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Competing to shine

Reformed youth across Canada are taking to heart Paul’s encouragement to young Timothy “don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers….” Over the past year, 16 school clubs and over 300 individuals have taken part in a friendly competition, organized by ARPA Canada and using newly-developed custom software, to spur each other on as Christian witnesses in Canada’s public square.

ARPA Profiles took off

"We finished our post-it note display which we have been working on for 23 days. Every note represents 40 lives of children lost to abortion." – Ebenezer School, Smithers

Daniel Kanis, the “tech-wizard” at ARPA, came up with the idea of using technology to “gamify” political action to make it competitive and fun. He first introduced his concept to his colleagues at a summer staff retreat, and then launched it publicly as “ARPA Profiles” mid 2022.

“The key to success would be rapid onboarding of students and adults alike” Kanis shared in an interview with RP. “Rapid onboarding” is what it sounds like: getting a lot of people all involved – all “on board” – at the same time.

“In October we had our chance. We rapidly onboarded a variety of students across the country from British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario at our youth conferences.” It didn’t take long and a healthy spirit of competition arose between these schools, that continues till today.

ARPA Profiles involves signing up for a unique profile on their website, taking part in political action and then getting points for that action, depending on how difficult it is. For example, sending an EasyMail letter gets you 200 points, meeting with your MP or MLA will result in 15,000 points, and distributing flyers results in 1000 points for every 25 flyers. If you are really ambitious and can get an airplane to fly a pro-life banner, you get 1,000,000 points! Other options include things like visiting an old age home, helping a pregnancy care center with groceries, baking cookies for an event, or hosting a flag display.

Those who have an ARPA profile can earn points for themselves but also for the school club or ARPA chapter that they are a member of. To make it fun, the school club with the most points gets a banner to keep, a trophy for a year, a pizza party, and celebration shirts. There are also prizes for individual championships. The deadline is May 17, 2023, and at press time, there is a fierce competition between Judy Slaa, Brooklyn Gortemaker, Anna Van Orizande, and Micah Wieske for the top place.

The race for the top school isn’t quite as fierce, as the Alberta Home School group is currently doubling the second-place school, Immanuel Christian in Winnipeg. Ebenezer school in Smithers is currently third out of 16, followed by Mount Cheam Christian from Chilliwack.

In it together

This 10,000 flag display for the preborn was set up in northern Alberta

When asked what ARPA Profiles has accomplished, Kanis shared that it has “one key ingredient that I think is essential to political action. And that’s the thought of: ‘I’m not doing this alone.’”

The ARPA Profiles website fosters a sense of community, as participants post a picture of what they did. Scrolling through dozens of pictures will silence those who lament that young people aren’t very active today. Not only are many active, they are doing things that their parents or grandparents likely never did at their age. And the hope is that it will make it far more likely that they continue to shine in the public square the rest of their lives.

Looking through the pictures, it is evident that Albertans are leading by example. Ed Hoogerdyk serves as ARPA’s Alberta Manager, with a special focus on helping Albertans shine their lights with political action. “ARPA Profiles is a great motivator!” he shared with me. Hoogerdyk proceeded to give some examples, beginning with their “CareNotKill” campaign. “Shortly after pictures are shared of grassroots action (flyer runs, billboards, banners), I receive inquiries from people wanting to order items so they can take action as well.”

Hoogerdyk has noticed a steady increase in the number of school club members and adult chapter members. “More people are meeting. More people are praying. More people are politically engaged.” And it is translating into giving as well. “Fundraising builds community spirit and reminds people of the importance of witnessing in their own communities. It’s been inspiring to work alongside so many ‘cheerful givers’ in Alberta.”

Healthy competition

Hoogerdyk testified that the competitive aspect of ARPA Profiles is important. “The competition is healthy. I sense a strong spirit of unity amongst the school clubs and chapters. They’re sharing updates with each other and encouraging each other to compete.”

"I held signs up for an hour, and got a lot of waves and honks." – Mya V, Immanuel Christian in Winnipeg

I asked Kanis how he would respond to those who think that people should be active without needing points or prizes. “At the level and caliber that the students on the platform are doing action, they are to be doing it for the heart of the mission,” he answered. “If you were just participating in the competition for the points, and for the prize, at the end of the day those with heart will win. It is great to award and acknowledge those people who go above and beyond in being a faithful Christian witness.”

Active like never before

But is all of this just an exception to the general rule that Christians aren’t very engaged in politics or culture? Hoogerdyk respectfully challenged those who think this way. “Based on my experience, there continues to be an increase in the number of people engaging with politics.” He proceeded to give examples.

“First, more people are praying. This is evident in prayer matters brought up in church services, messages from people letting us know they regularly pray for ARPA’s work, and ARPA’s prayer calendar. Second, more people are staying informed and taking action. They’re participating in grassroots activities, supporting our chapters and clubs, and contributing financially.”

