Today is Winston Churchill’s 135th birthday. Every year on this date, I celebrate the life of the “Great Man.” People sometimes find my devotion odd but I am mentored and inspired by Sir Winston–and grateful for what he left our generation. When I am asked about the source of Churchill’s greatness, I always make sure to mention the woman I describe in the article below. Let us now honor her too by remembering her and living lives of similiar meaning.

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THE HIDDEN CALLING

Her name was Elizabeth Anne Everest. Few today will remember her. In fact, few would have known of her even during her lifetime, which ended in near obscurity in 1895. She was, after all, only a nanny¾one of thousands in Victorian England¾who quietly spent their days caring for the children of other people. Strolling in a park with her baby’s carriage or braving the London streets with a little boy clinging tightly to her side, there would have been nothing to distinguish her to passersby; she was just another British nanny with another nobleman’s son in her charge.

Or so it would seem. But Elizabeth Anne Everest was not just another nanny. She was a Christian, of the most passionate and fearless kind, and for her being a nanny was not just a job, it was a ministry. She lived her faith boldly before the families that hired her and worked hard to build godliness and biblical truth into the young lives in her care. Thus it was, while serving her Lord in the hiddenness of her calling, that she came to have an impact on the course of modern history. For on a blustery English day in February of 1875, Elizabeth Everest came to be the nanny, and soon the primary spiritual influence, of one rosy-cheeked baby boy by the name of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, future Prime Minister of England and leader of the western world.

There was little hint in his early years, however, of the greatness that young Winston would one day command and Mrs. Everest soon understood the immensity of her task. In time, the boy’s mother would warn visitors, with typical British understatement, that the he was “a difficult child to manage.” She was right. He kicked, he screamed, he hid, and he bullied. The word “monster” was often used of him and the trouble was that he was bright, too. Knowing of Mrs. Everest’s Christian faith young Winston once tried to escape a mathematics lesson by threatening to “bow down and worship graven images.” It worked, too…for a while. But Elizabeth Everest was an exceptional woman. She knew how to enforce the boundaries she set and from the beginning Winston held a grudging respect for this woman who seemed to know the secret¾that his irritating behavior only served to hide a desperate longing of his heart.

This was the truth she tenderly guarded, for she knew that her Lord had not entrusted young Winston to her solely for the discipline she would enforce but more for the vacuum she would fill in the life of this lonely little boy. Few knew how painful his loneliness really was. It would be nice indeed to report that the Churchill’s shared a warmly intimate home life and that Winston was smothered with parental affection, but nothing could be further from the truth. Quite to the neglect of their son, Randolph and Jennie Churchill gave themselves completely to their social ambitions. True, Victorian parents maintained an astonishing distance from their children, receiving them only at prearranged times and under the watchful eye of servants, but the Churchills were remote even by these standards. Of his mother, Winston later wrote, “I loved her, but at a distance.” His father thought Winston was retarded, rarely talked to him, and regularly vented his mounting rage on the child. More than one historian has concluded that Lord Randolph simply loathed his son.

Thus it was that Elizabeth Everest¾ Winston came to call her “Woom”¾became not only his nanny but his dearest companion, sharing with understanding and tender loyalty the secrets of his widening world. She was, after all, the stereotypical British nanny; plump, simple, cheery, ever optimistic, always compassionate. The boy grew to love her completely. Of their special relationship, Violet Asquith later wrote that in Winston’s “solitary childhood and unhappy school days Mrs. Everest was his comforter, his strength and stay, his one source of unfailing human understanding. She was the fireside at the which he dried his tears and warmed his heart. She was the night light by his bed. She was security.”

She was also his shepherd, for it was here, in the safety of their shared devotion, that Winston first experienced genuine Christianity. On bended knee beside this gentle woman of God he first learned that surging of the heart called prayer. From her lips he first heard the Scriptures read with loving devotion and was so moved he eagerly memorized his favorite passages. On long walks together they sang the great hymns of the Church, spoke breathlessly of the heroes of the faith, and imagined aloud what Jesus might look like or how heaven would be. As they sat together on a park bench or on a blanket of cool, green grass, Winston was often transfixed while Woom explained the world to him in simple but distinctly Christian terms. And it is not hard to imagine that when their day was done many an evening found this devoted intercessor praying the prayers of destiny over her sleeping charge, asking her Heavenly Father to fulfill the calling she sensed so powerfully on his life.

