The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine introduces its new “lactation-related language.”
QUICK FACTS:
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) published new guidelines introducing “lactation-related language” such as “human milk feeding,” reports The Daily Wire.
“ABM recognizes that not all people who give birth and lactate identify as female and that some individuals identify as neither female nor male,” the guidelines read.
Other guidelines ask doctors to use “desexed or gender-inclusive language” such as “lactating person” instead of “mother,” The Daily Wire also notes.
The word “humankind” is recommended over “mankind.”
And "human milk feeding" is done by "human milk feeding individuals." ugh. https://t.co/uNHelXQsvk
"Terms for lactation include 'chestfeeding' and 'human milk-feeding individuals.'"
It's from an "Academy." 🤣😂🤣
The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine just one-upped the term "birthing person" with "human milk-feeding individual" https://t.co/Bx6my1PHGT via @Not_the_Bee
“We’re done. We can wrap our civilization up now. This is where future archeologists will say we passed beyond the event horizon of the woke black hole that is consuming us all,” writes conservative media outlet Not The Bee.
“They did it. They actually did it. The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine has found a way to one-up the dehumanizing term ‘birthing people’ with … I can hardly type it … “human milk-feeding individuals.'”
“You know, my legally-attached human milk-feeding individual (formerly called ‘wife’) has experienced what it’s like to chest-feed three legally-unabortable 4th-trimester fetuses as a lactating person,” they go on to say.
“Did you like that sentence? Because that’s how we’ll all be expected to talk by the year 2030 unless we tell these dumb dumbs we’re not playing their Marxist language games!”
BACKGROUND:
The Daily Wire reports The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has been among the loudest organizations pushing for progressive language changes.
NARAL claims that the term “mother” was specifically gendered and that “it’s not just cis-gender women that can get pregnant and give birth.”
A group of religious warriors, riding on captured American military vehicles, vanquish a US-trained military, which relinquishes much of its power without a fight.
Sound familiar?
That’s what happened in Iraq after the US withdrawal of troops from the country at the end of 2011. Within three years, an army of ISIS fighters was only a few miles from the gates of Baghdad and had taken many of the significant cities in Iraq.
It was then-Vice President Joe Biden who had negotiated the Obama administration’s drawdown from Iraq.
Anyone who has watched Joe Biden’s career could and should have seen this coming. For all his and his supporters’ claims that he is some foreign policy expert, Joe Biden has been expert at getting foreign policy questions wrong. He wanted to pay Iran cash right after 9-11, just because he wanted to. His own staff killed that notion. He’s still trying to pay Iran in cash, just as the Obama administration did while Biden was vice president. One could surmise that Joe Biden really wants to hand Iran, which backs terrorism against Israel and has declared itself an enemy of the United States since the 1979 revolution, large piles of American cash. One could also surmise that Biden is on course to exceed even Jimmy Carter’s disastrous Middle East foreign policy — a foreign policy that helped beget revolutionary Iran in the first place.
Biden wanted to carve up Iraq along sectarian lines as some kind of solution to the violence that plagued the country following the U.S. invasion. Iran was fomenting much of that violence through proxies with the express intent of hurting the United States, destabilizing Iraq, and extending its influence. Any armchair analyst could see that from the comfort of home in the U.S. I saw it first-hand in Baghdad in 2007 and was given a classified briefing on the situation in detail by American Army officers who had been fighting that war for years. But Biden evidently never saw it and still doesn’t.
When it came time to deal with Afghanistan from the Oval Office, Biden once again failed to see the facts on the ground and plan for anything. He even set the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, engineered from Afghan soil by al Qaeda under the aegis of the Taliban, as the date certain for U.S. withdrawal, believing that to be some kind of PR gain. That might be the mother of all head-scratchers unless the intent was to give the Taliban, not the United States, a PR boost.
Now he’s moved that date up to August 31, while also sending more troops in to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul and at the same time begging the Taliban not to attack that embassy. It’s all as irresponsible as it is incoherent. And it’s all vintage Joe Biden.
CNN’s Bergen likens Biden’s effort to one of history’s most notorious moments of rank cowardice.