And the involvement goes deeper too. “There are numerous constituency associations with good Reformed Christian representation, including some who are presidents of these associations.”

The contest closes mid-May, and readers can get plugged into ARPA’s weekly Quick Update videos, newsletter, or social media to find out which individual or school makes the podium. But it likely doesn’t end there. Kanis is hoping that they can build on the success next year. “I am tremendously thankful for the uptake that the ARPA supporters have shown in the open reception of this new system. I am thankful for their patience as this first year was sure to have some hiccups. I hope it can be a blessing to many others, and that those who may not have heard about ARPA Profiles can sign up and be encouraged with just how much action is happening across Canada!”

Full Article
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News

Australian Christian couple wins discrimination case against foster care agency

In 2017, Byron Hordyk, a self-employed carpenter, and his wife Keira Hordyk, decided that they could open their home to provide foster care to needy children. The Hordyks, who are members of Baldivis Free Reformed Church (FRC) in Australia, applied with Wanslea Family Services, a Perth-based agency that connects families with foster children, among other services. During the application process, the Hordyks were asked how they would deal with a child who was homosexual, or began to be interested in homosexuality. The couple had made clear that they were interested in providing short-term care to young children under the age of five (since their oldest at that time was about six years old), so this line of questioning seemed a bit out of place. (Some of the questions dealt with how the Hordyks would deal with reports from school about same-sex attraction or gay activity.) Byron and Keira answered honestly that they would not be able to encourage homosexuality. As Christians, they believe that a gay lifestyle is against the Word of God, and therefore they would not be the best fit long term for a child who persisted in pursuing that way of living. The Hordyks made clear that the agency would not need to immediately remove the child from their home, and that they would still show love and support to such a boy or girl while in their care. Ultimately, Wanslea Family Services rejected the Hordyks’ application in 2019, marking their case file as “assessed not to meet competencies” (although they were earlier judged to be suitable to become foster parents). Despite the fact that there is an enormous shortage of families willing to provide foster care in Western Australia, the agency did not believe that the Hordyks were fit to give a home to needy children, simply because of their Christian view of homosexuality. Disappointed, Byron and Keira sought legal advice from John Steenhof, a lawyer and fellow FRC member. Steenhof saw the potential importance of the case for religious liberty and against religious discrimination, and took on the case pro bono. (Steenhof at the time was working in private practice, and has since gone on to join the Human Rights Law Alliance.) He recommended that the Hordyks challenge Wanslea Family Services’ rejection as discrimination under Western Australia’s Equal Opportunities Act. The Act states that it is unlawful for a person who provides services to discriminate against another person on the basis of their religious or political conviction. Giving testimony to the Tribunal along with the Hordyks was Rev. Wes Bredenhof, frequent contributor to Reformed Perspective. Bredenhof provided an extensive written background of the Free Reformed Churches, showing that the Hordyks’ belief that homosexuality is sinful has long been a shared stance of confessional churches that take the Word of God seriously, such as the FRC. This past December, over five years after the Hordyks’ initial application, the State Administrative Tribunal ruled in their favor, deciding that Wanslea Family Services had treated the Hordyks unfairly, and awarding them damages of $3,000 each. Many news agencies including ABC News in the US, and newspapers all across Australia covered the court case, often with an antagonism to God’s warning against homosexuality. Lawyer Steenhof believes the case is an important one for religious freedom and against discrimination. He wrote that: “this landmark case demonstrates how societal hostility to religion – and especially Christianity – is increasing, especially within our institutions. Christians who established, grew and then gave to Western cultures their key social institutions such as hospitals, universities, aged care facilities and foster care agencies are now facing increasing exclusion from those very institutions.” After five years in this process, the Hordyks are eager to put this chapter of their lives into the past. They have gone on to have two more children, and are not likely to re-apply to become foster parents, since they would have to start all over again, and their personal circumstances have changed. Through discrimination against Christianity, Wanslea Family Services has removed from the pool of potential foster homes a family that could have provided loving care for kids in their community. Christians may hope that the Hordyks’ perseverance in this case, and the hard work of their legal advisor Steenhof and others, may result in more fair treatment for potential foster families in the future. The Lord has not promised us an easy road here on this earth, but Christians in the western world have become accustomed to relative freedom to hold to the timeless truths of the Bible. We are seeing more and more that the world is rejecting God’s truths, and wants to outlaw speech and thought that calls sin what it is. May the Lord provide courage to us all to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet doing so with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Court decision “a welcome dose of balance and common sense” by John Steenhof The recent decision by the State Administrative Tribunal that Byron and Keira Hordyk were discriminated against because of their religious views is a landmark case that demonstrates how societal hostility to religion – and especially Christianity – is increasing, especially within our institutions. As supported by expert evidence in the case, the Hordyks’ beliefs on marriage were consistent with those held by almost all branches of the Christian faith up until the sexual revolution of the mid-20th century, “that marriage is a lifelong relationship between one man and one woman; all extra marital sexuality is contrary to the Bible. Homosexual lusts and behaviors are contrary to the Bible and that there are two fixed genders or sexes, namely male or female.” Wanslea Family Services has sometimes recast their logo in the LGBT rainbow. Wanslea Family Services considered the Hordyks’ views unacceptable. This is increasingly common in many Australian institutions. The Hordyks were rejected as potential foster parents not because they were unsuitable to provide a temporary home for vulnerable toddlers, but because they held unacceptable religious views. The Hordyks are not alone in falling afoul of these institutional purity tests. In 2022, Andrew Thorburn at the Essendon Australian Rules Football Club was forced to resign because he held the wrong views. In 2021, the Australian Christian Lobby had venue bookings cancelled by the Western Australian government because their Christian beliefs were inconsistent with “diversity, equality and inclusion.” This increasing animosity to religion can be attributed to a variety of factors: the increasing secularization of Australian society generally, the irresponsible and hostile reporting of religious issues in the media, the ascendancy and triumph of LGBTQ dogma in Australian culture, the hard fusion in popular discourse of Christianity with the evils of colonialism, and the fragmentation and polarization of civil dialogue in a social media age. Whatever the causes, these cultural trends should be of concern to all Australians. While heteronormative Christians are the target today, there is no reason why this cultural trajectory will not progress to declare other social and political convictions as anathema and beyond the pale. The recent Essendon public apology to Andrew Thorburn, and the Hordyk decision are a welcome dose of balance and common sense in an otherwise fevered cultural environment. The tenacity of the Hordyks in seeking vindication through a grueling 5-year process demonstrates that there is value in pushing matters to the Courts past the loud cultural voices that have captured many of Australia’s institutions and which have declared Christianity anathema and unsafe. A pluralistic and multicultural society requires the participation of a variety of people with diverse and conflicting religious beliefs, political convictions and personal opinions. The friction lines between competing views will often be difficult to adjudicate, but the Courts have shown that, regardless of the prevailing ideological fashions of the day, religious Australians must be given a fair go. John Steenhof is the Principal Lawyer at Human Rights Law Alliance (HRLA), founded in 2019 to “provide assistance, advice and advocacy to ordinary Australians under attack for living out their faith and convictions in public.” John and his wife Lana have six children between the ages of 6 and 19, and now live in Canberra, Australia’s capital, where they attend Southside Bible Church, a Reformed evangelical church....

