carleton equivalent of Outer Mongolia. Polizogopoulos interceded on Lifeline’s behalf, but university administrators were unyielding.
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“Throughout history, mass killings have been called a state-sanctioned choice, validated by society as something that is okay,” Ruth says, adding that, in Canada today, “we have to pay for abortion through our taxes. Babies are being dehumanized through rhetoric such as ‘reproductive rights’ or ‘parasites’ – very similar to what happened to Jews in the Holocaust.”
“I was very nervous,” Ruth says. “We talked a lot about the possibility of arrest, and we were pretty convicted that that would not be an option … that the university would not go that far to silence their students.” Nevertheless, she began doing her homework, studying the university’s policies with regard to student speech.
went to a pro-life conference in high school, just to get out of school for a couple of days with my girlfriend,” recalls Nick McLeod, another Lifeliner. “They showed a video that changed my life forever. It showed me the reality of what abortion actually did to unborn children.” “Canada’s criminal code states that the preborn child is not a human being,” he says. “Abortion will not end until we recognize the unborn child as human, the same as you and me.” Joining Lifeline gave Nicholas more than a cause. It was his first real exposure to people of faith. “Through pro-life work, I was able to be around real Christians and actually see the real Gospel message,” he says. “It was through that that I found my own personal relationship with Jesus. Through a prolife group, God worked His grace through me to bring me back to Him.”
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t wasn’t so much love for a cause that brought James Shaw into the Lifeline fold in 2010. It was love for Ruth Lobo, his fiancée. He joined up mostly because she and Nicholas needed the help. “Within an hour,” he says, “I was a fullfledged member.” That summer, he volunteered with the CCBR, and “became more and more convicted of the need for this work … to show people what abortion looks like and what it really is.” Still, he says, Lifeline’s activities seemed “very calm” and restrained, mostly just setting up “little information tables.” He respected their ideals, but “I wasn’t really sure what they were doing on campus.” That changed, in October, when the group decided to initiate the Genocide Aware-
Through the GAP display, she says, Lifeline hoped “first, to lift the abortion debate for people to realize that it’s a much bigger issue than just a woman’s choice, and second, to talk to people about anything from abortion to sexuality to ‘why should we value life?’” Neither goal seemed unrealistic for a college campus, and the GAP had been shown effectively at many other schools in Canada and the U.S. “University campuses are places where you expect to be confronted with ideas and issues that may be somewhat uncomfortable, somewhat controversial, or perhaps even offensive,” Polizogopoulos says, “because it’s a market of ideas, and a market of different philosophies.” Carleton administrators, unfortunately, didn’t see it that way.
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ifeline asked permission to set up the display on Tory Quad, a large plaza and the busy center of student activities. Officials refused, saying some might find the vivid photos “offensive”
“I did a lot of research, so I could be well-equipped and know: Are we breaking some kind of policy? Doing something wrong? What does respecting the university mean in this situation?” In the end, it wasn’t just Carleton’s ambivalence toward the taking of human life that convinced Lifeline members they needed to go through with the demonstration. It was the realization that other universities across Canada and the U.S. were clamping down in similar ways on other pro-life student groups, denying their right to speak hard truths about these life-and-death issues on campus. “This has been epidemic across Canada,” Ruth says. (And just as common across the U.S.) “We felt very convicted this was Alliance Defense Fund
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something we had to do. So, on October 4, we informed the university that we were going to go ahead and do the GAP in protest of universities that try to censor their prolife students.” That morning, the Lifeline students met and prayed together. Word was that local police and Carleton security officers were waiting for them in force. They loaded their materials and drove to campus, with James ominously aware he was driving “into a very hostile environment.”
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he students were barely in sight of the quad when campus security officials blocked their path. Lifeline was ordered to leave at once. Affirming her rights as a student, Ruth began reading from Carleton’s own official policy declaring student freedoms to speak and demonstrate peacefully. A guard interrupted. The protest was over, he said. Lifeline needed to go. Ruth said no.
