In this special edition of Illinois Family Spotlight, IFI’s Dave Smith and Alyssa Sonnenburg sit down with Katy Faust to discuss her newly launched child-advocacy campaign, “Greater Than.”

Katy Faust is founder of Them Before Us, a foundation with one goal in mind: to protect the right of a child to their mother and father.

In her new “Greater Than” campaign, organizations, including Illinois Family Institute, are joining the movement to overturn the devastating Obergefell decision, a landmark Supreme Court decision which guaranteed the “right” of two men or two women to enter into a legal “marriage.”… Continue Reading

For decades, Illinois Family Institute and many other Christian and conservative voices have sounded the alarm about the ongoing assault on children and the family.

We have warned our readers — from both a biblical and real-world perspective — that divorce, abortion, the rainbow lifestyle, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges — which legalized so-called same-sex “marriage” — have all contributed to serious harm to children, our society, and the nation as a whole.… Continue Reading

On Feb. 23, Candace Owens released the trailer for her upcoming “investigative series,” called “The Bride of Charlie,” whereby she removes all doubt (if any remained) that she is either an unhinged, delusional moonbat or just plain evil.

Here is just a smattering of the loony nonsense Ms. Owens continues to peddle as she proves more and more every day that she is completely deranged.

Despite zero evidence to support her claims, Candace Owens persists in suggesting that Erika Kirk and/or other Turning Point USA insiders have been complicit in a broader plot and subsequent cover-up of Charlie Kirk’s murder.… Continue Reading

George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago — the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an upward blip in birth rates during the war, “the general curve is downward. The position is not quite so dangerous as it is sometimes said to be, but can only be put right if the curve not only rises sharply but does so within ten or at most twenty years.”… Continue Reading

Illinois State Senator Neil Anderson recently announced that he will be introducing legislation in Springfield to abolish abortion in the state of Illinois.

In this episode, IFI’s David Smith, Jenna Smith, and Alyssa Sonnenburg discuss this legislation and unpack the reality of the abortion practice in Illinois.

Did you know that in the state of Illinois,

• abortion businesses do not need to undergo inspections,
• when a woman dies during an abortion, the coroner is not required to be notified,
• a medical professional cannot be disciplined for performing an abortion on a non-pregnant woman, and
• medical professionals with a revoked medical license from another state will be allowed to perform abortions in Illinois.

The Illinois gubernatorial primary and general elections are coming up in March and November of this year, respectively.

For the past eight years, Illinoisans have had first-hand experience of the radical nature of the Democratic Party in Illinois.

• Shocking abortion statistics: 38,472 abortions in Illinois in 2014; 89,770 in 2024.
• The highest combined state and local tax burden in the nation.
• Heightened violence.
• Radical school curriculum: sex ed in kindergarten, proficiency testing of LGBTQ history in 8^th grade in order to graduate, tampons in boys school bathrooms, and much more.

One of the most chilling scenes in the 1965 epic film “Doctor Zhivago” is when the good doctor joyfully returns to his Moscow home after the communist Russian Revolution in 1917, only to find his stately house occupied by dozens of government-placed squatters.

Two unctuous Communist Party officials lecture him about why this is more equitable, to which Zhivago quickly agrees, given the circumstances. As he and his wife climb the stairs to the bare-bones living space left to them, the squatters stare with undisguised hatred.… Continue Reading

Public schools have long failed our children. Academic scores continue to drop and moral decay continues to creep in through the forms of critical race theory, gender theory, the usurpation of parental authority, and more.

Scott Phelps, head of the Abstinence and Marriage Partnership organization, reveals another way that public education is failing our children:

Sex education.

“Planned Parenthood is not only the largest provider of abortions in America, they are also the largest provider of sex education programs in America.

Join Spotlight for a special, hope-filled episode where we feature Walt Heyer’s testimony of how Christ saved him out of his lifestyle in sexual sin.

Walt Heyer underwent gender reassignment surgery at age 42 and lived for 8 years as a woman. In his testimony, Walt shares how Christ saved him from gender dysphoria, homelessness, and drunkenness.

“It is so important that when you hear that people can’t come back out of this lifestyle that you actually see a witness that says you can.

Our culture is in desperate need of a biblical perspective on marriage and family.

In this episode of Spotlight, Scott Phelps, head of the Abstinence and Marriage Partnership organization, discusses how to restore a biblical perspective of marriage and family in Generation Z and the future generations.

“The purpose of abstinence isn’t to avoid problems… it is to prepare you for the marriage relationship.”

This is an episode you do not want to miss.… Continue Reading

“The Troubling Case of Jeffrey Epstein” reveals one of the most notorious organized child sex trafficking networks in modern American history and the systematic government cover-up that protected it for decades. Written by Thomas Hampson, a former Air Force intelligence analyst and Chief Investigator for the Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission, this detailed report shows how Jeffrey Epstein exploited hundreds of child victims while seemingly maintaining ties to the wealthiest and most influential individuals in the world, as well as to the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and possibly other intelligence agencies.… Continue Reading

We keep being told that both sides of America’s political divide are equally culpable for violent rhetoric and violent acts. It’s a lie.

Virtually all of it comes from the political left. It wasn’t right-wingers who shot President Donald Trump and murdered health care executive Brian Thompson in New York and conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah in cold blood.

It wasn’t Young Republicans who attacked a Turning Point USA event on the University of California, Berkeley, campus last week, beating up a TPUSA staffer.… Continue Reading

In this wide-ranging conversation, Pastor Jack Hibbs interviews Dr. Erwin Lutzer about the growing appeal of socialism in America, the failures of Marxist ideology, and the urgent spiritual implications for the church. Drawing from his book We Will Not Be Silenced, Dr. Lutzer explains why socialism inevitably collapses—because it destroys initiative, fuels corruption, and depends on spending wealth created by capitalism. He shares firsthand observations from the Soviet Union and other communist countries, contrasting their misery and scarcity with the freedom and abundance produced by free markets.… Continue Reading

No matter their claims, Nick Fuentes and those who sympathize with him are not Christians.

How do we know this? Because what matters to true Christians is Jesus. Christ is our “highest good.” He is the most important aspect of our lives. He is our summum bonum. He and nothing else — not politics, not popularity nor personal animus — is our “first thing.”

Christ, not clicks, drives every decision of a Christian’s life.… Continue Reading

In this important episode of Spotlight, Illinois State Representative Jed Davis (R-Yorkville) shares about the upcoming Lame Duck session in the Illinois Legislature and troubling concerns that he sees with the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS).

Rep. Davis has a civil engineering degree, and served as board president for Yorkville’s Parkview Christian Academy.

“The state is running around investigating families and the people leading these investigations are interns who lack the experience.”

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently went on air to tell Americans that Antifa, designated by the Trump administration as a “major terrorist organization,” doesn’t exist. Ironically, Joe Biden said much the same during the 2020 debates, calling Antifa “an idea, not an organization.”

Many Democrats and their allies in the media have repeated that line for years. But if Antifa is merely an “idea,” not an organized movement bent on chaos and intimidation, then there’s no way to confront or curtail it under the law.… Continue Reading

I was listening in the car the other day to an old Jackson Browne album.

Don’t judge. The man has talent, even if, in his 70s, he still suffers from chronic liberalitis.

Contracted in adolescence, liberalitis is a mental block against reality that usually fades in most people with the passing of time. For some reason, people in show business seem more inclined than others to have an antibiotic like resistance to the kinds of life lessons that constitute a cure.… Continue Reading

Today’s episode of Spotlight features Dr. Frank Turek and his 2017 IFI Worldview presentation on Sex in America. Dr. Turek is an author of 7 books, the host of the podcast “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist,” & Founder & President of CrossExamined, an Apologetics-based ministry.

Dr. Turek was a close friend and mentor of Charlie Kirk, and his wisdom and insight into our culture is undeniable.… Continue Reading

In the wake of Charlie Kirk‘s assassination, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) posted an Anti-Defamation League chart that purports to prove that right-wingers perpetrate the majority of politically motivated murders in the United States.

“Data isn’t vibes,” she wrote. “If you need vibes, check out the hate filled comments the rightwing will leave on this post and all my posts.”

The ADL graph has been very popular among left-wingers. The problem is that it’s based on one of the most dishonest reports ever.… Continue Reading

The Democratic Party is having an identity crisis. To win elections, it must pose as moderately liberal. It is anything but.

The rise of Muslim/socialist Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for mayor of America’s largest city shows how far left the party has plunged.

New York City voters may yet reject Mr. Mamdani, but he is favored right now to win in November. That would saddle the Big Apple with a functionally Islamic/communist regime.… Continue Reading

Gay marriage was not just a step down the slippery slope toward today’s transgender dystopia. It was the first manifestation of it. Now that a broad reawakening has exposed the harms of gender ideology and the denial of natural law, Republicans must press beyond protecting women’s sports and opposing child castration. They must return to the root of the problem: the redefinition of marriage itself.

Marriage is the foundation of human civilization, not a mere “social construct.”… Continue Reading

In this episode of the Spotlight podcast, we’re highlighting remarks from Dr. Brad Wilcox during the Illinois Family Institute’s 2025 Marriage & Family worldview conference, hosted by Belmont Bible Church in Downer’s Grove.

Dr. Wilcox serves as director of the National Marriage Project & professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He’s the author of several books including “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Form Strong Families, & Save Civilization.”… Continue Reading

Today we’re highlighting remarks from Dr. Brad Wilcox during the Illinois Family Institute’s 2025 Marriage & Family worldview conference, hosted by Belmont Bible Church in Downer’s Grove.

Dr. Wilcox serves as director of the National Marriage Project & professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He’s the author of several books including “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Form Strong Families, & Save Civilization.”

In Part One of this Two Part series, Dr.… Continue Reading

Last week’s major kerfuffle in the conservative Christian world centered around the announcement by Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Magnolia Network fame, that they will proudly feature a “family” of two “married” men and the men’s young, surrogacy-purchased boys in an upcoming episode of their show.

