Over the weekend, author Ryan T. Anderson became the latest victim in big tech’s purge of conservative voices. Anderson, who currently serves as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote the bestselling “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” in 2018. It has now been banned from Amazon. This was a thoughtful and informative book, and it has been very helpful for those of us having to grapple with not only the public policy implications of transgenderism, but also the pastoral challenges of this neo-gnostic ideology. We have a copy or two at the MFI office, but the book will no longer be sold at all on Amazon, and it was temporarily removed from the Apple iBook platform as well. Fortunately, you can still purchase it through our local Christian Book Distributors as well as on Encounter Books, which also includes a statement on the book being banned.
However, this is further evidence that the threat of “Cancel Culture” is real and expanding. Those of us who dare to speak the truth on human sexuality may be removed from the marketplace of ideas. All of us will be pressured to accept and affirm lies, such as the lie that a man can “become” a woman. In fact, there are legislators on Beacon Hill currently drafting up new official lies to enshrine into Massachusetts law. In legislation filed this week, the term “infertility” is redefined to include individuals engaged exclusively in sexual acts with members of the same sex. Maybe someone needs to have “the talk” with this bill’s author, because two individuals of the same sex, or any sex, failing to achieve pregnancy when engaging in non-reproductive sex acts is not “infertility,” but sterility. Nevertheless, as the title of the bill admits, it’s not about biology. The “Act relative to LGBTQ family building” is about forcing insurance providers to pay for artificially creating children in order to meet the demands of people who don’t want to make babies the natural way. And you and I, through our insurance premiums, will have to pay for it. For now, at least, we still have the ability to speak out against it.
How then do we, as people of faith, learn to see these new lies in the world around us, judge them against the Truth of God’s word and objective reality, and act on those conclusions in such a way that we do not allow ourselves to live by lies? That question is taken up by the author of another new book (not yet banned on Amazon, but I’d buy your copy now) with that challenge as its title. Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents demonstrates that America is moving rapidly from political correctness and the Cancel Culture to a form of “soft totalitarianism.” Dreher uses examples from the lives of Christian dissidents under 20th century communism to teach us how to resist the soft totalitarianism emerging now in the West. This is such an important book that the entire MFI staff and Board of Directors is reading it. We want you to read it too, and we’re inviting you to be part of the first ever MFI Book Club. Next month, we will gather (virtually) for three evenings to discuss the book together. I will be inviting some local guest experts to explore what this soft totalitarianism looks like in Massachusetts, and how we can form communities of resistance. More details to follow soon, but order your copy of Live Not By Lies and get started reading today!