“Okay,” the guard said, signaling the other officers.“You can take this lady first.” Five students were arrested. The charge was trespassing … on their own campus walkways. “A scary feeling,” Nicholas acknowledges, but “a few in the crowd spoke up for us, including one of the professors, who went to the head of security, asked what he was doing, and said, ‘How can you be arresting them for merely stating and showing what their point of view is?’ “Part of confronting people and exposing injustice is taking the persecution that will inevitably 12 |
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result,” Nicholas says.“From Martin Luther King to William Wilberforce, no one was able to end an injustice without accepting the persecution that came from that.” “Standing there with handcuffs on, there’s nothing you can do,” James says. “Nothing I can say that would change it. It’s a little frightening, because you never know what is going to happen. What are they going to charge us with? What’s going to happen with my university degree? “But, at the same time,” he says,“I felt that that was the right thing to do. It was the right way to go about it. A lot of anxiety, but – at the end of the day – a lot of peace.”
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eactions to the arrest were immediate and varied.
“We received a lot of support from all across Canada, the U.S., and internationally,” Ruth says. “However, we do have our detractors –
[people] who would prefer that we didn’t do such radical things to prove a point. That has been personally very difficult for me to deal with: close friends who simply don’t understand, or seek to understand, why we felt we had to do what we did.” “[They] would prefer that we don’t hurt anybody’s feelings in our projects, or that we kind of toe the line and do things ‘nicely.’ [But] abortion is not something we should be comfortable with,” Ruth says. “Right now, even members of the church are comfortable with abortion and very passive in fighting it. In
Lifeline, we feel convicted that sometimes we have to do hard things … and ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ are not synonymous with ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’” “They’ve suffered a severe price,” Polizogopoulos says. “They’ve been ostracized on campus. They’ve been ostracized among their friends, families, and communities. They’ve obviously taken on a lot of stress associated with these disputes. They have done it with courage, with eloquence, holding their head up high. They are very impressive to me.” “Young people are often very concerned about their futures, their images, and their reputations, and rightfully so,” he says.“You’re training for whatever job you’re going to do … making the friends that you’re going to have for the rest of your life. It’s very easy to compromise – and [the Lifeline students] just haven’t. They will not compromise. I find that very admirable.”
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o did Kelsey Graham. Like the rest of the Lifeliners, she came to her pro-life convictions by her own unique route. As a young child, she watched a teenage sister who’d become pregnant out of wedlock make the difficult decision to keep her child, rather than put it up for adoption. “Just watching her as a parent, I really took from that how sacred life is,” Kelsey says. She started at Carleton in 2010 and soon heard of Lifeline. After the arrests, she sought out Ruth to ask what she could do to help. Ruth invited Kelsey to join her for an upcoming “Choice Chain” event – standing with other Lifeliners, holding up large photos of aborted babies and asking anyone who might approach for their thoughts on the images, and on abortion. Kelsey agreed. “It was very peaceful, and we had some really very profound conversations with students about abortion,” Ruth says. “We talked to more students that day than in the five years I’ve been at Carleton.” Loud protests from several campus women’s groups only sealed her determination. “We need a pro-life presence,” she says. “Lots of women on campus have had abortions
[and] never talked about it. Their emotions continue to be pressed down by the administration and by the women they are seeking help from. These projects bring dialogue to the table.”
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he fallout from those eventful autumn days continued in the weeks that followed. Lifeline met with Carleton administrators, who – like their counterparts on campuses all over America – made it clear that the usual rules regarding student clubs and free expression did not apply to pro-life organizations. They threatened to restrict Lifeline members to “speech zones” and warned of further arrests if the members so much as struck up a conversation with other students on abortion or handed out printed materials. In January of last year, Ruth and Polizogopoulos attended the national conference of Students for Life of America, where Ruth was surprised with an award as International Pro-Life Activist of the Year. While there, she met an Alliance Defense Fund attorney, who offered the ministry’s assistance and encouraged Lifeline to sue Carleton. A month later, the club’s members did just that. The case is currently awaiting a hearing before a divisional court in Ontario. “These pro-life groups are putting forth their position on abortion,” Polizogopoulos says, “and people who don’t agree with them
don’t want to debate them or discuss the issue with them, but essentially want to shut them right down.” By doing that, he says, “the university risks becoming a center of indoctrination as opposed to a center of education.” ADF, he says, has been a great help in challenging that university mindset. “ADF has been absolutely integral to our fight at Carleton,” Nicholas says. “Without them, we’d be unable to fight for the freedoms of students, and have that representation to educate students.”
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eyond the legal realm, Lifeline’s efforts have reverberated in remarkable ways.
Visit TruthandTriumph.org to see video of the Lifeline arrests, hear more from the students involved, and discover how your generous gifts are enabling ADF to effectively defend religious freedom and the sanctity of human life.