It would seem her prayers were answered, for though in early adulthood Churchill immersed himself in the anti-Christian rationalism that swept his age, he eventually recovered his faith during an escape from a South African prison. So deeply had he received the imprint of Mrs. Everest’s dynamic faith that in this time of crisis the prayers he had learned at her knee returned almost involuntarily to his lips, as did the Scripture passages he had memorized to the familiar lilt of her voice. From that time forward, his faith defined him, as it did his sense of mission. He came to see himself in much the same terms as those he once used to dedicate his grandson. Holding the child aloft he tearfully proclaimed him “Christ’s new faithful soldier and servant.”

So when the tests of life had prepared him and his day of destiny arrived, Winston Churchill was ready to lead the world with a clear trumpet call of the solid faith he first learned from his godly nanny. In an age of mounting skepticism, Church proclaimed the cause of “Christian civilization.” It was threatened from without, he believed,  by “barbarous paganism”—like Nazism—which spurned “Christian ethics” and derived its “strength and perverted pleasure from persecution.” Therefore, every Christian had a “duty to preserve the structure of humane, enlightened, Christian society.” This was critical, for “once the downward steps are taken, once one’s moral intellectual feet slipped upon the slope of plausible indulgence, there would be found no halting-place short of a general Paganism and Hedonism.”

While other leaders of his age vacillated and sought the compromises of cowards, Churchill defined the challenges of his civilization in the stark Christian terms that moved men to greatness. Yet behind the arsenal of his words, behind the artillery of his vision, was the simple teaching of a devoted nanny who served her God by investing in the destiny of a troubled boy.

So it was that when the man some called the “Greatest Man of the Age” lay dying in 1965 at the age of ninety, there was but one picture that stood at his bedside. It was the picture of his beloved nanny, gone to be with her Lord some seventy years before. She had understood him, she had prayed him to his best, and she had fueled the faith that fed the destiny of nations…in the hiddenness of her calling.

It was the ancient Greeks who urged us to “Above all, know thyself.” Their assumption was that through introspection and courage a man can thoroughly understand who he is and what his life is meant to be. It is a hope that has launched millions on the journey to self-discovery but I suggest this journey always ends in disappointment and failure.

The truth is that man cannot know himself completely. This is because he is not equipped with the ability to search his own soul free of bias and illusion. He knows himself only in bits and pieces and tends to reorganize the little he knows into a case for what he hopes he is—the image of himself he carries in his mind. He does not see clearly, cannot know entirely. This is just as true when it comes to a man knowing himself physically. A man cannot even know what he looks like without help and even then we are constantly shocked by how we look in photographs or how people describe us.

This reminds me of the existentialist play in which the characters only know what they look like from their reflection on the eyeballs of others. It also reminds me of the Chinese proverb which says that “A person is not a person without persons.”

I have made the mistake of attempting to know myself and then defining myself accordingly. It has ended in failure. Not until I had a band of unsparing brothers who loved me, weren’t intimidated by me and had no agenda except that I full my purpose did I begin to know who I really was. Then I became a better man, husband, father—even a better Christian.

The fact is that a man who is self-defined is a fool. We need the feedback of others to know who we truly are. We need the humility of assuming we cannot see ourselves for who we are alone. Then, when we see ourselves through the unvarnished feedback of those who know us best, we can be who we really are, and live out the implications of the truth. We will then not only understand who we truly are, but we will understand that we can never live out our true purpose alone. We are made for community, team, belonging, a band of brothers. Only the man defined by truth in the eyes of others genuinely understands this. The self-defined man will always be a world unto himself–and will always be lonely as a result.

Let me tell you where Barack Obama lost me on health care. You see, he might have won me. I’m a moderate Republican who believes that there is a compelling case to be made for some form of national health care. I think it is silly that in our wonderfully rich country more than forty million Americans do not have health care. I think it is silly that we spend more and gain less from our health care in America than does any other western nation. Since I am a Christian who believes that caring for the poor is a righteous cause, I might have been won to a national effort to assure health care for all Americans.

If that effort was wise.
If it involved free market incentives and corrections.
If it was not larded with political fat.
And it if was moral.