(U.S. Ambassador Zalmay) Khalilzad agreed to pressure the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, several of whom simply rejoined their old comrades on the battlefield once they were released. It’s hard to recall a more failed and counterproductive diplomatic effort. Maybe British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to reach a lasting peace agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 in Munich on the cusp of World War II?
Bergen notes that the fall of Afghanistan will be seen as a significant jihadist victory just as the Obama withdrawal from Iraq was. That withdrawal set the stage for ISIS to arise there and in Syria. Holy warriors poured in and the world saw them perpetrate horror after horror.
When it came time to deal with Afghanistan from the Oval Office, Biden once again failed to see the facts on the ground and plan for anything. He even set the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, engineered from Afghan soil by al Qaeda under the aegis of the Taliban, as the date certain for U.S. withdrawal, believing that to be some kind of PR gain. That might be the mother of all head-scratchers unless the intent was to give the Taliban, not the United States, a PR boost.
Now he’s moved that date up to August 31, while also sending more troops in to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul and at the same time begging the Taliban not to attack that embassy. It’s all as irresponsible as it is incoherent. And it’s all vintage Joe Biden.
CNN’s Bergen likens Biden’s effort to one of history’s most notorious moments of rank cowardice.
(U.S. Ambassador Zalmay) Khalilzad agreed to pressure the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, several of whom simply rejoined their old comrades on the battlefield once they were released. It’s hard to recall a more failed and counterproductive diplomatic effort. Maybe British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to reach a lasting peace agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 in Munich on the cusp of World War II?
Bergen notes that the fall of Afghanistan will be seen as a significant jihadist victory just as the Obama withdrawal from Iraq was. That withdrawal set the stage for ISIS to arise there and in Syria. Holy warriors poured in and the world saw them perpetrate horror after horror.
The first sets the stage for a resurgence of global Islamist jihadism. The latter puts China in the catbird seat to exploit one of the few valuable natural resources Afghanistan has: the mining of rare earth minerals that we use in modern technology every day (but which the United States does not mine in significant quantities — but guess who does).
Both of these consequences greatly damage the United States. Both of these consequences are Joe Biden’s responsibility.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has expressed his support for controversial vaccine mandates for U.S. schools. Cardona said on Wednesday, he would favor the measures to require teachers and school staffs to have a COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the new school year.
This comes after embattled California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) ordered forced vaccinations for school personnel within the entire state. Cardona went on to claim mass vaccination is the best way to reopen schools.
“We know they are lining up to get vaccinated. Ninety percent of the teachers across the country have gotten vaccinated. We’re proud of that,” said Cardona. “We want to keep the efforts going. We want our youth to get vaccinated.”
Cardona also said mass vaccination would allow for the lifting of face mask requirements, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommending face masks for those who took the vaccine as well.
At the end of the day, we are talking about students learning in classrooms. Let’s make sure they can do so safely and without disruption. pic.twitter.com/p1vOi1J8og
PAYPAL HOLDINGS, Inc, is an indispensable, American, global corporation, without whose services, financially transacting online is difficult. The company is worth $16.929 billion.
The worthless Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a meddlesome shakedown operation, in the mold of the Southern Poverty Law Center, that has taken it upon itself to decide who lives and who dies socially and financially. People like Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson the ADL deems to be mired in white supremacism. What next?
The ADL and PayPal have conspired to ferret out “bigotry and extremism” from the financial industry, by which they mean ban thought crimes.
In response to this particular collusion against thought crimes, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson has vowed to stay chipper. This is not sufficient a solution from so powerful a persona as Mr. Carlson.
Justice Clarence Thomas’ Solution
The requisite and fitting noblesse oblige comes from Justice Clarence Thomas.
As one of the few public intellectuals to grasp the gravity of social and financial excommunication by Deep Tech (to denote Big Tech’s enmeshment with The State), and for proposing a way to prohibit wicked social and financial ouster of innocents — Justice Thomas is my hero.
To blabber on about simply finding alternative outlets to Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, PayPal and other banking facilities is asinine verging on the criminal. Coming from political representatives, such advice ought to guarantee loss of face, even political expulsion.
The ordinary guy or girl (check) is told to go up against economic and political entities whose revenues exceed the GDP of quite a number of G20 nations combined.
“It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information,” inveighs Justice Thomas:
“A person could always choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.”