Upon receiving predictable criticism for this decision, Mr. Gaines defiantly posted the following message on X:

“Talk, ask questions, listen … maybe even learn.

Recorded live from the 2025 Illinois Christian Homeschool Convention (ICHE), Monte Larrick converses with Abraham Hamilton III. Hamilton is a husband, Bible teacher, a national radio host & TV host, a lawyer & homeschool father who was a keynote speaker for ICHE’s 2025 Conference, themed “This We Believe.”

Hamilton encourages listeners to prioritize homeschooling, because:

“For far too long, people have failed to recognize that mind cultivation is essential to disciple making.

When we abandon the most basic of truths–man & woman–what do we have to stand on?

Today we’re featuring a Spotlight interview conducted in 2023 with conservative icon and activist, Riley Gaines Barker. Riley is a 12x all-American collegiate swimmer, praised by President Trump for leading the fight for fairness, safetey & the protection of women in women’s sports.

Riley will be our keyenote speaker at our annual Faith, Family & Freedom banquet on November 7th of this year. … Continue Reading

Have you noticed? The ‘heroes’ of the American left, like Michael Brown, George Floyd, Freddie Gray, and Trayvon Martin were all bad guys? Mr Floyd was a convicted felon and drug addict, caught in the act of passing counterfeit money, Mr Brown had just roughed up a shopkeeper half his size, and then attempted to assault a police officer. Mr Martin had assaulted George Zimmerman. Mr Gray had a criminal record with 18 prior arrests, on drug charges, three separate assault charges, and minor crimes and had spent time in jail.… Continue Reading

If you watched the recent “No Kings” riots with a lingering sense of deja vu, together with a haunting feeling that the “fox is in the henhouse,” you had good reason. This chaos is not without precedent, and it is far from the grassroots movement it is portrayed to be. First, let’s deal with the deja vu.

Because most of our public schools have long since abandoned teaching anything remotely akin to an accurate version of world history, most people today are unaware that the anarchy we are witnessing in the streets of Philadelphia and Portland is not without precedent.… Continue Reading

As an observant Jew and a strong supporter of the State of Israel with family members in bomb shelters, three serving in the IDF, and others who perished in the Holocaust, I find it deeply offensive and historically ignorant when Democrats suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome compare Donald J. Trump to Adolf Hitler or call him a Nazi.

Let me be clear: Donald Trump is not a Nazi.… Continue Reading

Illinois is the abortion capitol of the Midwest. Women from states that have safegaurds to protect babies are choosing the land of Lincoln for surgical abortions or, increasingly, aboriton drugs. Donna Williams is trying to counter that. As the executive director for PASS network for Life, she leads the pregnancy based care center in Tinley Park to protect and promote life.

Pregnancy Aid South Suburbs offer services designed to address the needs of both mothers in crisis pregnancy situations and the father.… Continue Reading

A battle of perceptions has been underway since rioting began on June 6 in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.

The footage of burning vehicles and people throwing concrete blocks from an overpass to smash police car windshields might lead viewers to conclude that the “peaceful protests” have not been so peaceful.

You might even think President Trump was right to nationalize 2,000 troops from California’s National Guard and send in 700 Marines to protect federal buildings and quell the violence.… Continue Reading

Last week in this column, I argued that if we truly respect our neighbors, we should stop using all of the LGBTQ labels that have become endemic to the month of June and its corresponding celebration of “pride.” More specifically, I wrote,

“Don’t you realize that by calling people ‘gay’ (or lesbian, transgender, queer, homosexual or even heterosexual, for that matter) you are parroting the lie that our desires define us and that people can be pigeonholed into categories of appetites, proclivities, drives and desires?

President Donald J. Trump has promised a “huge” celebration to commemorate America’s 250th birthday next year.

We’re talking massive fireworks, a Flag Day military parade in Washington and the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes consisting of life-size statues portraying great Americans from all walks of life, including Harriet Tubman, Frank Capra, the Wright Brothers, Susan B. Anthony and Miles Davis.

The truly eclectic selections include “scientists and inventors, entrepreneurs, civil rights leaders, missionaries and religious leaders,” along with “those who fought for the abolition of slavery” and “opponents of national socialism or international socialism.”… Continue Reading

Recording from the annual Illinois Christian Home Educator’s (ICHE) Convention at Olivet Nazarine University in Bourbonais, Monte Larrick conducts his annual interview with ICHE’s executive director, Kirk Smith.

The Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) is a not-for-profit Christian organization dedicated to supporting families who choose to home educate their children throughout Illinois. Founded in December 1983 by four Christian families, its core mission is to encourage and equip parents to glorify Jesus Christ by discipling their children through home-based education.… Continue Reading

“Low birth rates will end civilization,” Elon Musk recently warned. The plummeting birthrate is a grave concern which both he and J.D. Vance have repeatedly raised and one that the Trump administration is now seeking to address.

America’s birthrate has plummeted below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman to its lowest point ever recorded – 1.6.  In 2023, the U.S. saw only 55 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44; for comparison in 1950 that rate was 106 births. … Continue Reading

What was the most evil regime of the 20th century? Many people instantly picture a crazed Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich rounding up millions of Jewish men, women and children in an attempt to systematically exterminate them. An estimated six million were murdered across German-occupied Europe. That’s truly evil. Yet, if we’re looking at death tallies, consider the human toll inflicted under Communism:

• Sixty million dead in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features Dan Marquardt of We Love Police, an organization that dedicates itself to highlighting the untold good of police officers.

“We Love Police… spotlights the untold GOOD of our police officers… Through various resources, we uplift our police and their families holistically. Story by story, we will elevate the way Americans view our police…”

It has been well-documented that police officers have increasingly become demonized in our culture– especially since the George Floyd incident and BLM riots in 2020:

“A growing body of research has found that, after protests draw public attention to officer-involved killings, police officers become less proactive, pulling back from enforcing the law or other practices aimed at ensuring public safety due to fear of criticism, lawsuits, or low morale.”

It is unfortunately unsurprising that yet another school district in Illinois has defied the clear privacy and safety protections that Title IX puts in place.

Illinois School District 203, located in Naperville, is currently in the spotlight for allowing a biological male to participate in the female’s track meet.

Not only was the biological male allowed to participate in this athletic event, but he (surprise, surprise) won the track meet.

This should, of course, come as no surprise to those of us who acknowledge a basic biological fact which states that biological males have distinct physical advantages over biological females.… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight features Shannon Adcock, founder of Awake Illinois, an organization dedicated to erasing DEI initiatives and protecting children from mental health screenings, graphic sex education and Title IX violations within Illinois public schools.

“Parents don’t know that they have the right to opt out of radical sexual education, and they should.”

This is an important conversation that you do not want to miss.

Listen to “What is Going on In The Illinois School Districts?”… Continue Reading

The U.S. Supreme Court could soon decide whether to take up First Liberty’s case involving Blake Warner.

This is a major case that can ensure government doesn’t get in the way of parents deciding what’s best for their children.

Blake lives in Hillsborough County, Florida, where he filed a legal complaint against the school board. However, he was told by a court that he must have an attorney in order to legally represent his child.… Continue Reading

Illinois is currently trying to legalize assisted suicide through the passage of the End of Life Options Act.

This Act, if passed, would give doctors the legal ability to prescribe death-inducing drugs to patients who have been diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

In this episode, Dr. Kevin Garner sits down with Monte Larrick to discuss the dangers this Act pose– not only to the terminally ill but the possible expansion of the bill to include non-terminal conditions and children.… Continue Reading

When Russian leader Vladimir Putin jails or poisons rivals or journalists or even invades a neighboring country, it’s not all that shocking.

After all, the Russian president was a high-ranking agent in the Soviet KGB and has shown little inclination to change his stripes while presiding over the kleptocracy that is modern Russia.

However, countries with actual self-governing systems are not supposed to resort to unsavory tactics. Leaders are not supposed to consolidate power by arresting opponents or crippling them with lawfare.… Continue Reading

British sociologist Noah Carl is the one who reported it: the political right has seemingly lost all confidence in the “scientific community.”

Percentage of Americans with “a great deal” of confidence in the scientific community, broken down by party. (The most recent data point is 2022.) pic.twitter.com/cXvheG2kde

— Noah Carl (@NoahCarl90) March 18, 2025

The data he used came from a “general social survey,” something whose reliability would perhaps seem suspect if the findings didn’t also match most of our anecdotal, personal experiences.… Continue Reading

Transgender ideology has wreaked havoc across America.

Biological men, claiming to be women, have insisted on infiltrating women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and sports.

Because of the radical policies allowing this infiltration, women’s privacy was revoked, championships were lost, and opportunities were ripped away.

However, consequences of this ideology have been even more severe than this. The infiltration of men into women’s spaces has led to egregious violent acts.

In January of 2024, NBC New York reported on an incident where a biological male, claiming to be a woman, sexually violated a female prisoner on Riker’s Island.… Continue Reading

The assault on America’s children from the Democratic Left is unprecedented on our history.  Considering our long and storied history of favoring and protecting children, it is shocking and disgusting; and it must not be ignored!

Until I had children of my own, I did not fully understand how they would change my life and the joy they would bring.  I was always fond of children, but it is not the same as having little ones of your own.… Continue Reading

In this special episode of Spotlight, Pastor Ceasar LeFlore sits down with Latasha Fields to discuss education and the exciting upcoming event, Chicago Home Educators’ Summit.

Latasha Fields has been a home educator for over 18 years and her passion for parental rights and quality education is evident. She is a former candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, is a critic of the public school system, and has even testified before the U.S.… Continue Reading

Forgive me if I’m late to the party, but I just became aware of a Christian preacher named James Murray who leads a congregation in Australia called Abide Church. A peripheral scan of their webpage indicates the church has multiple campuses, but again I know next to nothing about it.