But it wasn’t. The proposals for national health care first circulated in Washington called for dramatic expansion of abortion rights. This sprang directly from the Obama administration’s nearly fanatical devotion to abortion. It is a commitment so single-minded that it makes a pro-lifer like me almost wish for the days in which President Bill Clinton spoke of making abortions “safe, legal and rare.” The Obama administration is eager to enlarge the number of abortions in America and at nearly any cost. This they do while speaking of a “post-adversarial dialogue” on the issue, just as the president did when he reversed the Mexico City policy banning abortion funding in federal programs.

So he might have won me, but the Obama administration so loves abortion that they overreach. They can’t help themselves. They imbed a dramatic expansion of abortion rights in their health care plans and they even threaten to remove protections for medical professionals who choose not to participate in providing abortion services.

Thankfully, they heard about it in shrill terms at town hall meetings across the country this summer. And, thankfully, wiser heads prevailed. Federal funding for abortion has been pulled from the administration’s heath care wish list.

Perhaps this will give the Obama administration time to ponder the recent polls showing that a majority of American’s now consider an abortion to be the taking of a human life. These same polls show that increasing numbers of Americans believe that the child in the womb is indeed human and does indeed have a right to protection. We aren’t yet living in a pro-life nation, but we are living in a nation rethinking its former callousness toward the unborn.

Mr. Obama might have won me and others like me to a noble campaign to assure justice and compassion in health care. But, no, we had to make expanding the war on the unborn—and with nearly 4,000 killed everyday, it is indeed a war—a top priority. So it has cost us. All of us. And it has helped to temporarily scuttle what might have been a noble effort by our generation of Americans to right a horrible wrong.

On October 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case entitled Salazar v. Buono. Most Americans don’t pay much attention to court rulings but for people of faith this one is going to have far-reaching consequences. I’m going to put the Pew Forum’s overview of this case below. I suggest you read it, pray, and be aware of what might be unfolding in the next few weeks.

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In Brief: Salazar v. Buono

Sept. 24, 2009

On Oct. 7, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Salazar v. Buono, a case involving a constitutional challenge to the presence of an eight-foot-tall Christian cross in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, Calif. The case arose when Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent of the preserve, filed a lawsuit demanding that the National Park Service, which administers the preserve, remove the cross. Buono argued that because the cross is on government land it amounts to a government endorsement of religion and thus violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After eight years of litigation in lower courts, the case is now before the Supreme Court. The high court’s decision has the potential to determine the fate of the cross and similar displays across the country as well as to limit who may bring Establishment Clause lawsuits in federal court.

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life provides a brief overview of the case’s long path to the Supreme Court and the arguments that the parties are likely to make when they appear before the justices.

• What is the origin of this controversy?
• How did the case progress through the federal court system and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court?
• What arguments does Salazar make in the government’s brief to the Supreme Court to explain why the National Park Service is not required to remove the cross?
• What is Buono’s argument in response?
• What might be the significance of Salazar v. Buono?

It was love that defined them and we should remember this as we mourn the passing of Paul Harvey and Walter Cronkite in this year. They were not the bombastic, interrupting bullies we know so well from the cable news programs of our day. They were men who showed us our world framed by their love of life and delight of discovery, men whom we trusted and even needed in the dark hours of our national life.

Their lives were as epic as their reporting. Paul Harvey was born the year World War I ground to an end and had endured the murder of his policeman father and boyhood in rugged boom town Tulsa before a high school teacher saw his talent and insisted that a local radio station give him a try. Walter Cronkite, born two years earlier, became enamored of the reporting life when he read an article about journalistic adventure in Boy’s Life magazine. He later dropped out of college, began working for the United Press and soon found himself reporting from the frontlines of World War II. Both men brought middle American values and wonder to their work. Both felt gratitude for their role. And both became the reasoned narrative voice of their times—one on radio and the other on the new, transforming medium of television.

Though they were men of headlines and breaking news, they understood events in the clarifying light of the past. Early in his career, Cronkite was asked to host “You Are There,” a series in which great moments of history were recreated by actors while the unflappable Cronkite reported to a modern audience. Old news hands scoffed at the premise, but Cronkite pulled it off and made it believable for a generation in danger of losing their grip on their heritage.

Harvey, too, mined the past to delight his audiences. His “The Rest of the Story” broadcast taught Americans what they did not know of their history—that George Washington was greater than we knew, for example, and that it was a black man who was the first martyr of the American Revolution. It may seem odd that perhaps the most current men of their times would turn for perspective to the far off country of the past, but this is what both men brought to their work—wisdom and calm culled from a knowledge of history. As Harvey had once said, “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.” It was the just the kind maxim that settled hearts and summoned courage.