I’d go further. It would hardly be hyperbole, in driving home Justice Thomas’s ingenious point, to put it thus:
With respect to financial de-platforming, barring someone from PayPal is like prohibiting a passenger from crossing the English Channel by high-speed train, via ferry and by means of 90 percent of airplanes.
“Sure, some options remain for you to explore, you hapless loser. Go to it!”
Thomas has argued in favor of the “two legal doctrines” that “limit the right of a private company to exclude”:
The first doctrine, he explained, involves “common carriers,” such as railroads and telegraphs, which have historically been required “to serve all comers.” The second involves “places of public accommodation” or amusement, such as inns, restaurants, and theaters, which have generally been forbidden from denying service to certain categories of people. “The similarities between some digital platforms and common carriers or places of accommodation,” Thomas wrote, “may give legislators strong arguments for similarly regulating digital platforms.” [Via Reason.]
Republicans, especially the tenured motormouths on TV, have refused so much as to grapple with Justice Thomas’ outstanding assessment of Big Tech and his attendant legal recommendation.
President claimed spending would ‘be fully paid for’
A new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget charges that Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” theory, which he says “will be fully paid for,” actually leaves Americans $4.3 trillion deeper in debt.
“Overall, we estimate these packages could cost as much as $2.4 trillion over ten years and set the stage for up to $4.3 trillion of total borrowing over the next decade,” the report, released Wednesday,said.
“This cost would lift debt to 119 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2031, compared to a record 106.4 percent of GDP projected under current law.”
Biden’s claims had been different: “The investments I am proposing will be fully paid for over the long term by having the largest corporations, including the 55 corporations that paid zero federal tax last year, and the super wealthy begin to pay their fair share.”
Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at CRFB, said in the report by Just the News the programs and policies Biden is adopting – or promoting – including the Senate-passed infrastructure bill, already are at $6 trillion in spending.
Regarding debt, he said, “It’s $2.4 trillion of direct and it’s $4.3 trillion including indirect; and by indirect we mean, is it creating new programs and making them temporary or are they going to be extended?”
Tax Foundation chief Scott Hodge said Biden is just wrong when claiming the spending will be paid off.
“Only in Washington could someone claim that using budget gimmicks, borrowed money, and higher taxes ‘fully pays for’ $3.5 trillion in new spending,” he told Just the News.
Biden has claimed those he wants to tax more will “still make a lot of money, but pay their fair share.”
Also on the table is Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan that explodes spending for preschool, child care, a new Civilian Climate Corps, global warming projects and more.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday he received a letter from the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services determining that genital mutilation of a child through gender transitioning surgery constitutes child abuse.
Abbott had directed DFPS to issue a determination on the matter last week and the department’s commissioner Jaime Masters replied with his findings.
“Genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery is child abuse,” Masters wrote. “This surgical procedure physically alters a child’s genitalia for non-medical purposes potentially inflicting irreversible harm to children’s bodies,” he wrote.
“Generally, children in the care and custody of a parent lack the legal capacity to consent to surgical treatments, making them more vulnerable.”
In the letter, Masters said that allegations involving genital mutilation of a child would be promptly investigated.
Failure to report abuse is a class misdemeanor and is punishable by up to one year in jail, a $4,000 fine, or both.
At present, the transgender population in Texas counts as the second highest in the United States with 125,350 adults (.66 percent of the population) who identify as transgender. California ranks number one with 218,400 transgender residents.
There are currently an estimated 1.4 million transgender people in the U.S. according to a study put out by the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blocked an attempt by Senate Democrats to push through a federal election overhaul bill early Wednesday morning.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) brought the For The People Act, a bill critics say amounts to a federal takeover of elections, to the floor around 3:30 a.m. after the Senate had concluded 15 hours of amendment votes on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution. In the dead of night, Schumer sought to pass the federal overhaul of elections by unanimous consent, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Only one objection by a senator was required to stop the process. In a roughly 15-minute back-and-forth, Cruz tanked Schumer’s attempt to force the election bill through the Senate. Cruz blasted the bill in remarks on the Senate floor:
This bill would constitute a federal government takeover of elections. It would constitute a massive power grab by Democrats. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans and it would do precisely the opposite of its nominal title, ‘For The People.’ It is, instead, for the politicians because it entrenches politicians and ensures that the people cannot vote them out of office. It would strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country, including voter I.D. laws supported by the overwhelming majority of this country, including prohibitions on ballot harvesting, again widely supported by people in this country. It would mandate that felons be allowed to vote, and it would automatically register millions of illegal aliens to vote. It would profoundly undermine democracy in this country, and for that reason I object.
