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Welcome to G3 Weekly—a summary of this week’s top news stories on Christianity and the public square.
This week, the nation mourned after a gunman murdered nineteen children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school. In more lamentable news, an independent report confirmed that Southern Baptist Convention leadership “resisted” and “stonewalled” sexual abuse allegations within the denomination. Meanwhile, many upcoming “LGBTQ+ Pride Month” celebrations appear to be targeting children—including babies.
Texas School Shooting Claims Twenty-One Lives
An eighteen-year-old gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, claiming the lives of nineteen children and two teachers before a border patrol agent killed him.
The school shooting is the second-deadliest in American history, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Before traveling to the school, the gunman shot his grandmother, who remains in the hospital as of Thursday afternoon. The gunman crashed his car in a ditch upon arriving at the school and lingered outside of the building for twelve minutes. Authorities entered the building one hour later and failed to enter the fourth-grade classroom in which the gunman barricaded himself. An elite border patrol tactical team entered the classroom and succeeded in killing the gunman.
Nationwide debate ensued about the cause of the violence—and what can be done to prevent future killings. While conservatives stressed the gunman’s fatherless upbringing and history of behavioral problems, progressives called for new gun control legislation.
“These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen elsewhere in the world,” President Joe Biden claimed. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it? It’s time to turn this pain into action.”
SBC Leadership Avoided Lawsuits Rather than Helping Victims
A seven-month investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention’s treatment of sexual abuse incidents revealed that victims shared allegations with the denomination’s Executive Committee “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.”
The report comes three weeks before SBC messengers are slated to meet in Anaheim, California, for this year’s national meeting.
The report says that an Executive Committee staffer kept a list of pastors accused of abuse—yet there is no sign there was “any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches.” Indeed, the report concluded that denominational leadership was “singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC.”
Pastors and church leaders across the country lamented the report’s findings.
“Truth is, this report shows Southern Baptists in the worst light,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler said in an opinion piece for WORLD. “We have to face that fact. But I must move ahead with the confidence, based on long experience, that faithful Southern Baptist laypeople, pastors, and denominational leaders will do the right thing, once they know what that right thing is.”
“Every Southern Baptist church member should read this report and ask the Lord to awaken us to an honest assessment of just how far we have drifted in our churches from his holy Word,” Grace Baptist Church pastor and SBC presidential candidate Tom Ascol told The Daily Wire. “The Bible is crystal clear about how we are to handle sin in our churches. Yet, as this report makes obvious, too many of our churches are falling short in this area.”
LGBTQ+ Pride Month Celebrations Target Children and Babies
As “LGBTQ+ Pride Month” approaches, many celebrations from corporate America and government agencies alike are targeting little children.
In addition to selling chest binders, packing underwear, bras, and boyshirts for customers professing transgender identity, retailer Target is selling multiple items in a kids’ collection—such as a “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” shirt for toddlers, rainbow-colored onesies, “First Pride” baby bibs, and shirts featuring pronouns.
Likewise, Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services is sponsoring Lake County PrideFest—a “free, family-friendly outdoor festival” featuring music and performances, according to The Daily Herald. Among other events is a “PrideFest Kiddie Corner” complete with “drag queen story time,” “drag kids dress up,” and a “drag show” for children.
Why do transgender activists target children in particular? In a Thursday interview with The Daily Wire, Carl Trueman—professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and author of seminal book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self—explained that “children are the perfect target for groups whose purpose is the subversion of the parent-child bond and the consequent strengthening of the power of a progressive establishment.”
“Destroy the bond between parents and children and you have destroyed the most powerful and influential pre-political bond of influence and loyalty that stands in the way of the various lobby groups trying to drive the direction of our culture,” the scholar explained.