“We’ve had a lot of little victories,” says Kelsey, who’s led Lifeline since Ruth graduated last May. “People walking away, questioning whether they really are ‘pro-choice.’ We’ve had some beautiful conversations with people who’ve jumped into their faith and joined the church again because of work in the pro-life movement.” At another Lifeline event, a woman who’d already scheduled an abortion saw the “disturbing photos” – and ended up keeping her baby. A friend of Ruth’s, who had also been active in pro-life activities, became angry over Ruth’s part in the GAP arrests, writing to other pro-life leaders to denounce Ruth as an impediment to the cause. Ruth sought her out, and discovered that her friend had drifted from her former convictions. Now, “she’s made a complete turnaround,” Ruth says. “She’s come back to the faith completely. When I saw that, I said, ‘Lord, this was Your will.’ People are going to come back to the faith through seeing the conviction of students … through talking about these hard issues in their life.” “Some of us take the route to share our faith,” James says, while others choose “to confront the culture on what is happening.” But to Nicholas, who found salvation through the witness of pro-life activists, the line between activism and evangelism is as fuzzy as an ultrasound. “When you sacrifice yourself for someone else – which is what pro-life work is,” he says, “that’s when you truly meet the face of God.” ★ Alliance Defense Fund
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Vicki Bailey
Though they’ve been Ministry Friends of the Alliance Defense Fund since 1998, Vicki and Brian Bailey never had reason to draw on ADF resources personally … until the day they learned firsthand that religious freedom and today’s education culture can intersect uncomfortably in even the most innocuous moments. First-grader Rachel enjoys church, reading, and time with her family.
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y little girl, Rachel, is the kind of child who keeps a pastor honest. She’s only in first grade, but when she sits in a service, she pays close attention. She keeps her Bible open and she wants to know exactly which Scripture the preacher is reading, so she can read along with him. That’s not just for Sunday, either. She has a little orange Gideon New Testament she carries in her backpack. Sometimes at school, during free reading time, she pulls it out and peruses it. One day last spring, a kindergarten classmate of hers saw what she was reading. He likes small books himself, and asked if she had another little Bible that he could have and read, too. That night, she asked if she could take him one of our extra Bibles. Fine, I said, but suggested that she have her friend ask his mom, first, if it was okay for
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him to receive a Bible. Rachel did, but he kept forgetting, and the extra Bible bumped around in her backpack for a few weeks. Finally, one day as class was ending, their teacher noticed Rachel giving the boy something out of her backpack, which he placed in his take-home folder. The teacher asked about it, and he told her, “Rachel gave me this little book.” The teacher flipped
through the Bible, handed it back, and called Rachel over. Rachel wasn’t allowed to give away that kind of book at school, she said, and told the boy he’d have to give it back. He did, but Rachel said he looked a little disappointed. Later, the teacher sent me an email. “We’re not allowed to distribute reading materials such as this at school, even if distributed by a student,” she wrote. Yes, the boy had asked, and she was glad the two were talking about their mutual reading interests, but Bible trading was just a no-no. If we had any questions, she said, we could always contact her or the principal.
I
had a feeling I was only going to get one answer if I pursued this, but a friend in my Moms In Touch group suggested I call the district Student Services office. (Moms
In Touch is a group that encourages mothers worldwide to pray together each week for their children’s schools.) I was afraid I might be getting in out of my depth, but then thought just to ask for a copy of the official district policy with regard to this situation. A secretary said she’d look for one and call me back. Only she wasn’t the one who called – it was the director of Student Services, and his message made it clear that he’d talked with the principal. Now I really would need to be sure of my facts.
Paul warned us that “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).” As parents, teaching our children to live godly lives, we have to expect that, sooner or later, that teaching will bring us into conflict with the culture that dominates our public schools. We need to prepare for that,
About that time, I remembered the Alliance Defense Fund. Brian and I have been Ministry Friends of ADF for many years, and I’ve read stories along the way about ADF cases similar to what Rachel was going through. I started doing some research at their website. It was important, I thought, to be informed, and not just sound like I was on a tirade about what had happened. After studying a few ADF cases, I was feeling more confident – and just then, the Student Services director called again. It turned out he’d been a principal himself, at one point, and was familiar with Christian clubs and activities on campus. He explained that there’s just a lot of confusion on the whole “separation of church and state” idea, that people often have their own notions of what they think that means, and that most really don’t know the legal truths involved.