What I do know is that a clip Murray just posted to his Instagram account is one that resonated with me, and is a message Christians the world over need to hear.… Continue Reading

This special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight highlights Pastor Douglas Wilson’s remarks given at the 2015 Illinois Family Banquet.

Pastor Douglas Wilson preaches at Christ Church in Moscow, ID, and is senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College. He is a prolific author of many books and his blog, dougwils.com, is home to his witty and rapier thoughts on culture, the church at large, and politics.

In his speech, Pastor Wilson challenges Christians to fight for biblical sanity and morality.… Continue Reading

In this special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Pastor Ceasar LeFlore sits down with Latasha Fields to discuss education, parental rights, and community empowerment.

Latasha Fields has been a home educator for over 18 years and her passion for parental rights and quality education is evident. She is a former candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, is a critic of the public school system, and has even testified before the U.S. Congress on “Poverty in America: Economic Realities of Struggling Families.”… Continue Reading

Policies have the power to influence the culture towards marriage and family.

In this episode of Self Evident, Jenna and Alyssa sit down with Scott Phelps for a discussion on what government policies the Trump Administration can implement to encourage marriage and family.

Scott Phelps is the executive director of The National Marriage Campaign, formerly known as Abstinence and Marriage Partnership. The National Marriage Campaign was founded in 2004, and their mission is to let every teenager in the country hear a clearly reasoned, positive presentation on the blessings of abstinence until marriage and instruction on preparing for a healthy, future marriage.… Continue Reading

Governor J.B. Pritzker is pledging to “Trump proof” Illinois through keeping Illinois open to transgender surgeries and drugs for minors, which is one of the issues that took center stage during the Presidential campaign.

In this episode of Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with Thomas Hampson to discuss Governor Pritzker’s plan and the harmful effects it will have on children.

Thomas Hampson is a contributing writer for IFI serving as an intelligence analyst, U.S.… Continue Reading

Recently, the 40 Days for Life pro-life activist, Catherine Walker, spoke outside of Illinois’ Flossmoor Planned Parenthood.

Catherine Walker is a post-abortive, pro-life warrior and she has dedicated her life to helping women through the ministry of sidewalk counseling. In this episode of Spotlight, Catherine shares how she is seeing a positive impact in her community as a result of sidewalk counseling.

“My job is to be faithful and be a warrior in the army and go and try to save one life at a time.

Did you know that the abortion industry is trying to shut down SouthSide Pregnancy Center and other crisis pregnancy care facilities?

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, we feature remarks by Frank Pavone given at SouthSide Pregnancy Center’s 2024 Banquet. Reverend Frank Pavone serves as the national director of Priests For Life and president of the National Pro-Life Religious Counsel and pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard.

“There is nothing that takes more life than abortion.

“Every Home a School. Every Church an Academy.”

Reverend Ceasar LeFlore is the pastor of Spirit of Liberty Church of God, is an IFI Board Member, is the field director for Public School Exit in Illinois, and is the executive director of the Good Soil Good Seed Christian Education Foundation.

Good Soil, Good Seed is an education foundation that is dedicated to enabling families to take their children out of the public school system, and they accomplish this through generous grants and scholarships.… Continue Reading

In this special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with Reverend Elmer Harris.

Elmer Harris is the pastor emeritus of Second Baptist Church in Joliet and serves as a chaplain for the Bolingbrook Police Department. He also ministers to hundreds of people in the community through the ministry, Blessing Table. Blessing Table is a food pantry that was started in June of 2020 to help feed needy people across many communities.… Continue Reading

Does sex outside of marriage have any consequences?

Pam Stenzel answers this vital question during her keynote remarks at Illiana Right To Life’s 2024 Fall Banquet. Pam Stenzel has been a pro-life advocate since the 1980s and currently helps to operate four pregnancy resource centers in the state of Florida.

She is the author of “Sex Has a Price Tag” and co-author of the book, “Nobody Told Me: What You Need to Know About the Physical and Emotional Consequences of Sex Outside of Marriage”.… Continue Reading

In case you missed it, the week of September 22nd was announced as Banned Books Week according to the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA wants the public to believe that raising concerns about obscene material in children’s books is the same as Nazi book banning.

Thomas Hampson sits down with Monte Larrick to combat this false narrative. Thomas Hampson is a contributing writer for IFI serving as an intelligence analyst, U.S.… Continue Reading

Is it a Christian’s duty to vote?

According to research conducted by Barna, 41 million professing Christians and 32 million mainline Christians are not planning on voting in the upcoming general election.

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with David Smith, Executive Director of Illinois Family Institute and Illinois Family Action, to discuss the results of this research study.

“Romans 13 tells us that all authority is ordained by God… Who is the authority in America?

Women’s rights are the central theme of the Harris/Walz campaign and central to Eric Sorensen’s campaign for reelection to Illinois’ 17^th Congressional District.… Continue Reading

“Operation Swing State” is in full gear for the upcoming general election on November 5^th.

The goal of this operation? To convert as many people as possible to the pro-child sacrifice side not only in Illinois but also in key swing states like Wisconsin.

NPR Illinois recently covered the work of this operation:

“On a hot sunny day in September, Elizabeth Posner and Mark Steen, two volunteers from Illinois, drove around the politically purplish city of Racine, Wis.,

In this exciting episode of Spotlight, we are featuring Allie Beth Stuckey’s keynote speech that she delivered at the annual Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet! Allie is a dedicated wife, mom, cultural commentator, and is the beloved host of her podcast, Relatable.

In her speech, Allie breaks down her popular catchphrase: politics matter because policies matter because people matter. Politics affects policy, policy affects people, and people matter.

“While it is absolutely true– yes and amen– that Jesus is coming back one day, He is not here yet.

IFI recently produced a document comparing the stances of the Democrat and Republican party platforms on eight major political issues.… Continue Reading

Dr. Erwin Lutzer is the pastor emeritus of Moody Church in Chicago and is the author of the highly acclaimed books including The Church in Babylon, When a Nation Forgets God, and The Eclipse of God.

In this special episode of Spotlight, Dr. Lutzer sits down with Monte Larrick to discuss what inspired his newest book, The Eclipse of God.

“If the baboon is our grandfather– if we are only animals on a continuum with animals… we have no argument against abortion, euthanasia.

A Newsweek article from August chronicles the many Republicans who have openly pledged their support for Kamala Harris.

Their list includes former Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney (Wyoming), Adam Kinzinger (Illinois), former Trump White House official Stephanie Grisham, and a group of over 200 staffers for previous presidential Republican candidates.

Enough Republicans are feeling likewise that Newsweek reports a program started by the Harris campaign—”Republicans for Harris”—which is intentionally catering to Republicans who are rejecting Trump.… Continue Reading

As a young girl, Anni Cyrus was sold as a child bride in Islamic Iran. Because of the courage of her grandmother, Anni was able to escape the horrors that she faced at the hands of Islam and make her way to America– to freedom.

As a legal American citizen, Anni Cyrus is now a human rights activist that speaks out against the horrors and oppression that Islam brings.

In this special episode, Anni specifically addresses Christians in America and how they can embrace their God-given freedoms.… Continue Reading

“Nothing shocks me anymore” is a phrase Christian conservatives find themselves saying with evermore frequency these days, often with a deep sigh. Yet you’ll probably be astounded to learn that Illinois Congressional Democrats voted against the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (HR 7909) this week.

Joining most of their fellow Democrats in the U.S. House, they voted “no.” The title of a Fox News report highlights the disgrace: “158 Dems vote against bill to deport illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes.… Continue Reading

Sometimes, particularly in the toxic world of social media, it’s difficult to know whether people are being honest and earnest in their questions or whether they’re trying to make a statement.

Usually, after a modicum of research it becomes apparent, as was the case with the recent query posted by online anti-Trump activist John Collins:

Can someone explain to me why any woman would vote Republican at this point?

— John Collins (@Logically_JC) September 12, 2024

I know that’s an attempted jab, a straightforward slight, smacking of an arrogantly patriarchal mindset, directed at women who see the world differently than him.… Continue Reading

Is praying outside of an abortion clinic terrorism?

In this episode of Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with Constitutional attorney David Shestokas to discuss how pro-life activists in Illinois have been targeted by Eileen O’Neill Burke, a candidate for the Cook County State’s Attorney position, as it regards their Constitutional rights.

“She’s going after free speech… Possibly potentially freedom of religion… She’s intending to prosecute people not necessarily based on their conduct, but based on the content of their message.”

Fox News reported that presidential candidate Kamala Harris affirmed her support of a federal wealth tax.

It’s meant to hit only the “super wealthy”:

“The proposal would impose a minimum tax of 25% on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million,” the Treasury Department stated in its FY25 revenue proposals. The same proposal was also put forth by the Biden-Harris administration in fiscal year 2024 and in fiscal year 2023, but the minimum taxable amount was 20%.

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features remarks from the Go Public for Pro Life rally, organized by Vision 2020.

Julie Garofalo, executive director of the women’s crisis pregnancy center, Waterleaf; Matt Yonke of the Pro Life Action League; and Veronica Janiszewski with Students for Life, all speak on the vital importance of speaking truth and hope into the lives of women facing unexpected pregnancies.

“Our voices are a gift from God, and we must use them for good.

I’ve reached that stage of life that, on occasion, I’m asked for life advice. My best, most succinct answer is this: Follow Jesus and don’t vote for Democrats. The reason for the former part of my statement is widely known, and the reason for the latter is simple: The Democrat Party is one of the greatest tools of Satan in the world today.

In spite of this, there is some foolish thing called “Evangelicals for Harris.”… Continue Reading

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke before the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) last Thursday. This was her first speech as a presidential candidate, since President Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee.

Rather than hiding the fact that the AFT has had a tremendous amount of power and influence on the Biden administration and the country, Harris proudly announced it, thanking AFT president, Randi Weingarten, in particular saying that she has been a “great force” and “an incredible friend and adviser” to the president and her.… Continue Reading

In this edition of Illinois Family Spotlight, we are highlighting a special news conference from the 2023 Black Conservative Summit featuring Dr. Eric Wallace, Robert Woodsen, Ken Blackwell, Larry Elder and Lt. Col. Allen West.