They were both masters of audio branding—Cronkite with his “And that’s the way it is” and Harvey with his “Hello, Americans; Stand by for news!”—but this was not all that endeared them to us. They told us the facts, straight and simple, yes, but they did so with eagerness, with a fascination for the world and its ways and with—there is no other way to say it—joy. They brought the simplicity of earlier times and places to the complexities of their day yet they never became jaded or shallow. Always there was the thrill of the hunt, always the passion for the tale well told, whether it was Cronkite telling us how technology would change our lives or it was Harvey telling us what happened when farmer Jensen went to his barn that morning.

They were fatherly figures in a fatherless age, souls in search of understanding among an overwhelmed people. They nurtured in us a flame that the winds of change might have extinguished—the flame of knowledge, of wonder and of confidence that the march of time need not be feared. We should grieve their loss, and honor them by hoping that their like have not passed from us forever.

I am an evangelical and a political conservative, so I say the following with respect: American Evangelicals and political conservatives must respond with more than just anger to the challenges of an Obama age.

We have failed in this so far. Rather than hone our ideas, present our case with creativity and craft alternative cultures, we have been content to merely contribute to the outrage industry before a delighted national media. But bitching builds nothing, inspires no one. It is also far beneath the calling of a Christian and far afield of the best in the conservative tradition.

I recently wrote an article for USA Today on Obama’s faith. Citing respected surveys and history that is not in dispute, I made the case that Obama’s faith is a nearly perfect fit with the beliefs of a vast majority of Americans today. I should say quickly that as an evangelical, this is not good news to me. The article prompted widespread discussion but I was struck by the tone of those who were disturbed by what I reported. Rather than grieve over the state of American culture and commit to work for change, most of those angered by the article simply blamed Obama for perverting America. None took responsibility for the fact that American Christians have been retreating from cultural impact for several generations and that the conservative movement has just scuttled–and squandered–its historic revolution. Instead, we gripe as though all decline in America began on Inauguration Day of this year.

I did not vote for Obama and I believe his neo-orthodox brand of Christian faith is a dangerous distortion of truth. Still, what he represents is a culmination of forces we Christians and conservatives have either allowed to go without meaningful challenge or have foolishly created ourselves.

Let’s not spend the Obama years whining like spoiled children who’ve lost a Saturday afternoon ballgame. Let’s build and contend as though our ideas are true, as though our God is real, and as though the future of our nation has yet to be decided.

I have a great many friends who send me quotes that are meaningful to them, but none has had the impact of a quote I came across recently. I first read it at the end of an email from my friend, Father Thomas McKenzie. It reads, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” The quote is attributed to Philo of Alexandria.

I can’t tell you how deeply this has changed me. Truly, everyone I meet is fighting a great battle of some kind against some enemy at some horrible personal cost. I may not be able to join them in their battle, but I can at the least be kind. Though I’m usually kind anyway, this bit of wisdom from an ancient father makes me even gentler with my fellow man and this has, in turn, made the culture around me a sweeter and more forgiving place.

I hope it does for you too.

Readers of this blog will know that I work hard to encourage my pro-life friends around the country with the idea that we are winning hearts and minds even as the Obama administration expands abortion services. In my last blog, I cited a Pew Forum survey supporting this view. Now the Gallup organization confirms the trend. See their latest research here. America is moving pro-life and it is not because we are becoming calloused to women’s rights. It is because we are becoming convinced that what grows in a woman’s womb is a human being, not just a political problem.

I describe my politics in this way: libertarian as far as my faith allows. Abortion is one of those issues that I cannot leave alone because my faith will not allow it. I believe abortion is the taking of a human life and that it damages any society that sanctions it. I believe this on the basis of science, Scripture and the demographic trends of a receding western world.

Now, for quite some time I’ve been trying to get my fellow pro-life advocates to stop being so glum about living in an Obama age. Yes, I understand that he is the most radically pro-abortion president we’ve ever had. Yet, I also understand that there is a difference between politics and what is happening “on the street.” While we might be losing ground in federal abortion policy, we are gaining ground when it comes to American hearts and minds.

The Pew Forum has just reported that Americans are making a strong turn against abortion these days. The portion of Americans saying that abortion should be legal has declined from 54% last August to 46% percent today. Currently, 44% of Americans say that abortion should be illegal in most cases, up from 41% last August. Read the poll results for yourself here.