News

Saturday Selections – Feb. 18, 2023

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News, Pro-life - Abortion

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British comic on climate change (7 min) Comedian Konstantin Kisin went viral in mid-January for his common sense counter to climate change hysteria. What we can learn about sacrifice from John Calvin’s "School of Death" "If any of our seminaries today were nicknamed 'The School of Death,' they would be empty!" Denmark secretly inserted IUDs in Greenland's women for decades In a 15-year span, from 1963 to 1978, Greenland's fertility rate dropped from 6.74 births per woman to just 2.21, and it was due in part to Danish doctors secretly and systematically chemically sterilizing Greenland women. While the world doesn't know how such a widespread evil like this is even possible, John Stonestreet offers an explanation above. Lord Acton offers another: "all power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." A Christian response to an arrogant government's abuse is to urge citizens to minimize its powers. Instead of expecting our governments to run not only justice and defense, but healthcare, education, the overall economy, and even whether we should have children, we should demand our elected leaders control much less. When a government is forced to acknowledge it doesn't know better than its own citizens how best to run their lives, that humility can counter the temptation to abuse its powers. And should it still succumb, a smaller government won't have the power to do harm on this scale. 8 ways we normalize the abnormal The world is normalizing certain sins, but as Paul Tripp notes even Christians – orthodox Bible-believing Christians – are busy normalizing our own sins. 8 times C.S. Lewis displayed brilliant political commentary in the Chronicles of Narnia Peter Jacobsen shares "what Narnia can teach us about politics in our own world." A key difference between social justice and biblical justice (4 min) Voddie Baucham says that one big difference between the two is how they each define "injustice." ...