All five guests will focus on how to build a better America.

“The number one problem facing the black community was not systemic racism, not police brutality, but the large number of kids who enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother.”

For years, liberal think tanks and media figures scoffed at the mere suggestion of many dangerous illegal aliens living in this country. They claimed absurdly that those who cross the border illegally are family-loving hard workers who commit crimes at a much lower rate than native Americans. A new report from Fox45 Baltimore reveals that one county has a shockingly disproportionate number of illegal alien child sex offenders, raising the question: How bad is the illegal alien sex offender problem nationwide?… Continue Reading

In this week’s episode of Spotlight podcast, Dr. Benjamin German discusses physician-assisted suicide from his perspective as a medical-care provider.

Dr. German is a primary caregiver in the Lawndale Christian Health Center and serves as an Illinois Representative in the Academy of Medical Ethics, which is the biomedical arm of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations.

Dr. German’s speech will discuss how medically-assisted suicide works and the ethics surrounding medically-assisted suicide.… Continue Reading

Two more American companies have seen the light after feeling the heat.

Like Bud Light beer, which learned the hard way that pushing the transgender agenda was bad for business, Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere recently retracted their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The companies cater primarily to farmers, rural homeowners and suburbanites.

LGBTQ groups are expressing outrage. Human Rights Campaign Vice President Eric Bloem accuses John Deere of bending to “a coordinated attack by far-right extremists on American business.”… Continue Reading

This special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features an interview with Ken Ham at the 2024 Illinois Christian Home Educators conference.

Ken Ham is the CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis, a Christian organization aimed at giving Christians real answers to deep questions about the world. He is the author of over thirty books and is also the founder of the two popular attractions: The Creation Museum and The Ark Encounter.… Continue Reading

There have been a lot of laughs at President Joseph R. Biden’s expense since his disastrous debate with former President Trump on Thursday, June 28.

Democrats have been in a state of panic since then.

USA Today on June 30 reported the shocking results of a CBS/You Gov National Survey in which 72% of voters –  as well as nearly half of his party – said they do not believe Biden has the mental or cognitive capacity to serve as president.… Continue Reading

This special episode of Spotlight features Nancy Pearcey’s presentation at the 2023 Worldview Conference based on her bestselling, critically acclaimed book, Love Thy Body.

Nancy Pearcey is an Apologetics Professor and scholar at Houston Christian University. She is dedicated to bringing a biblical worldview to cultural issues such as gender, transgenderism, abortion, masculinity, agnosticism, and more.

“If there is no God…, there is no meaning to life.”

This is an incredible presentation you don’t want to miss.… Continue Reading

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, the pro-life issue has become more important than ever before.

With the Republican National Convention coming up on July 15^th in Milwaukee, Students for Life Action (SFLAction) understands this crucial moment and is demanding that the Republican Party (Grand Old Party, GOP) maintain its pro-life stance.

While the GOP has been dedicated to the pro-life cause for decades, there are some Republicans (Republicans In Name Only, RINOs) that stand as a hindrance to the pro-life mission.… Continue Reading

Progressives frequently point fingers at those who disagree with them, calling them deplorables, Bible-thumping rubes and science deniers. Yet without fail, our accusers rarely provide any evidence to support their claims. The leftists’ call to “respect the science,” i.e., look at the obvious empirical evidence, almost always works against them rather than for them and their utopian schemes.

This is true across the spectrum of the current political debate. Be it inflation, foreign policy, immigration, racism, the efficacy of masks, climate change or gender identity, when we look at the empirical data relevant to any of these topics, the science screams that progressives are wrong and conservatives have been right all along.… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight focuses on the topic of homeschooling.

Kirk Smith, ICHE’s (Illinois Christian Home Educator) executive director, gives encouragement to parents who don’t know how to homeschool, gives direction on how to choose good curriculum, and much more.

Parents, especially moms, feel like they’re unworthy- that they are not capable of homeschooling… if it’s [homeschooling] is a principle of God, it works– regardless of how good or how unprepared we feel as parents.

This week’s Spotlight episode features Dr. Scott Lively and his speech, “Recovering Biblical Manhood” from IFI’s 2024 Worldview Conference.

Dr. Scott Lively is an author, attorney, commentator, activist, and the founder and leader of Scott Lively Ministries.

In his speech, Dr. Lively starts with giving his personal testimony and relates his personal experiences to the importance of recovering biblical manhood.

Listen to “Recovering Biblical Manhood” anywhere you find podcasts or click the link!… Continue Reading

The government spent decades trying to make fathers unnecessary. The failure of that experiment put society on the long-term path to collapse.

Sunday was Father’s Day. It’s much less popular than Mother’s Day for a sad reason.

Fewer fathers are involved in their children’s lives. That’s caused by two main factors.

The first is children born to single moms. In 2022, almost 40% of births were to unmarried women, according to the CDC.… Continue Reading

Government-run schools keep failing. It shouldn’t surprise us. Monopolies rarely serve customers well.

People call them “public schools,” but “government-run” is more accurate. After all, charter schools are available to the public. Privately run supermarkets are open to the public for more hours than “public” schools are.

International tests show American kids don’t learn as much as kids in other countries. During the pandemic, they did even worse because our teachers unions kept schools closed.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Spotlight, David Smith and Richard Hartian continue their discussion on fatherhood with Kent Evans.

Kent Evans is the co-founder of the ministry, Manhood Journey and is the author of Bring Your Hammer, a book that gives fathers tools on how to biblically disciple their children. Kent notes, “The only way we know about Jesus Christ is through discipleship.”

When asked why discipleship is so important, Kent notes,

I disciple my boys because God told me to, and if I am going to be faithful like Jesus was faithful, then I am going to do what God said… If I have children in this world, I am their primary disciple-maker.

The national parental rights group has again made the latest “hate map” of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the most prominent leftist smear machine outside of the legacy media itself.

Despite a scandal in 2019 that ousted its leadership, “SPLC annual revenue still reaches nine figures, and its assets are just shy of $700 million,” the Capital Research Center reports.

The Moms last year were designated partly because they supported reform-minded school board candidates who won elections.… Continue Reading

This edition of Illinois Family Spotlight features a conversation with Kent Evans surrounding biblical fatherhood.

Kent Evans is the executive director and co-founder of Manhood Journey, a ministry that aids fathers in intentionally discipling their children.

Fatherlessness is on the rise in homes across the nation, and the effects of fatherlessness are very real.

A definition for a godly father is: Am I exhibiting to my children the image of God the Father as close as I can represent it?

Reducing sentences for our already under-incarcerated criminal population is a great goal of George Soros. Yet for the past 15 years, this dystopian objective has been supported by the Kochs and other libertarian front groups that convinced Republicans — and, eventually, Donald Trump — to join the jailbreak bandwagon.

Now, despite the ubiquitous recognition that we have a violent crime problem because of weak deterrent power against criminals, particularly juveniles, the Koch-funded groups continue to wield influence among Republicans to further weaken the criminal deterrent rather than strengthening it.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews Pastor Myles Holmes of Revive Church.

In this interview, Pastor Holmes tackles the issue of the 2024 election.

Making America great again actually means making America godly again. We need to get back to the Constitution, but even before that, back to the Bible and what has made America great, which is faith in God.

Listen to “What to Expect in the 2024 Election” anywhere you find podcasts or click the link below:

… Continue Reading

Much has been said about the Harrison Butker situation over the course of the last few days, but I wonder if anyone has paused to consider how violative the secular progressive left is right now of their own rules of inclusion and open-mindedness.

A few years ago, I watched a commencement address at a moderately sized public university. The speaker spent nothing short of 25 minutes warning the graduates about the perils of homophobia, transphobia, climate change, and more than a few other buzzwords associated with our state religion.… Continue Reading

In this week’s Spotlight episode, David Curtin, IFI’s Springfield Lobbyist, gives an update on the Illinois General Assembly.

As it relates to Assisted Suicide in Illinois, David Curtin has a hopeful update:

Assisted Suicide is dead for now. We don’t expect it to come up before the end of May. If it comes up during veto session in the Fall, maybe? If it comes up next year, maybe?

But, we are just ecstatic that IFI listeners registered their opinion on so many bills down here.

Freedom can be deceiving. When you drive through the countryside and see a horse standing unrestrained in a field, does it seem free? When you walk through a neighborhood and hear a dog running and barking on the other side of a fence, does it appear to be free? When you drive by a school during recess and see dozens of children playing on the fenced-in playground, are they free? When you see a toddler playing with blocks in his playpen, is he free?… Continue Reading

I’ve seen a couple of video clips of Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson (R-NC) in the past few years, and every time I have found myself cheering, applauding and occasionally shouting “amen!”

He is now the Republican nominee for Governor in North Carolina in what promises to be a tight election. What a blessing it would be to see a bold Christian conservative like him elected as chief executive of that state!… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight features Pastor Myles Holmes and his speech at the annual IFI Worldview Conference.

Pastor Holmes is the pastor of Revive Church located in Collinsville, Illinois.

In his speech, Pastor Holmes highlights the vital importance of manhood and the need for good, godly, and strong men.

We’re talking today about recovering biblical manhood. Not just recovering manhood– recovering manhood biblically.

Listen to “Why Manhood Matters” anywhere you find podcasts or click the link!… Continue Reading

This Spotlight episode features Nancy Pearcey’s Worldview Conference speech, “The Toxic War on Masculinity.”

Nancy Pearcey is the director of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture at Houston Baptist University. She is also the author of several, critically-acclaimed books including Total Truth, Love They Body, and The Toxic War on Masculinity.

We are failing to nurture boys and then we blame them for their toxic behavior… researchers now tell us that male unemployment is at Great Depression era levels… and male life expectancy has gone down.