Now, I have been arguing for quite some time that just because the Obama administration is expanding access to abortions doesn’t mean that we can’t convince good-hearted Americans with the facts–with our photos, with our statistics, with our ultrasounds, with our post-abortion profiles, and from a case based in faith.

I’m more optimistic about the pro-life message than ever and largely because I’m not letting my optimism rise or fall based on what the Obama administration does. My optimism is rooted in the truth of my cause and the fair-mindedness of my fellow citizens.

Great days are ahead, my pro-life friends. Stand strong!

When Barack Obama was elected to the presidency and began his new life in Washington D.C., there was much speculation about where he would go to church. Since his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and his friendship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright proved so controversial, his choice of a new church in D.C. was sure to be eagerly awaited and largely because it would signal something of what Americans might expect for the role of religion in an Obama administration. Would he choose a congregation as radical and activist as Trinity? Would he choose a largely African-American congregation? Would he remain a member of the liberal United Church of Christ denomination? Or would he, like a number of other presidents, stay away from church entirely, prefer private services at Camp David, and claim the excuse of the security burden his presence creates for a congregation?

It may be that we will learn of the Obama family’s decision this Easter week and, if so, their likely choice will be 19th Street Baptist Church, one of Washington’s historic black congregations. If this is where the Obama’s land, it will signal a preference for a quieter, more traditional, and–may I say it–more theologically conservative congregation.

The Obamas visited 19th Street on January 18th, just before the Inauguration, and found it a pleasant experience. Dr. Derrick Harkins leads the congregation, which has existed since 1839, and is known for his solid biblical exposition and his compassion for the hurting of the D.C. area. You can read a report of the Obama’s visit as recounted in the church bulletin here.

We should, of course, pray for the First Family and their choice of church, since it is a decision that will shape much of who they will be in the coming years. If they choose 19th Street Baptist, we can conclude that the Obama’s want to identify with the historic African-American Christian experience in D.C. and that they also are hoping for a spiritual family that is a bit less media circus, a bit more biblically aligned, and yet as culturally relevant as their Chicago congregation.

I should say, too, that I attend a largely African-American church in D.C. and I would have been disappointed had the Obama’s chosen one of the leading white congregations to attend. I like that they are willing to identify with their ethnic and spiritual heritage in our nation’s capital and I cannot hide my delight in their possible choice of a more biblically consistent brand of Christian expression.

May they find a fresh drink of God’s Spirit wherever they choose to worship. Millions of Americans, I trust, will be praying for them as they do.

More soon.

I’m in Ireland–in fact, I’m just about to attend services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin–and I confess I feel at times that I have landed in the Republican Union of Europe. With a G-20 Summit in London nearing, serveral leaders of European nations are speaking out against the Obama Plan for curing the global recession. Both Merkel of Germany and Solbes of Spain have charged, essentially, that the West got into this economic mess by spending beyond its means and that it is not going to get out of the mess by doing exactly the same. The Obama Plan, these leaders believe, is based upon borrowing too much, spending too much and expanding government intervention too much.

Odd indeed. I’ve spent years listening to Republicans in the United States warn that liberalism is taking us toward an American form of European socialism. Now, they may have to cite Europe as their example. Lead on, Mrs. Merkel!

Now, to church.

More than one email has reached me of late filled with concern about our times. Of particular interest has been an “urgent sense” by David Wilkerson that a disaster is about to befall the world and that wisdom calls for laying aside a month’s worth of food and cash.
We will continue to hear such warnings in the years to come and if each individual “prophecy” does not prove true, the general commentary on our age will. We are indeed a people experiencing upheaval, which we Christians understand will befall every generation in this fallen world, particularly any generation that has drawn to itself the judgment of God.
As to the matter of preparation for crisis, I have long been an advocate of what I call a “Grandma Strategy.” Let me explain.
Our grandparents’ generation, having witnessed the tragic collapse of institutions in wars and depressions, learned to take responsibility for their own affairs in a manner that we should emulate. From hard experience, they learned to live simply, stay out of debt, and keep their passions from ruling them. Knowing the value of pulling together for tough times, they kept close friendships with their neighbors and built goodwill by serving in the community. If your grandparents were like mine, they had a storm cellar or a pantry where they rotated enough food for a month or more. They kept gardens, learned practical skills, and maintained the tools necessary to keep their property in repair. They were also careful to keep copies of their important papers, to have some money on hand at all times, and to always, without fail, keep enough of everything to share with those in need. Perhaps most of all, many of our grandparents loved God and knew from experience that salvation doesn’t come from governments and men’s institutions, but from heaven. These simple steps of a “Grandma Strategy” will see us in good stead for the days to come.
So, do not panic, do not despair and do not give up on your cause. But, yes, do prepare and do build the networks that will allow us to make a difference in the troubled times to come.