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Population of the world’s largest country begins to decline

For the first time since the early 1960s, deaths have outnumbered births in the world’s largest country – over the course of 2022 China’s population shrunk by 850,000. This development was a long time coming, as the country has seen a steady decrease in births since the 1970’s. That is thanks in part to China’s One-Child Policy, which stayed in force till 2015, and which penalized parents for having more than one child. The Communist government has been trying to reverse the downward trend since then, but with no success. China’s fertility rate is a dismal 1.28 children per woman, and still decreasing each year. To simply stay stable, a country’s fertility rate needs to average out to 2.1 children per woman, the two children to take the place of their two parents in the next generation, and the .1 to account for the fact that not all children reach adulthood. According to the Globe & Mail’s coverage: “no country has successfully reversed birth-rate decline, which tends to track with development, as wealthier, urbanized populations choose to have less children.” “China’s demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected,” demographer Yi Fuxian commented in response to these findings. China is realizing quickly what Psalm 127:3 proclaims: “Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him.” However, even as China is being confronted by this truth, Canada and much of the Western world continues to discourage children and is relying on immigration to keep the population and economy stable or growing. But where are these immigrants coming from, and what happens when these countries too need people? And if no country has been successful with reversing a decline, what happens when the world’s population begins to decline, as is expected later this century? Through birth, fostering, and adoption, Christian families have an opportunity to show to the world the gift that life is....

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Canada taps the brakes on the runaway euthanasia train

After the Society of Canadian Psychiatry (SCP) sounded the alarm late last year, the government of Canada has now temporarily put the brakes on its expansion of the country’s already liberal euthanasia regime. It had planned to make euthanasia available to the mentally ill as of March 2023, but is giving the system more time to get ready. The SCP’s warning was based on clinicians’ current inability to assess when a mental illness is or is not “irremediable” (i.e., irreversible/incurable). The SCP asserted as a given that euthanasia shouldn’t be given to people who may still recover. So, their argument went, since we can’t yet tell when someone with a mental illness will or won’t recover, it is premature to be offering it to the mentally ill. The organization Dying with Dignity, which has been leading the charge for state-sponsored death in Canada, was upset by this decision. "We must avoid creating barriers that will prolong grievous suffering." Sounding very similar, Justice Minister David Lametti said: “Remember that suicide generally is available to people. This is a group within the population who, for physical reasons and possible mental reasons, can’t make that choice themselves to do it themselves.” Before Canada legalized assisted suicide back in 2016, ARPA Canada urged the Supreme Court of Canada and the federal government to recognize that once the sacred line of the 6th Commandment is crossed, condoning some killing, it will become impossible to draw a new line that will hold. The past six years bears this out. Our society no longer knows which suicides should be prevented and which should be celebrated as an expression of choice. Lobbying government to stop (and reverse!) the train is important and needs to continue. But given that the train keeps roaring down the tracks, the Church needs to do what it can to get people off the tracks. More than ever before, Canada needs to hear the hope of the Gospel, which gives meaning to all lives. Have your neighbors heard it?...

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Saturday Selections – Jan 21, 2023

Should we force all men to get vasectomies? (3 min) Since the overturning of the US Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision – the ruling that originally legalized abortion in America back in 1973 – last year a lot of arguments have been made for abortion "rights." But they all stand on confusing the real issues. One of the more popular, but also sillier arguments says that if the government can control women's bodies by preventing them from having an abortion, the government should also be able to control men's bodies and force them to have vasectomies. Tim Barnett, of "Red Pen Logic with Mr. B." weighs in. Will my spouse at least be my best friend in heaven? For happily married couples, that there will be no marriage in heaven (Mark 12:25) is a hard truth to understand. John Piper offers some insight in his answer here to a young widow. Russia, Ukraine, and the fog of Culture Wars (10-minute read) One country invaded another: who's the bad guy here? It would seem obvious that Ukraine is the victim, right? But for many Christians, the complicating factor is that the mainstream media, and leaders like Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden, say that Russia is at fault. These are the same people saying that boys can become girls, and that it isn't a baby if the mother doesn't want it. So it's understandable then, that we are skeptical about whatever positions they take. But as reasonable as it is to question anything these folk say, Jonathon Van Maren warns us against the knee-jerk response of believing the truth must be just the opposite. No liar is consistently so, and getting to the truth isn't as simple as heading in the opposite direction of wherever they're going. A saying, commonly but likely mistakenly, attributed to Martin Luther warns that there are two sides to fall off a horse, so simply reacting against a lie might well have us falling for another error on the opposite side. So how can we really know what's going on in Ukraine? By listening to someone we can trust who has been there... like Jonathon Van Maren. Inoculate – don't insulate – our kids against bad ideas Covid led to a notable exit from public schools, but as a recent US study found, it isn't all good news on that front since: “Homeschooled and parochial schooled undergraduates are as or more likely to identify as LGBT or non-binary as those from public or private school backgrounds.”  The key, then, isn't simply to get them out of godless schools, but for parents to inoculate them against godless ideas, as John Stonestreet details. How long have you been battling sin? Tim Challies on how "In some way each of us carries a heavy load through this life. In some way each of us finds it a long marathon more than a brief sprint. In some way each of us is called to endure with fortitude, even for a very long time." Card-throwing amazement! (4 min) Some good clean trick shot fun for the whole family. ...

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