FOR THE PEOPLE ACT: In the dead of night, Sen. @tedcruz successfully blocked Democrats' For the People Act from passing in the Senate. pic.twitter.com/XeWRux2YXf
“Cruz also blocked bills aimed at preventing partisan gerrymandering and requiring additional campaign finance disclosures. Cruz instead offered his own bill to end federal limits on campaign contributions and Schumer objected,” the Chronicle reported.
Dozens of Democratic Texas state lawmakers traveled to Washington, D.C., last month in protest of state election reforms Texas Governor Greg Abbott and GOP state legislators sought to pass. While in D.C., the rogue Democrats also pushed for Congress to pass the For The People Act before some returned to Texas earlier this week.
Schumer’s failure to force the For The People Act through the Senate so far amounts to a failure for Texas Democrats who spent weeks pushing for the legislation, as well. On returning to Texas this week, state Rep. James Talarico touted his work in D.C. and said he is “confident” that the Texas Democrats’ lobbying would force Congress to pass the federal election bill.
“I’m home! Our quorum break shined a national spotlight on the TX voter suppression bill and pushed Congress closer to passing a federal voting rights act to override it. I’m confident they will,” Talarico said on Twitter.
After Schumer’s failed attempt, Texas state Rep. Ron Reynolds (D), who remains in D.C., reacted angrily to Cruz’s objection.
“In the dead of last night, Cancún Cruz killed critical federal voting rights legislation in the Senate,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The assault on our democracy has never been more dangerous than it is right now. We need federal legislation now.”
The issue here is not Hunter’s addiction or illegal behavior. Rather, it’s the intense corruption of the media and intelligence agencies, and how greatly our current president is compromised.
A Russian woman, a drug dealer, and two of his compatriots may have stolen a laptop from Hunter Biden in 2018, Hunter told a prostitute in another sex video, leaving the president’s son concerned he may be blackmailed because of his father’s political position.
While the salacious video of Hunter Biden released earlier this week exposes more details about the troubling lifestyle of the president’s son, it reveals much more about a corrupt and complicit media, a corrupt and incompetent intelligence community, and a corrupt and compromised Joe Biden.
Late Wednesday, The Daily Mail published what it called “unearthed footage” of a naked Hunter Biden telling a prostitute that “the Russians have videos of me doing crazy f-cking sex!” According to The Daily Mail, “after filming himself having sex with the woman using his laptop in January 2019, Hunter left the camera rolling as he recounted a Vegas bender in which he spent ‘18 days going round from penthouse suite to penthouse suite,’ sometimes costing $10,000 a night.”
The video then captured Hunter telling the prostitute that during the summer of 2018 he had nearly overdosed from drugs while partying in Las Vegas with his drug dealer and two other guys. When he came to later, “there was this Russian 35-year-old, really nice, pure brunette,” Hunter explained. He then discovered his laptop was missing.
“I think he’s the one that stole my computer,” Hunter said on the tape, apparently referring to his drug dealer. “I think the three of them, the three guys that were like a little group. The dealer and his two guys, I took them everywhere,” Hunter explained. “They have videos of me doing this. They have videos of me doing crazy f-cking sex f-cking, you know,” Hunter added. “My computer, I had taken tons of like, just left like that cam on,” Hunter continued, “and somebody stole it during that period of time.”
The prostitute is then heard asking Hunter if he worried the Russian thieves would try to “blackmail” him. “Yeah, in some way yeah,” Hunter replied, noting his father is “running for president,” and that “I talk about it all the time.”
Connections to the New York Post Story
Like the videos, emails, and text messages recovered from the MacBook Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop and reported on by The New York Post in October 2020, the footage published Wednesday by The Daily Mail exposes recent disturbing and illegal behavior by the president’s middle-aged son.
But like the New York Post’s earlier reporting, the issue here is not Hunter’s addiction or his illegal behavior. Rather, the latest video reveals the corruption—and more—of the media and the intelligence community, while also establishing how greatly our current president is compromised.