During some down time in a Washington D.C. hotel room this past weekend, I happened upon a movie on HBO that touched me as few movies have. It was called “Taking Chance” and it is based on the true experience of Lt. Colonel Mike Strobl in accompanying the body of PFC Chance Phelps home for burial.

Now, I am usually no fan of HBO and the mind-numbing drivel they produce, but I must openly admit that they have done our country a  needed service in giving us this film. It is a loving, almost understated portrayal of the Marine Corps’ care for their fallen, of the touching way in which airline employees and even truckers on the road express their quiet regard for our honored dead, and of the complex emotions of family, friends and comrades in arms. Kevin Bacon portrays LTC Strobl and does so with dignity and restraint. The camera work is appropriately wrenching and the soundtrack is perfectly chosen. It is, quite simply, a masterful treatment of its theme.

I am not ashamed to tell you that I wept and not just because of the events in the film but because the film did what a film of this kind ought to do: take me beyond its images to the grief and mourning that has plagued thousands of homes in the days since our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I was touched, too, with how the film seemed to offer to the dead its own refusal to make politics or policy its theme. Every word, image and sound is about honoring the dead of our wars and about how the living are left to bear witness over time.

You must see this film, in a quiet few hours with loved ones near. You must talk about what this means and you must have each generation reflect on this from their own perspective so that all you have gathered can hear. “Taking Chance” is astonishingly good, exceptionally moving and it gives us an overdue opportunity to grieve and to learn.

You can read the original article by LTC Strobl that inspired the film here.

More soon.

There is a great deal of discouragement in the pro-life community these days. Barack Obama is proving to be the most pro-abortion president in our history and for many who work to defend the unborn this is a time of deep and tearful disillusionment.

I believe the opposite ought to be true. Yes, Obama is what we expected: radically in support of abortion of most every kind. And, yes, this is tragic and, yes, we should pray and work for a change.

But let me mention some reasons for us to soldier on in vision and in hope. First, we are winning the battle of hearts and minds. The statistics now show that a majority of Americans believe that the life in the womb is a human being and that to abort is to bring that life to an end. This progress did not come from government but from pro-life centers and services throughout the nation.

It also came from the second reason we ought to stand strong: technology is on our side. Surveys also show that what has convinced many Americans who have changed their minds is ultrasonic photography. When people see what is in the womb–the heartbeat and the fingers and the little body forming even from early in the pregnancy–they realize what they did not understand before: this “fetus” is a child. And it should be protected at all costs. Notice that this technology-induced change came while abortion was legal yet it was the facts that won hearts and minds. This is the path of the future for us.

And, finally, Americans are increasingly being turned from abortion when they see the results of what infanticide and low birthrates have done to our European friends. This is becoming a hedge against abortion for cultural reasons even for those who otherwise aren’t convinced of the pro-life message.

You see, for a country to maintain its population, it must have a birthrate of at least 2.1. Below that and the population declines; above and it grows. Well, the U.S. has just a hair below 2.1, but Italy is 1.2. Ireland is 1.87. Spain is 1.1 and Russia’s is 1.2. But consider this: Somalia is 6.91. Yemen is 6.75 and Niger is 6.83. The rate for Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is about the same. You tell me what this means in fifty years.

As Americans become aware of these demographic trends and of the tragedies that are occurring because Europe is aborting itself to death, increasing numbers are starting to see the pro-life effort as one of the most patriotic projects of all. And this is as it should be, for as the Old Testament book of Proverbs tells us, a large population is a glory to a people. So it is with America today whether Mr. Obama knows it or not.

So, my friends, do not be discouraged. The political battles are not yet lost, but even if we do not win in that arena, we are already winning where it counts: in the hearts and minds of Americans. And this may mean that one day it won’t matter that abortion is legal because nobody will want one. Instead, Americans may come to understand what we already know about the value of that all important life in the womb.

Be encouraged. Our finest hour may be upon us.