It’s 2024, and we are living in schizophrenic times. Dickensian times: the best of times, yet the worst; times where we demand the truth while reveling in our lies; times of great material gain but of even greater moral loss; times of calling good evil and evil good; times of saying bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter; times of the “tolerant” not tolerating what they find intolerable.

These are times when Jews are shamed and shunned by those who claim to stand against ghettos, gulags and racism.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Tom Brejcha discusses President Biden and his State of the Union address.

Tom Brejcha is the Founder, President, and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Society. He is a legal expert with over 50 years of experience in the federal and state courts.

Abortion is a top issue for the 2024 election, and Brejcha comments on states who are codifying abortion into their state laws and gives insight on how Christians and conservatives can counter this.… Continue Reading

On Sunday, April 21^st, Governor J.B. Pritzker appeared on CNN to discuss the 2024 Biden Presidential Campaign.

During his segment, Pritzker relayed a series of factually incorrect statements. For the sake of time, only three of these statements will be briefly discussed here.

Pritzker’s first claim was that adding Robert F. Kennedy to the presidential ballot would not affect Biden’s campaign. But a recent New York Times article noted,

Fears among Democrats are particularly acute this year, with polls suggesting that Mr.

In this episode of Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with IFI Springfield Lobbyist, David Curtin, in order to get his perspective on the upcoming Illinois legislative sessions.

A bill that has a lot of conservatives in Illinois concerned is SB 3499 (Physician-Assisted Suicide). David Curtin comments,

The assisted suicide legislation is a very coordinated national effort and they’ve already done it in a few other blue states, and Illinois is the next state they usually stop at to try to pass something like this… [Physician Assisted Suicide] would allow physicians to dispense some pills to a person who is diagnose with a terminal illness to kill themselves at home.

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features Reverend Ceasar LeFlore.

Reverend LeFlore is the director of Public School Exit , an IFI-affiliated organization dedicated to facilitating the exit of children from government schools. He is also the director of Good Soil Good Seed (GS2), a scholarship foundation designed to help children afford to attend Christian schools.

Reverend LeFlore has an event on April 18th, called “Saving Our Children for God.”  Attendance is free and the discussion will focus on the danger of Illinois government schools.… Continue Reading

This edition of Illinois Family Spotlight features Mark Houck, a devout Catholic and peaceful pro-life protestor who was falsely accused of violating the FACE Act.

Houck was arrested and handcuffed in front of his wife and children by the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice.

With legal representation from the Thomas More Society and a unanimous jury verdict, Mark Houck was declared to be innocent.

This is a conversation you won’t want to miss.… Continue Reading

In this episode, Spotlight is featuring remarks made by former state representative Peter Breen at the 2024 Speakout Illinois Pro-Life Conference.

Peter Breen is the executive vice-president and is the head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, which is a non-profit, public-interest law firm that champions the causes of life, family, and freedom.

In his speech, Peter Breen remarks on the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which overturned Roe v.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews Scott Lively, author and founder of Biblical Worldview Resource Center.

Scott Lively emphasizes the importance of pushing against the status quo of the culture. He also has a strong message to send to parents who continue to keep their kids in the public school system:

If you are intentionally keeping your kids in public schools, you know the children are being indoctrinated in secular humanist presuppositions in every field.

There is a concerted effort to divide our country, and the people responsible know that if they can get us to focus on ourselves, our grievances and our victimhood, the very fabric of our nation can be torn apart thread by thread. As Solomon said, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken,” but a cord of one is defenseless. In other words, divide and conquer.

The transparent “us against them” agenda of the diversity, equity and inclusion movement is but one example.… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight features a conversation between IFI’s David Smith, IFI board member Richard Hartian, and Scott Phelps.

Scott Phelps is the executive director of A&M Partnership (Abstinence and Marriage Partnership). A&M Partnership was founded in 2004, and exists to ensure that every teenager in the country has the opportunity to hear a clearly reasoned, positive presentation on the benefits of abstinence until marriage and instruction on preparing for a healthy, future marriage.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features Dr. Karl Benzio, a Christian Psychiatrist who serves with the AACC (American Association of Christian Counselors). He is s the co-founder of Honey Lake Clinic, a board certified Christian mental health treatment facility located in Greenville, Florida.

In this interview, Dr. Benzio focuses on how God designed the mind to work and how we can properly steward our mind in our decision-making process.

This is an amazing interview you don’t want to miss.… Continue Reading

In 2013, author John S. Dickerson wrote about the troubling condition of the American church in his book “The Great Evangelical Recession: 6 Factors That Will Crash the American Church and How to Prepare.”

Mr. Dickerson‘s key premise was that Christian orthodoxy in the United States is in rapid decline. The evidence he presented to support what, at first glance, seems to be a terminal diagnosis is multifaceted.

According to Mr.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Spotlight, IFI’s Executive Director, David Smith, sits down with Darren Bailey.

Darren Bailey is a former state representative for the 109th district in Southern Illinois, and is now running for U.S. Congress for the purpose of fighting for Southern families, defending the Second Amendment, Protecting the Sanctity of Life, Demanding Border Security, and much more.

In this conversation, David Smith focuses on the issue of border security and asks Bailey what he would do to ensure the safety of the southern border.… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight features the legacy of Joe Schiedler, who passed away at the age of 93.

Joe Schiedler leaves a 50 year legacy of peaceful, pro-life activism that took him around the nation and the world. Schiedler and his wife, Anne, co-founded the Chicago based Pro-Life Action League, and he authored Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion and Racketeer for Life.

Back in 2017, IFI hosted a Pro-Life Forum where Joe Schiedler reflected on his work and his calling in the pro-life movement.… Continue Reading

This episode of Spotlight the IFI Forum for pastors & leaders, hosted by the Spirit of Liberty Church of God in Markham, IL.

In the first segment of this episode, IFI’s Executive Director, David Smith, explains why Christians should be active in politics, public policies, and the 40 Days for Life campaigns that operate outside of abortion facilities. In his speech, David Smith emphasizes the first three words of the Constitution: “We the people…”

We have lots of opportunities as American citizens.

If you read the article from a few months ago about how to remove yourself or a family member from the voter rolls, you learned that there is a form that makes self-removal pretty easy here in Illinois.

After reading that article you may have asked some obvious questions like these:

• Is my deceased neighbor, grandparent, or friend still registered to vote?
• Is my neighbor’s son who moved out of state 15 years ago still registered at his former Illinois address?

January 6 has come and gone, and we need no longer be confused. Our wise and learned betters in the White House and the media have graciously reminded us that they are the final authority. They determine definitions. They decide what the words we use daily to define our laws, culture and freedoms mean. We no longer need to wonder what our overseers intend when they talk about such things.

Here is a glossary of terms for your convenience.… Continue Reading

Like green shoots poking up through snow in early spring, more signs of resistance are emerging every day.

We may be witnessing a massive rejection of the grim future fashioned for us by ruling elites, whose narrative of radical change is collapsing.

Americans are not buying what they’re selling.

They told us to endure endless rounds of COVID-19 shots, which are not only ineffective but may be harmful. Pfizer and Moderna stocks have plummeted because Americans have weighed the outcomes and gone natural.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight is highlighting remarks made in August 2023, by Riley Gaines during a Will County Republican organization banquet, where she recounts her personal experience of having to compete against a biological male and the dismantlement of Title IX.

Riley Gaines made headlines when, in 2022, during an NCAA competition for the University of Kentucky, she was forced to share a swimming pool and locker room with male competitor, Will Thomas, who self-identifies as a female – Lia Thomas.… Continue Reading

The abortion debate generally centers around two people: the mother and her child. Of course, there’s a lot of back-and-forth over how to define her child, when her child “becomes” a child, what that means, how or whether to support her as a mother and so on.

But somehow, another necessary party is almost always missing from the debate — namely, the father. I find this baffling.

There is a father involved, somehow, in every pregnancy.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features Peter Breen’s speech at the Will County Republican Banquet in the first half and a Q&A session with Scott Klusendorf, President of the Life Training Institute, in the second half.

Peter Breen is a former state representative and currently is the executive vice president & head of litigation for the Chicago based Thomas More Society.

Breen speaks on the unconstitutional nature of Senate Bill 1909, which causes pro-life pregnancy centers to undergo litigation and fines.… Continue Reading

According to a recent Wall Street Journal/NORC survey, just 36% of Americans believe that “the American dream still holds true.” This figure is a significant drop from surveys taken in 2012 (when 53% of Americans believed that the American Dream remained viable) and in 2016 (when 48% of Americans believed that the American Dream was real). Furthermore, a recent NBC News survey showed that 19% were “confident that life for their children’s generation would be better than for the current one—a record low.”… Continue Reading

This Spotlight episode features Shannon Adcock’s speech that she presented at Foundations of Faith and Family Conference.

Shannon Adcock is the founder of Awake Illinois, a grassroots organization that was founded to expose the public schools’ sexualization of children.

In her speech Shannon highlights the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, which protects the “fundamental right of parents to direct the care, upbringing, and education to their children.” She comments,

This [parental right] is fundamental.

The first segment of this episode of Spotlight features remarks made by IFI’s Executive Director David Smith at the annual banquet. The second segment features a Q & A time with Eric Metaxas. You will love how he answers some pressing questions from notable Illinois pastors.

Though our present situation in Illinois celebrates radical abortion policies, an “untenable” immigration crisis, foolish gender confusion and sex-education in our government schools, Dave has encouraging words for his audience:

“Be encouraged.

This episode of Spotlight features a conversation between Monte Larrick and Eric Metaxas on how Christians should live in present-day America.

Eric Metaxas is a broadcaster and a New York Times Bestselling author of prominent books with his recent being “Letter to the American Church.”

In this book, Metaxas calls on the American church to wake up and be the church. This is an interview you won’t want to miss.… Continue Reading

This week’s episode of the Illinois Family Spotlight podcast features a message from Reverend Stephen Broden that he gave at the Foundations of Faith and Family conference.