When the New York Post broke news of the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned MacBook shortly before the election, corporate media framed the story as misinformation and refused to report on it. Leftist-controlled social media outlets went further by de-platforming The New York Post and blocking the sharing of the article.
The corporate media’s bias in favor of then-candidate Joe Biden was clear to all but the most hardened partisans on the left, but Wednesday’s reporting from The Daily Mail now reveals another reality: that while the corrupt media ignored the story, even a hooker saw the significance of a missing laptop containing Hunter Biden’s sex videos.
Did he worry about being blackmailed? the prostitute asked, followed by Hunter acknowledging that was a genuine concern since his father intended to run for president. The elder Biden announced his candidacy just two months after his son’s first computer went missing. Yet when The New York Post reported the existence of the Hunter Biden sex videos on the abandoned laptop, corporate media ignored this huge political scandal.
Media-Intelligence Collusion
The corruption revealed, however, extends much beyond the media, to the intelligence community. Here, recall that after The New York Post reported on the contents of the Hunter Biden MacBook, “50 former senior intelligence officials,” led by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’”
That letter, clearly intended to turn the Biden scandal into a Trump-Russia scandal, now takes on a new significance in light of The Daily Mail’s reporting.
Hunter Biden believed that sometime in the summer of 2018, Russians stole his laptop, which contained videotapes of Biden engaged in sex acts with prostitutes. Either U.S. intelligence knew of this or they didn’t, but both scenarios are equally damning.
If U.S. intelligence agencies knew of this fact, then why would “50 former senior intelligence officials” proclaim to Americans that The New York Post story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation?” Simply put: to counter the scandal and influence the election for their preferred candidate.
Who Is Publishing Disinformation?
Further, re-reading the intelligence officials’ letter in light of The Daily Mail’s reporting reveals how manipulative Clapper and his cronies were. In the earlier portions of the letter, they spoke of a “Russian information operation,” which suggests the information published by The New York Post was accurate, but released by Russia to influence the election. But in closing the letter, they quoted “media reports” saying “the FBI has now opened an investigation into Russian involvement in this case.”
“According to USA Today,” the letter continued, “federal authorities are investigating whether the material supplied to the New York Post by Rudy Giuliani. . . is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia.”
By quoting USA Today’s claim that federal authorities were investigating whether the reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop is “disinformation,” former intelligence officials succeeded in changing the narrative of the story. What began as them claiming the story appeared as a “Russian information operation” ended by sleight of hand, representing The New York Post’s story as consisting of “disinformation.”
Surely some signatories of that letter would have known Hunter Biden believed Russians had stolen his laptop with the compromising information. Or, if not, that would just show how incompetent our intelligence agencies are.
Here we are not speaking merely of the former intelligence officials who signed the letter. At the time The New York Post published the videos, emails, and texts from Hunter’s MacBook, in October 2020, intelligence agencies would have been focused on any issues related to the then-Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, for months, which clearly would include risks caused by his addict son.
Collusion, Disinformation, and Incompetence
Did the intelligence community really not know of Hunter’s two missing laptops? If not, that’s pure incompetence.
In December 2019, the FBI seized the MacBook Hunter had left at the repair store. It is unbelievable to think the FBI did not promptly review the contents to determine if it was in fact Hunter’s and to determine whether the material on the laptop created a national security risk. It is also beyond the pale to think agents did not ask Hunter about that laptop.
Yet ten months later, when The New York Post published the video and email messages, someone at the FBI told USA Today they were investigating whether the story was Russian “misinformation.” To date, though, there has been nothing but corroboration of the materials published by The New York Post, so who at the FBI suggested the content was “misinformation?”
Further, after recovering the MacBook from the Delaware repair store, a competent intelligence industry would have then also discovered the second missing laptop—the one Hunter told a prostitute in January 2019 he believed the Russians had stolen. Did agents know of that fact? Did they brief Joe Biden on the fact that the laptops contained information that could subject Hunter, and thus Biden himself, to blackmail?
After all, James Comey briefed Donald Trump on the false but salacious Christopher Steele dossier, so why not brief Biden on the bigger risk that he or Hunter was compromised? Or if they did brief Biden, then why did no one leak that briefing to CNN, as they had with the briefing of the fake Steele dossier?