The Bailey family: (from left) Rachel, Vicki, Brian, and Jonah.
“So,” I said. “You’re telling me that what my daughter did should have been allowed?” “Yes,” he said. Students could share Bibles, as long as it didn’t disrupt classroom instruction. He said he’d talk to our principal, and added that he was impressed, after dealing with so many parents who just wanted to tell him “what they’d heard,” that I’d actually made the effort to familiarize myself with the law. But, of course, I really couldn’t do anything else.
B
rian and I have made a deliberate choice to keep our children in public school. I know that’s not for everyone, but it’s where we believe our children are supposed to be. It’s a good training ground for them, where they can learn to live out and share their faith with others. We feel that if we want them to do those things later, as young adults, we have to teach them to do it now.
Visit www.TruthandTriumph.org to learn more about how ADF is defending the freedom of students across America to live and share their faith in public schools, colleges, and universities.
But that makes it all the more important that we do all we can to protect their freedom to live for Christ at their school. I can’t tell Rachel to listen to her teacher but not obey God. On the one hand, she needs to absolutely respect the authority that’s over her, but when the authority is wrong, she needs to honor God above that – above everything – regardless of the consequences.
not only by praying for our children and their teachers and administrators, but by knowing our constitutionally protected rights, and being ready to stand graciously but firmly for those rights when they’re challenged. Today, the boy has his Bible. Rachel’s in first grade at another school. They’ve mostly forgotten all about what happened. But during that busy week last spring, I know that Rachel and her brother, Jonah, were watching Brian and me. In truth, I think with every Christian, someone is watching … to see if we really believe what we say. To see if we will stand and speak up for the truth. For us, the test of that began with Rachel wanting to give a boy a little Bible. And with us, as her parents, wanting to give her a little courage … a little example of how to stand. God was so good to give us that opportunity, and the resources of ADF to make the most of it. ★ Alliance Defense Fund
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Cathi Herrod is now in her fifth year as president of the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a family policy council whose legislative agenda includes a number of Alliance Defense Fund objectives. Her tireless leadership has helped secure the passage of 101 bills – many of them written, endorsed, and/or defended in court by ADF.
“T
he relationship between CAP and ADF is a great example of the meaning of ‘alliance,’” Cathi Herrod says. “Pastors in Arizona now look at CAP as being the public policy ‘go-to,’ and ADF as being the legal ‘go-to.’” Across the country, she says, “my colleagues at family policy councils depend on ADF for legal advice and for legal defense in court,” she says. “The associations are phenomenal, and they’re only going to grow.” Coming from a personal background that gave her an up-close view of the threats to families, religious liberties, and children in the womb, she describes her work now as “a calling.” “I am in this,” Herrod says, “because of what I see in God’s Word, and the joy that comes from being obedient to what God has called me to do. I believe He calls us to be salt and light, to lift up a standard of righteousness, to go into all the world with our beliefs.” She takes a special joy in celebrating two crucial triumphs that saw two of those beliefs underscored by state law.
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In 2008, CAP orchestrated a multi-denominational grassroots effort that accomplished the successful passage of a state amendment defining marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. Then, last summer, the state Court of Appeals upheld an Abortion Consent Act that has already led Planned Parenthood to stop offering abortions at seven clinics and a sharp downturn in the number of abortions in Arizona – hundreds less than just a year before. “To those who Visit www.TruthandTriumph.org to see an interview with Cathi Herrod and discover believe Christians how ADF is working throughout America shouldn’t particito defend marriage and the family. pate in the legislative process or engage in public policy – look to Arizona,” Herrod says. “When we pull together as people of faith … when we register to vote, vote our values, and participate in the legislative process, we can make a difference. And we see the triumph of good over evil.” ★
in the news
HOUSE OF HOPE Volume II, Issue 2 On December 5, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the 17-year-old case of Bronx Household of Faith vs. Board of Education of the City of New York. The Bronx Household has met regularly in Public School 15/291 since 2003, while Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have defended the congregation’s right to equal access to New York public buildings. Because of the decision by the Second Circuit to uphold the city’s policy to deny churches equal access, as we went to press, New York City was poised to evict
dozens of churches, even as they still extend access to other community groups. On January 5, a group of pastors and laypeople peacefully protested the city’s policy at the New York City Law Department, kneeling in prayer and singing hymns. Several were arrested, charged with “criminal trespassing.” On January 12, another peaceful protest was held, resulting in the arrest of more than 40 pastors. About 500 pastors, laity, and state legislators rallied at city hall on January 29, drawing more media focus on the issue.