Stephen Broden is the senior pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Texas and is the chairman of the Gone Too Far movement.

In his message, Pastor Broden speaks on the spiritual conflict that is in America and how to heal a nation in decline.… Continue Reading

This Spotlight episode features Scott Phelps, executive director of Abstinence and Marriage Partnership, and his speech on The Success Sequence– the three steps to a successful life.

The first step to a successful life is to complete a high school level of education. The second step is to get a stable job.

Finally, the biggest indication for a successful life is to keep sex and children in the context of marriage alone.… Continue Reading

16 years ago, Planned Parenthood opened an abortion facility in Aurora, Illinois. On the anniversary of this opening, pro-life activists held a prayer vigil outside of the building featuring Pastor Randy Schoof of Warehouse Church and Eric Scheidler, Executive Director of Pro-Life Action League.

In his speech, Pastor Schoof encouraged those in attendance to continue to pray for the end of abortion, to plead for God’s mercy, and to continue the work of sidewalk counseling outside of abortion sites.… Continue Reading

My son and I attended one of the Washington Nationals’ last home games and were walking back to his vehicle when we saw a strange sight.

It was a guy pushing a grocery cart full of goods down the sidewalk toward us at top speed, accompanied by a young woman who was laughing. Two clerks from a CVS store came around the corner and began screaming, “Stop them!”

Just then, a police car sped by in hot pursuit with lights flashing.… Continue Reading

It was always one of the most frustrating aspects of Barack Obama‘s rise to power. While the famous keynote speech he delivered at the 2004 Democratic National Convention catapulted him to fame, the rhetoric he used there was a startling departure from his previously established reputation as an instigator and agitator.

Obama cut his teeth in the dirty arena of corrupt Chicago politics, having learned the duplicitous art of “community organizing” from some of the most notorious theorists (Saul Alinsky), and even criminal mentors (Bill Ayers).… Continue Reading

The growing divide in the United States isn’t merely political. It runs far deeper than that. It’s a struggle between those intent on using government and corporate power to turn America into a Marxist version of Sodom and Gomorrah and those resisting this radical transformation.

Political pundits and Republican moderates who dismiss the culture war as a sideshow are missing it. A wave is building. People are awakening to the immense damage that the left is doing on all fronts and are pushing back.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, we are featuring the second part of Scott Klusendorf’s speech at the 2023 Worldview Conference.

Scott Klusendorf is the founder and president of the Life Training Institute, which is an organization that is dedicated to equipping pro-life advocates to effectively defend Life in the public square. He is the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture.

In this portion, Klusendorf tackles the topic of how one’s church can effectively engage the culture with pro-life apologetics.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features Scott Klusendorf at the IFI 2023 Worldview Conference.

Scott Klusendorf is the founder and president of the Life Training Institute, which is dedicated to equipping pro-life advocates to effectively defend their view of life in the public square. He has taught pro-life apologetics at over 80 colleges and universities, and he is the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture.… Continue Reading

In this special episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick sits down with award-winning swimmer and speaker, Riley Gaines.

Riley Gaines was a member of the University of Kentucky’s NCAA swim team and the 2022 Southeastern Conference Women’s Swimming and Diving Scholar of the Year.

In March of 2022, Riley Gaines, along with her teammates, was forced to share a locker room and swim alongside a biological male, Will Thomas.… Continue Reading

It’s always been true—pride comes before the fall. This summer, companies proved it like never before. The people spoke, voted with their dollars, and chose family values over corporate America’s virtue signaling. We witnessed companies that went “woke”—from Target to Anheuser-Busch—instantly regretting the backlash they caused and taking backward steps. People are tired of the nonsense, especially when marketing departments promote things like gender ideology that actively targets our children. Let’s review the corporate wokeness we’ve seen in recent months, and what happened next.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features remarks from Ariella Del Turco on the topic of religious liberty in the first half, along with a question and answer segment with Ambassador Sam Brownback during the second half.

Arielle Del Turco is the director of Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council (FRC) and is the co-author of FRC’s “Hostility Against Churches” report.

Sam Brownback is the former governor of Kansas, formerly representing Kansas in the U.S.… Continue Reading

In this episode, Illinois Family Spotlight features remarks and insights made by the honorable Sam Brownback that took place during an IFI Forum on religious liberty.

Sam Brownback served as governor of Kansas, represented the people of Kansas in the U.S. House & Senate during President Trump’s administration, served as the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and is currently the chairman for the National Committee for Religious Freedom.… Continue Reading

We’ve all heard the story of “the boy who cried wolf,” but perhaps the modern version should be about “the organization that cried hater.”

The far left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has forged a reputation as a nationally outspoken advocate against “hate groups.” Founded in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, the SPLC is no stranger to controversy.  The group has long been accused of targeting conservative and Christian organizations.… Continue Reading

Though I don’t think it’s a particularly wise or self-aware accusation for them to make, the progressive left continues to make political hay out of smearing conservatives as “anti-science.” Most people who are not fervent congregants of the church of progressivism, and who have been conscious over the last several years, probably can’t help but roll their eyes at the insult.

After all, this is a movement that denies the humanity of human babies in the womb.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features remarks made by Kevin Sorbo during IFI’s 2022 Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet.

Kevin Sorbo is an actor, director, author, and is best known for his role in Hercules: The Legendary Journey, Andromeda, and God’s Not Dead, to name a few. He has also become an outspoken and witty conservative pundit with 1.7 million Twitter followers. We recommend that you follow him @ksorbs.… Continue Reading

About 3 weeks ago, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action sponsored a Conference for the conservative grassroots at the Palm Beach Convention Center in Palm Beach, Florida. Attendance was estimated at over 6,000, with close to half of those being young, conservative college students.

As you may or may not know, Turning Point was initially founded locally in 2012 in Lemont, Illinois. Charlie Kirk is originally from the Arlington Heights/Prospect Heights area.… Continue Reading

This episode of Illinois Family Spotlight features remarks given by Sam Sorbo at Illinois Family Institute’s 2022 Faith, Family, and Freedom Banquet.

Sam Sorbo is an actress, filmmaker, radio host, and a staunch advocate for educational freedom. Her book, They’re Your Kids: An Inspirational Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate, chronicles her family’s experience with homeschooling.

In her speech, Sam insightfully notes the lies of the educational framework in America, what true education is, and how parents can fight for their child’s education.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews Horace Cooper. Cooper is a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board and a legal commentator.

In response to the attack that Christianity and the Church is facing, Cooper notes,

As Christians, one of things we need to understand… American Christians are one of the most powerful forces on the planet.

Did you know that debating issues in Congress is part of the culture war and is bad for democracy?

That’s what The Washington Post (motto: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”) implied in its front-page story after the Republican-led House approved the National Defense Authorization Act in a 219-210 party-line vote.

The bill authorizes an $886 billion defense budget and rolls back some of the Democrats’ schemes aimed at turning America into a Marxist version of Sodom and Gomorrah.… Continue Reading

In the early days of my career, one of my mentors, David McKenna, shared some simple words of wisdom that I will never forget. His advice was pretty straightforward: “The best predictor of the future is always the past.”

This was his way of saying that, barring true repentance and transformational change, people, organizations, and even countries are generally as predictable as the sunrise.

What happened in the past will inevitably happen again in the future.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews attorney David Shestokas, a former 2022 candidate for Illinois Attorney General. Mr. Shestokas is involved in the battle for election integrity, and is the author of two must-read books: Creating the Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Soundbites.

In this episode, Shestokas emphasizes the important role that the Declaration of Independence currently plays in preserving American freedoms. He notes,

“What the Constitution is intended to do is to execute the ideals that are found in the Declaration of Independence… the Constitution itself is a pretty mechanical document, but the Declaration of Independence defines really what it means to be an American.”

Independence Day is a good time to take America’s measure. The United States is the first nation created with secured rights derived from nature and nature’s God — not man. We grew rapidly and providentially into a world power with unrivaled liberty and wealth.

Along the way, we endured a bloody civil war and got rid of slavery. We defeated Nazism, Japanese imperialism and the Soviet Union.

We’ve seen unprecedented material progress and such varied marvels as an end to polio and the introduction of digital timers to speed up the game of baseball.… Continue Reading

Republished with permission from judgekenton.com.

The genius of the Declaration of Independence is the way it packs the entire philosophy of American government into a very few lines.  Listen to what it tells us:

1) “We hold these truths to be self-evident” – What follows is so true that anyone can see it for themselves.

2) “all men are created equal” – People are not “judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” in Dr.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, we are featuring remarks made by Dr. Jonathan Diggs during Illinois Family Institute’s 2023 Worldview Conference.

Dr. Jonathan Diggs has been practicing medicine for over thirty-five years, is an American Board of Internal Medicine diplomat, is a motivational speaker, and is a guest on national television and radio programs.

In his speaking segment, Dr. Diggs outlines three consequences of sexual immortality, which include the following:

1) unwanted pregnancies,
2) sexually transmitted diseases (STIs),
3) and the disruption of social cohesion.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick discusses the pro-life movement with Eric Scheidler, who is the executive director of Chicago’s Pro-Life Action League. During their annual “Face the Truth” tour, dozens of volunteers line sidewalks adjacent to streets near busy intersections in Chicago and the suburbs, silently and often prayerfully holding photographs of aborted babies.

When asked about the public reaction to these photographs, Scheidler notes,

We expected to see more hostility and anger and we’ve had some incidents… But, what I’ve found more notable is kind of a lack of curiosity… it seems more difficult to get people to take a piece of literature from you… That’s troubling.

In this episode of Spotlight, we are featuring remarks from Dr. Michelle Cretella given at IFI’s 2019 Worldview Conference. During her presentation, she points out the differences between true, biological science, which supports pro-life and pro-family propositions, and the anti-science cult of gender ideology, which is preached by mainstream medicine, psychiatry, public and private education systems, and social and mass media.

