Kerby Anderson
As you may have heard, President Biden wants to change the Supreme Court. This latest desperate attempt at “court packing” will not succeed, but it’s worth discussing as a teachable moment. In his op-ed, the president proclaimed, “I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.” One of his proposals is 18-year term limits for justices.
The Founding Fathers gave Supreme Court justices lifetime tenure while serving with good behavior. They did so to assure justices had independence from political whims. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper #78 that “This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals” and would protect them from “serious oppressions of the minor party.”
Kelly Shackelford (First Liberty Institute) quotes Joe Biden, who in 1983 said that court packing “was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make. And it put in question, for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body” which is the Supreme Court. He says Biden was right back in 1983 and wrong today.
His organization had put together a nationwide coalition of nearly a half million patriots who plan to flood Congress and the White House with this critical message: NO to court packing, NO to the liberal agenda, NO to a Supreme Court Coup.
Kristen Waggoner (Alliance Defending Freedom) also warns, “Don’t be fooled. This move by President Biden has nothing to do with protecting the court and has everything to do with the Left’s desire to dominate every institution in society.”
These proposals have little chance of succeeding since they need an amendment to the Constitution. That requires a supermajority of Congress and ratification by three-fourth of the states.
Fortunately, none of these so-called “reforms” will be enacted.

Penna Dexter
It would be nice if we could count on the medical community to emphasize excellence and evidence over woke ideology. When we learn of transgender interventions, including life-altering surgery, being prescribed as standard protocol for young people struggling with mental health conditions, we’re wondering where the sane doctors are.
Thankfully, there are still doctors making the case for protecting children against radical transgender ideology.  In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, physician Travis Morrell filed a resolution with the Colorado Medical Society “based on the rise of transgender medical interventions both in Colorado and around the nation.”
In doing so, Dr. Morrell is drawing upon the Colorado Medical Society’s policy opposing genital mutilation. He points out that “transgender surgeries often involve mutilation.” Dr. Morrell began his medical career in gynecology and says that transgender treatments “can ruin healthy sexual function and damage reproductive ability, potentially leading to a lifetime of physical and mental ailments.” His fellow members of the society overwhelmingly stood with him.
Dr. Morrell’s resolution came before the general membership in mid-May. Members were given four weeks to vote on it and as the votes came in, passage looked likely. “But,” Dr. Morrell wrote, “by June 12 — the day before voting ended — the tide had dramatically turned, thanks to a sudden influx of votes by medical students.”
It turns out that an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine asked the medical students to quickly join the Colorado Medical Society and vote against Dr. Morrell’s resolution. One hundred fifty of them did, resulting in its rejection.
Dr. Morrell is disappointed that the students so easily switched away from supporting his protective referendum, instead siding with “unproven, unethical and unscientific medical interventions.”
He’s right to conclude that “Americans should worry that when today’s trainees become tomorrow’s doctors, they’ll put political activism ahead of patient health.”

Kerby Anderson
Most Christians do not have a biblical worldview. That has been well documented in numerous studies. This is puzzling since a significant percentage of Christians without a biblical worldview regularly attend church services. A recent study by George Barna may have an answer.
Put simply, church members don’t have a biblical worldview because the pastor does not have a biblical worldview. Less than a third (31%) of pastors in America have a biblical worldview. That is a shocking percentage.
One pastor told George Barna that may not be too shocking considering that many pastors of liberal churches would not have an orthodox view. But he went on to say that what would be shocking is if the percentages were low among evangelical pastors. The most recent poll shows that a bare majority of evangelical pastors (51%) and only about a third (36%) of charismatic or Pentecostal pastors have a biblical worldview. He also found that less than one in ten (9%) of pastors in traditionally black churches have a biblical worldview.
Another interesting correlation was the relationship between worldview and church size. Generally, the smaller congregations are more likely than the larger congregations to have a biblical worldview. More than four in ten (41%-45%) of the pastors of churches with smaller congregations have a biblical worldview. By contrast, only 15 percent of pastors in churches with more than 250 adults have a biblical worldview.
George Barna explained that pastors who fill the position of Teaching Pastor or Executive Pastor usually had the lowest scores. These positions are found most often in larger churches.
His survey breaks down pastors according to denomination, according to church size, and according to congregational ethnicity. None of the percentages are encouraging and are a reminder that we need to be discerning when choosing a church.