These questions have nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s disgraceful behavior and everything to do with whether our intelligence community is incompetent and corrupt.
Many Questions with Distressing Answers
Wednesday’s revelation also raises the question of when Joe Biden learned of the second stolen laptop. Did he know it was missing before the intelligence community did? Did he tell intelligence officials so they could investigate to determine if Hunter had been ensnared by Russian operatives?
Finally, while the latest tape concerned only Hunter’s sexual improprieties, the risk that Joe Biden is gravely compromised extends much beyond a potential sex scandal involving his son. Americans need to remember that Hunter’s MacBook contained much more than videos of Hunter engaged in illegal drug use and sex with prostitutes: That laptop also included text messages and emails that implicated “the Big Guy” in a pay-to-play scandal.
So news that Hunter believed Russians stole another laptop raises serious national security concerns over whether foreign adversaries hold sway over the senior Biden based on the president’s own misconduct when he was vice president or a senator.
But don’t expect the corrupt press to pose these questions to the Biden administration—proving they have even lower standards than Hunter’s prostitute.
Barna study shows Christians age 13 to 18 are skeptical of evangelism, but they’re having deep and personal peer-to-peer conversations.
Treyson West doesn’t have a name for it, but if you want to call it evangelism, that’s fine.
He doesn’t think he has a strategy or model for trying to change people’s beliefs, though. He’s just interested in friendship and reliance on the Holy Spirit.
“The big thing is showing somebody what their identity could be through Christ,” says the 19-year-old high school graduate in the suburbs of Dallas. “Everybody is pushing you to be polarized. And ultimately that just pushes you deeper into a sense of not belonging, and Gen Z digs deeper into loneliness.”
That’s why, when West wants to tell a teenager about Jesus, he doesn’t tell them. He listens, and asks questions to get to know them, showing that he cares. And when God becomes real to one of his friends, he likes to point that out.
Recently, West was sitting with a friend in a car in front of the friend’s house, and the friend was talking about his life and struggles and whether he could believe in God. West asked him how he felt right at that moment, talking about God in the car.
“My heart feels, like, warm,” the friend said.
“Dude, that’s the Holy Spirit,” West said. “That’s God, right there.”
The friend accepted Jesus before he got out of the car.
A new Barna Group study, set to be released on Monday, says that West’s approach isn’t unusual for younger Christians. Gen Z believers want to share about Jesus, and they are having deep, personal conversations about their faith with their friends. But they have reservations about the idea of evangelism and are skeptical of evangelistic strategies.
According to Reviving Evangelism in the Next Generation, produced in partnership with Alpha USA, 82 percent of Christians between the ages of 13 and 18 say that it’s important to them to share their faith. And nearly 80 percent say they have had a conversation about faith with someone at least once in the past year.
The study is based on an online survey of more than 1,300 teenagers between March and April of 2021. The parents were selected by random sampling, and the teenagers’ responses were weighted by demographic data, including gender, ethnicity, and geographic region, to ensure Barna was looking at a representative sample. Barna says the numbers have about a 3 point margin of error.
Seventy percent of the sample identified as Christian, according to Barna, and the next largest group, about 12 percent, identified as “nothing in particular.” Seven percent identified as “spiritually open,” while 3 percent said they were atheist and 3 percent, agnostic.
Gen Z is generally considered to be anyone born after 1996. The oldest of them are now 25. They were 12 when the housing market collapsed and Barack Obama was elected president. Barna chose to focus on the group of young people who are in high school right now—people who were born roughly between the introduction of the first widely available cellphone with a camera and the release of the first iPhone.
The 13- to 18-year-olds who identify as Christian “have strong feelings against specific evangelistic language and persuasive practices,” the study found, but they “are talking about their faith with non-Christians” and believe that “relational, neutral spiritual conversations with non-Christians strengthen their faith.”
Most Gen Z Christians do not think it’s important to have all the answers to questions about faith. They are skeptical of arguments that aim to change someone’s mind. Almost none think it’s a good idea to be quick to point out inconsistencies in others’ perspectives, which has been a key component of some approaches to apologetics.
Instead, 66 percent say they want to be someone who listens without judgment, 62 percent say they want to be confident sharing their own perspective, and 54 say it’s important to ask good questions.