Dr. Cretella also addresses the serious implications of the transgender movement: erasure of parents’ rights, women’s rights, and religious freedom; establishment of gender identity as a protected class; as well as potential legal action that awaits anyone who persists in using “discriminatory” language, i.e.… Continue Reading

The growing revolt in America against cultural madness is annoying the ruling elites, but not enough to keep them from continuing to foist their evil agenda brazenly on the rest of us.

The criminalization of political opposition continues apace. The Justice Department actually indicted former President Donald Trump on Thursday over documents stored at his house. But not President Joe Biden for essentially the same offense. Meanwhile, as evidence pours out of congressional investigations about millions of dollars from China, Ukraine and other nations flowing into the Biden family’s 20 different accounts, the elite media yawn.… Continue Reading

With June 1^st marking the start of Pride month, numerous woke corporations and government institutions wasted no time in raising pride flags and rolling out social media profile pictures to match the occasion.

However, many companies are beginning to think twice before pledging their allegiance to the LGBTQ lobby.

After Bud Light and Target suffered significant losses from boycotts for pushing gender ideology nonsense, many companies seem to be a bit more cautious and hesitant, and rightly so.… Continue Reading

In this podcast episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews Dr. Voddie Baucham regarding the issues of education, worldview, and critical race theory. The latter threatening to divide the Church and nation. There is an agenda to push a “false divide” between black and white people. In an interview with Christianity Daily, Dr. Baucham points out:

“So the Jew-Gentile divide that Paul talks about in the latter half of Ephesians 2, that is a real divide that God established.… Continue Reading

In this edition of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick has an interesting conversation with Kirk Smith, executive director of the Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE). Over the weekend of May 20th, ICHE hosted their annual homeschool conference at Olivet Nazarene University where families were not only encouraged to educate their children academically, but educate them spiritually.

When asked about the difference between public school and home school, Smith points out that children in government systems are often being taught anti-Christian morals and deceptive worldly philosophies.… Continue Reading

Illinois legislators are hard at work creating a sexless society. Using sex-neutral terminology, they are creating and changing legislation to remove any distinction between males and females. Moreover, they are trampling on advancements in our society for women’s rights and lawful protections, while endangering some of the most vulnerable members of our society.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, Monte Larrick interviews former state representative, Peter Breen, who now serves as the Executive Vice President of the Thomas More Society, which is a non-profit national public interest law firm that is dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, religious liberty, and election integrity. They discuss at length the tyrannical Senate Bill 1909, which is designed to shut down pro-life pregnancy care centers through litigation, fines, and more.… Continue Reading

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the world’s largest beer company with over 400 global brands. Among these brands is one of America’s leading light beers, Bud Light, known for its sophomoric, fun, and outlandish advertising characters like Spuds McKenzie and the Dilly-Dilly knights.

Recently, the beer’s executives decided that the best way to communicate the attributes of the product to their target audience of mostly young, blue-collar males was to promote a sponsorship with transgender influencer and activist Dylan Mulvaney.… Continue Reading

Decades before the Visigoths invaded Rome, that once-impregnable republic had fallen into decadence. Virtue was no longer taught and people were pacified with “bread and circuses.” The Colosseum served up gladiators, chariot races and the crowd-pleasing spectacle of Christians being thrown to the lions.

Similarly, the Bible chronicles how Israel gave up worshipping God and engaged in abominations such as child sacrifice. Each time, God let them come to destruction before rescuing a remnant and restoring the nation.… Continue Reading

If you’re honestly following America’s culture wars, you must admit that many of the ideas and values that were once considered a necessary predicate to our constitutional republic have substantially eroded. Key virtues thought to be the bedrock of our free society are no longer recognized. One of the casualties in this battle over definitions and meaning is the word “love.”

Today it is assumed that love means tolerance, and tolerance means love.… Continue Reading

Larry Elder, in this interview, capitalizes on the importance of black fathers being present in the home, as this is the greatest threat that is facing black America.… Continue Reading

Karl Marx’s famous prescription for economic equity is “from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.”

A more honest version is “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” which takes brute force in most cases.

This is the ethos of the radicalized Democratic Party, whose mantra is centralized power and redistribution of wealth. The street version is called “looting,” but that word aptly summarizes their entire agenda.

This is the ethos of the radicalized Democratic Party, whose mantra is centralized power and redistribution of wealth.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Illinois Family Spotlight, David Smith and Pastor Ceasar LeFlore interview Pastor Charles Moodie, who is the head of the Chicago City Life Center. This center is located in the middle of one of Chicago’s darkest neighborhoods– Englewood.

Chicago City Life Center’s mission is to change the city of Chicago, one life at a time. They implement this mission through “offering discipleship and life skills training, spiritual treatment, job training, pre-school, and several programs for children, youth and young adults.”… Continue Reading

Everywhere we look, we see confidence in the American experience on the wane. A recent Wall Street Journal/NORC poll found that patriotism has declined among Americans from 70% to 38% since 1997. Part of the explanation for that alarming trend is how the left creates a narrative that America is inherently a racist and oppressive nation.

Furthermore, that narrative has asserted that Christianity is a harmful religion, creating division, violence, misogyny and justifying slavery.… Continue Reading

In this special episode of Spotlight, Illinois Family features remarks from Ann O’Connor, Vice President of legal affairs for the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA). This lecture, presented at Speakout Illinois 2023, highlights legislation that is targeting pregnancy care centers for the sole purpose of shutting them down. She states the core of what NIFLA is about in her lecture when she says,

While Dobbs did change abortion not to be the law of our land federally, it didn’t change hearts and that’s our job.

Thirty-five hundred years ago, God through Moses conveyed the ultimate human choice:

“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways … life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30: 15 and 19).

Fifteen centuries later, as foretold by Moses, Isaiah and other prophets, the Messiah came. As the human Incarnation of God, Jesus Christ healed, did miracles and taught.… Continue Reading

In this Spotlight episode, David E. Smith and Self Evident‘s Jenna Smith continue the conversation with Eric Hovind, President and Founder of Creation Today, and Helmut Welke, President of Quad City Creation Science Association. This conversation includes discussion on faux fossils, the importance of training your children to ask the right questions, and why a young earth perspective is crucial to a Biblical worldview. Eric Hovind capitalizes on the importance of sharing one’s faith in order to strengthen one’s faith.… Continue Reading

In the space of a week, we saw three children and three adults executed at a Christian school in Nashville, the indictment of former President Donald Trump, and the advent of the national “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

We also saw the current White House occupant awkwardly joking at length about his love of ice cream before addressing the Nashville massacre. The word “inappropriate” is wildly inadequate. Within moments, he segued into a gun control rant.… Continue Reading

In a recent interview, I was asked a simple question: “What’s wrong with the world?”

If you were asked the same question, what would your answer be?

Maybe you’d say it’s the selfishness of identity politics. Perhaps you’d mention that Big Government is overbearing. Or you might stress education, energy or the economy, or things like socialism, communism, racial animus, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and war.

While all these cultural pathologies are obvious, none of them made it to the top of my list.… Continue Reading

In a recent interview on “The Daily Show” President Joe Biden said that the legislature in Florida was both “cruel” and “close to sinful” for not allowing people to indoctrinate and groom young children in sexual perversion. The proposed Senate Bill 254 in Florida protects children from gender mutilation, and prohibits the use of public funds for such procedures. The President is adamantly against this Bill.

Biden said, “It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I wanted to become a man or want to become a woman or I want to change.’… Continue Reading

Stephanie Trussell is a mother, grandmother, entrepreneur, board member for the Illinois Family Institute & Good Soil Good Seed Foundation, and former candidate for Illinois Lieutenant Governor. In this special episode of Spotlight, Monte, David and Stephanie revisit the 2022 campaign and the events that led up to it.

They discussed how Illinois Republican voter turnout can be improved. Startlingly, only 45 percent of Republicans turned out to vote. Stephanie implores that conservatives must unite, not tear each other up for small differences in beliefs, and overcome a defeatist attitude when it comes to Illinois elections.… Continue Reading

“Every Republican who lives in Illinois
who really wants to see the strength of the party grow
needs to be at the Black Conservative Summit. . .”
~Rev. Ceasar LeFlore (aka “Bishop of Truth”)

Dr. Eric Wallace, the founder and executive director of the Freedom Journal Institute, is hosting a very important event this month that every conservative should endeavor to attend. He is hosting The Black Conservative Summit on the weekend of March 24th & 25th at the Tinley Park Convention Center in the southwest suburbs.… Continue Reading

When your source of truth
goes no further than what you see in the mirror.

“The problem with you conservatives is that you’re arrogant. You think you’re always right.” This is a challenge I recently received from a millennial who fancies himself my intellectual superior as well as that of all other orthodox believers. How should we respond?

Well, first, we need to remember the obvious. The difference between conservatives and progressives is not that conservatives think they’re right and progressives don’t.… Continue Reading

In our materialistic modern age, we sometimes need reminders that Lucifer is real and up to no good. And that God is infinitely more powerful.

Years ago, LGBTQ activists picketed a church in Anchorage, Alaska, because the church opposed a gay rights ordinance. The protesters noticed a guy dressed in a devil suit with a pitchfork marching beside them. When they asked what he was doing, he said, “Oh, the pastor sent me out here.… Continue Reading

Approximately 2,000 years ago, St. Paul warned first-century Christians of the dangers of lying. In fact, he admonished the church in Rome that the consequences of deceit can be deadly.

“Those who suppress the truth,” he said, “become futile in their thinking” and are “given over to a debased mind.” As a result, they are filled with “all manner of evil” such as “envy, strife, arrogance … and murder.” Paul then lowered the hammer on his argument: When people lie, people die.… Continue Reading

Some things are hard to give up.

Take the extra-constitutional powers governments have exerted because of COVID-19. Officials in otherwise self-governing republics got a zesty taste of what it would be like to operate under an authoritarian regime.