FAULT LINES Volume III, Issue 2 Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Matt Bowman recently obtained a copy of a written policy from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City affirming the legal right of all medical staff to choose not to participate in abortions.
in an abortion procedure at Mount Sinai – apparently was drawn up by administrators to forestall further legal action against the hospital.
The new evidence stands in “startling but welcome contrast to the hospital’s previous behavior,” The document – written sometime Bowman says, and “shows that our after ADF client Cathy DeCarlo, legal position is undeniable.” ADF R.N., was forced against her peris still pursuing other legal options sonal religious convictions to assist in the case.
Sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund in conjunction with the ADF Pulpit Initiative (a legal effort to secure the free speech rights of pastors), Pulpit Freedom Sunday encourages pastors to preach sermons presenting biblical perspectives on the positions of electoral candidates. The surge in participation this year reflected an August 2011 survey of 1,000 Evangelical pastors conducted by ADF and LifeWay research, which found that 86 percent – more than fourth-fifths of those asked – opposed government use of a church’s tax exemption to manipulate what pastors preach from the pulpit.
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Timothy S. Goeglein, Vice President for External Relations, Focus on the Family
Standing At The Crossroads Of Faith And Government
I
t took the worst experience of my life for me to truly appreciate the work of the Alliance Defense Fund and the group I serve with, Focus on the Family. For nearly eight years, I worked as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, helping him to establish outreach plans for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and the President’s emergency plan for AIDS Relief, and to secure the confirmation of two Supreme Court Justices. I knew what it was to have access to the President, to work with and for him, to be asked into that Oval Office sanctum
where issues were decided that could make a good and lasting impact on communities, the country, even the world. Then, I learned what it is to fall. I plagiarized other people’s writing, bringing shame and embarrassment to the President, my White House colleagues, my friends, my mentors, and above all, to my family. I felt certain that my life was over. My fall was swift and painful and deserved. But at the end of my rope was Jesus Christ, Who took me in His loving arms and sheltered and helped me. I cannot, even now, get to the bottom of the riches of His boundless love and peace. He showed me that love and forgiveness in an extraordinarily personal way. 18
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In the political classes, when you embarrass the President, a kind of divorce takes place. You are rapidly cut off; you instantly become persona non grata. That didn’t happen to me. The most powerful man in the world did what almost never happens in the political classes: he forgave me. He extended to me the same grace and mercy that had been extended to him in his own life. It was surreal. Clearly, the President’s faith was the foundation of his forgiveness, which he gave without hesitation and unconditionally. The grace extended to me was not rooted in some ab-
stract theory about how two kingdoms – government and faith, politics and religion – should mingle or intersect. It was a lived reality for me, and I’ll never forget it.
H
aving been in the political world, I’ve met every kind of person imaginable – those who embrace faith, and those who reject God outright. Do you know what I’ve found? Even lost souls – especially lost souls – gain their best ideas from people of faith. The same people who argue for abortion rights and same-sex “marriage” and the removal of God from our culture insist that we must reach out to the poor and the helpless, exercise tolerance and generosity, treat people of every race and background with fairness.
Of course, those are all biblical ideas … beliefs grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Yet so many of those who hold these ideas as their standard are determined to separate them from the God Who embodied them. They want the benefits of the Christian faith without the One who gave those benefits to us. As believers, we see that discrepancy, and the danger. And: we have the opportunity, the responsibility – indeed, a calling – to transcend it. We have the King’s ear. We are blessed to work alongside Him and to do His good bidding. We truly serve “the Leader of the Free World.” And that, I now know, is what makes the work of these two great allies, ADF and Focus on the Family, so crucial: by preserving religious liberty, ADF is keeping a door open for those of us who’ve been set free to extend that same freedom to others. By putting marriages, families, and parenting in the middle of what we do, Focus is opening people’s hearts to their Father’s love. Even in an election year, our work is not about politics. It’s about redemption – standing at the crossroads of faith and government to extend an unimaginable and unswerving grace in an extraordinarily personal way. ★ Tim Goeglein is author of the new political memoir The Man In The Middle: An Inside Account Of Faith And Politics In The George W. Bush Era, published by Broadman and Holman.
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