Gen Z Christians “seem to be hyper-considerate conversation partners,” according to the report, “driven to listen and learn from others and preferring to ‘prove’ their faith in their actions, not their words.”
Despite their long exposure to social media—or perhaps because of it—Gen Z Christians are not big advocates for digital evangelism. The Barna study found that less than a third think that posting something to social media or sharing online content should be considered evangelism.
Jordan Whitmer, the 22-year-old founder of a Gen Z evangelistic organization called the HowToLife Movement, said there are young Christians proclaiming the gospel on social media, especially the video-sharing site TikTok. He sees that mode as something important.
“If Billy Graham was 25 years old today, he would be on TikTok. Or Louis Palau or D. L. Moody. They could spot an evangelistic opportunity a mile away, and that’s where it is,” said Whitmer, whose grandfather Ron Hutchcraft is an evangelist who worked with Youth for Christ and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
But today’s TikTok evangelists are aware of the drawbacks and dangers of social media. It’s not their first choice for talking about important things.
“I don’t know any of my friends who make TikToks or social media content or any Gen Zer who would say, ‘I love social media,’” Whitmer said. “You would never see that on a T-shirt. It’s a blessing and a curse, and 90 percent of the time it’s a curse, but you try to focus on the 10 percent.”
HowToLife primarily focuses on in-person evangelistic events. They have done more than 100 so far, organized by young Christians in a church or a high school with support from the national organization.
In some ways the events are as traditional as Graham’s crusades or old-fashioned tent revivals. But since they’re put on by Gen Z for Gen Z, there are also notable differences, Whitmer said. The 102 events the group has supported so far tend to elevate storytelling, panel discussions, and Q&A sessions, along with lots of music.
Occasionally a young person will preach. Whitmer has also been known to conclude an event with an altar call, which he calls “a straight-up, come-forward, Billy Graham–style invitation.” But more often than not, the events end with small groups of friends just talking.
Jordan Biere, the national director for Alpha USA’s youth division, said connection is incredibly important to young people today. That need has only heightened during the pandemic.
“They’re fiercely relational,” said Biere, who is 34. “They need to be present with one another, and physical presence matters to them.”
Alpha, which started in the Anglican Church in Great Britain, offers a 10-week course introducing people to the basics of Christian faith. The sessions are centered on discussion, and framed as “an opportunity to explore the meaning of life.”
Many of them are held in churches in the US, but Biere says he increasingly sees high school students who run their own groups, often in their homes. For them, Alpha groups facilitate relationships and deepen friendships.
“Faith conversation is actually a point of deep connection for Gen Z,” he said. “They have a deep longing for belonging, and faith conversation is a connection point.”
That’s what Graham Varnell was thinking when he started an Alpha group in his Baptist church in Richardson, Texas, a few years ago when he was in high school. The church, he said, had always emphasized evangelism, but when he’d tried to witness to one of his peers, it hurt their friendship.
The friend said no one wants to be a project. Varnell was hurt by the implication, but he also thought his friend was right; he had been looking at him as a project.
With Alpha, he decided to take a different approach and really focus on listening, hospitality, and friendships. The first few weeks, he mostly ended up with extra pizza, but soon there was a regular group, including Treyson West, and there were friendships, conversations, and then conversions.
“Friendship is absolutely paramount, that’s what I’ve seen,” he said. “Friends will bring friends and then we’ll just invite the Holy Spirit to come, and the Spirit comes with power.”
Recently, because Varnell and West have been talking so much about listening, they’ve started to change the way they pray, so that they listen to God more than they talk. The result, according to Varnell, has been “something of a charismatic outbreak,” though he hastens to add he’s not sure that’s the right term.
“You put your hands on someone and ask the Holy Spirit to come and wait like three minutes or four minutes,” he said. “It just turns into this space where there’s not a structure, or there’s a loose structure. … What I see with students most is they cry. They cry and cry until they’re happy, and they get fired up about God and they go and pray for each other.”
Varnell doesn’t know whether this is evangelism proper. But his friends and his friends’ friends are experiencing the love of God, and they’re talking and sharing about faith and Jesus. To Varnell, and a lot of other Gen Z Christians, that seems more important than whatever you call it.