As the Wuhan virus morphs into multiple variations that appear to be less dangerous than the original strain, some authorities don’t want to let go of vaccine or mask mandates. Authority, once granted, can be difficult to claw back.… Continue Reading

Freedom inherently involves risks. If you want your children to roam free at the local playground, they might injure themselves on the big slide. If you want the freedom to watch baseball, someone might get hit in the head by a stray line drive. All decisions about restricting freedom thus require a cost/benefit analysis that weighs the benefits of freedom against the potential risks.

In practice, this analysis requires two very different sets of considerations.… Continue Reading

This past week, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity issued a report highlighting the following: Current unemployment benefits combined with pandemic and health care subsidies can now add up to $160,000 annually in certain parts of the country. The report cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent data, showing America’s current potential workforce is participating at a woeful 62%. This is 1.5% below pre-COVID levels, which means that, by some estimates, we now have at least 400,000 fewer people engaged in gainful employment than we did before 2020.… Continue Reading

When I was young and foolish, I went to see a horror movie one afternoon.

It was George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” a black-and-white 1968 classic that is still quite terrifying.

The low-budget ($150,000) film is set in western Pennsylvania. It’s about some strangers who flee a growing mob of zombies and hole up in a farmhouse. The scariest scene is when a wounded woman, prone on a table, quietly turns into a zombie herself and attacks the people who had thought they were safe.… Continue Reading

Democrats, with help from feckless Republicans, have advanced the Orwellian-named Respect for Marriage Act. They’re trying to finish the job they began in the 1960s.

That’s when Lyndon Johnson launched the anti-marriage Great Society, whose welfare policies shattered the urban family and sentenced a major constituency to perpetual dependency. As President Biden says, “you ain’t black” if you don’t vote Democrat.

By destroying marriage and exiling black fathers, the party created an underclass that could be exploited indefinitely.… Continue Reading

Several years ago, the graduating class at the high school where I teach asked me to give their commencement address. In hindsight, I should have known better than to stray from the tried and tested formula for graduation speakers. Young, brash, and always eager to say something that would be remembered, I made the fateful decision to stray from the culturally approved list of platitudes that everyone knows you are supposed to tell high school graduates:

• “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

We’ve had a very serious setback this last week in the cause of freedom, courtesy of a dozen “woke” Republican senators. But first, we’ll begin with a bit of pop culture that speaks to where we are as a nation.

Sad to say, Mariah Carey won’t be able to trademark “Queen of Christmas.” Yes, in time, we will get over this.

The ubiquitous songbird, whose “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is piped everywhere, tried to monopolize the title legally.… Continue Reading

Illinois Family Action was contacted by another dad, whose story deepened our concerns about the race for Illinois Supreme Court and about the Democrat Candidate, Judge Elizabeth Rochford.

A third person has reached out, unsolicited and previously unknown to us, who felt compelled to share their story of injustice and bias, at the hands of Judge Rochford. (The same Elizabeth Rochford who donated to corrupt and indicted Chicago Alderman, Ed Burke and is getting millions from Governor J.B.… Continue Reading

On August 19, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child.” The calculation came from a study at the Brookings Institution, which in turn relied on data gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

$300,000 is a lot of money. A primary reason that the cost of raising a child is so high is the everyday reality we all face: high inflation.… Continue Reading

“Information is power” and the Medical Freedom vs. Medical Tyranny Forum hosted by Illinois Family Institute was clearly an evening of empowerment! Attended by an estimated 500 people–young and old alike–the audience, rapt with attention, benefitted from the insights of Dr. Simone Gold*, MD,FD, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS).

In her presentation on May 17, 2022, Dr. Gold provided energy-packed insight around this idea penned by Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, ironically on January 6, 1816:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Hospitals need to back off their authoritarian “we know best” posture and respect what a patient’s family wants.

At 10 a.m. Saturday, Royal London Hospital stopped life support for 12-year-old Archie Battersbee, against his parents’ wishes. He was dead by 12.15 p.m. Millions had followed his case since April, when his mother found him unconscious on the floor.

Apparently, he took a dangerous dare promoted on TikTok to hold his breath until he blacked out.… Continue Reading

If you want to know what Democrats are attacking at any given time, just watch how they label something. It’s the opposite of what it would mean to any normal person.

For instance, “reproductive care” is not about reproducing, that is, having babies. It’s about abortion or preventing pregnancies.

“Gender affirming” or “gender confirming” policies do not verify actual genders. Instead, they deny biology and elevate delusions into enforced falsehoods. They should be called “gender denying” policies.… Continue Reading

The U.S. House passed H.R. 8404 yesterday to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, also known as DOMA. It passed by a vote of 267-157 with 47 Republicans joining every Democrat. Seven Republicans did not vote.

The bill’s sponsor is leftwing U.S. Representative Jarrold Nadler (D-NY), who has been in Congress for 30 years. There were 179 cosponsors in the U.S. House–all Democrats–who are working feverishly to respond to the Dobbs opinion and U.S.… Continue Reading

In this episode of Spotlight, Self Evident’s Jenna Smith interviews Will and Meeke Addison. This power couple hosts a a daily radio/podcast program focused on Marriage, Family and the Church titled “Airing the Addisons” on American Family Radio.

Will and Meeke were keynote speakers at this year’s Illinois Christian Home Educators conference, where they spoke on the vital importance of discipling your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and the opportunities homeschooling provides: “We see [homeschooling] as an opportunity to pour in our children and make them culture proof.”… Continue Reading

One thing I’ve learned by living in the reality of rural America as opposed to the concrete and neon of Washington or New York City is that freedom can be deceiving. Or maybe better said, freedom is often the opposite of what it appears to be.

For example, when I drive through the ranches of Kansas and see cattle roaming freely in the fields, they are always surrounded by a fence.… Continue Reading

This past week our nation saw another morally lost young man enter a local school and proceed to shoot and kill 19 children and two teachers. The next shoe to drop was as predictable as the sunrise: Our nation’s elites rushed to their respective podiums to score political points. Their solution? Remove the personal rights of all law-abiding Americans and replace these rights with more laws.

In the minds of our country’s political class, this is the only solution.… Continue Reading

Listen now!

Kenna, Eliana and Jenna are back in Self Evident’s third episode to wrap up their conversation on how girls should protect their hearts in today’s world.

Listen now!

 … Continue Reading

Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself. ~ Susan B. Anthony

In the second episode of Self Evident, Eliana, Kenna and Jenna address the vital importance of protecting your heart as a woman–not merely physically, but mentally and Spiritually. Proverbs 4:23 tells us to guard our hearts carefully, for out of it flows the springs of life. The girls list practical approaches you can take to ensure you are fully prepared for whatever life throws your way.… Continue Reading

“Falsehood is false, even if everyone believes it,
and truth is true even if no one believes it.
Truth is true and that’s just the end of it.”
~Os Guinness

During this edition of Spotlight, we present a timely message on truth from Dr. Everett Piper’s keynote address at IFI’s 2022 Worldview Conference. You will definitely want to follow along as Dr. Piper superbly explicates the four pillars of a Christian worldview: the primacy of Jesus Christ, the priority of Scripture, the pursuit of truth, and the practice of wisdom.… Continue Reading

Hosts Jenna, Eliana and Kenna introduce themselves and why they decided to begin a podcast together. They–by discussing and dismantling subjects prevalent in the Western culture–want to make truth self evident again. Their goal is to to make current cultural events and worldview issues relatable to generation z, and point all those listening to the Gospel and what the Bible says.

Listen to their first episode here:

The overlords at Google/YouTube have banned the IFA video of our U.S. Senatorial Forum. Why? Because the topic of widely suspected voting irregularities during the 2020 election was briefly touched on during the forum. That is a “conspiracy theory” Leftists will not tolerate despite the mounting evidence. So, what conspiracy theories do they tolerate?  Well, if you search the following topics, you will find a plethora of videos available:

• Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory
• Jussie Smollett attacked by racist, homophobic Trump supporters conspiracy theory
• Who shot JFK conspiracy theory
• Moon landing hoax conspiracy theory
• Area 51 conspiracy theory
• Sasquatch conspiracy theory
• Loch Ness Monster conspiracy theory
• Elvis still lives conspiracy theory

Thankfully, last year we decided to cross-post our videos over at our Rumble channel in case intolerant regressives blocked us, but who knew it would be over a video of a candidate forum?… Continue Reading

It had even more corporate and cultural support than the vaccines and Ukraine. It was the greatest juggernaut in politics that even ensnared many Republican politicians. Yet never have we seen a movement that accomplished the opposite of what it was purported to do in such a short time frame. It turns out that as a result of the BLM-induced crime wave, reversing a generation-long trend of reduced crime, there were thousands of excess black homicide victims, a body count that is still climbing.… Continue Reading

Every parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle – anyone who loves and cares for the children in their family or sphere of influence – will want to listen to the second half of Dr. Rob Rienow’s presentation from IFI’s 2022 Worldview Conference! In his address entitled The Church, The Family, and The Kingdom of God, Dr. Rienow states that, while the church is doing a good job of investing in the next generation of Christ followers, the family is neglecting to hold up their end in their partnership with the church to reach the world.… Continue Reading

Written by John Lopez

On Tuesday (April 5), WTTW, in its segment “Richard Irvin’s Ex-Wife Hired by Development Firm Receiving Millions in Aurora City Incentives: Web of Politically-Connected Companies Involved in $128M Hospital Redevelopment” brought up the bad optics, though legal of Mayor (and now Republican gubernatorial candidate) Richard Irvin’s campaign fund, a charity and a former law partner’s campaign receiving contributions from a large project which won unanimous approval of the Aurora City Council.… Continue Reading

In this week’s edition of IFA Spotlight, we feature a fantastic presentation from IFI’s recent worldview conference, delivered by our good friend Dr. Rob Reinow, founder and director of Visionary Family Ministries. Dr. Reinow begins this session with an amusing anecdote of how awful the reality of the blind leading the blind really is, and how it seems that many churches today are doing just that with their congregations. The reason is that we’re slipping up on a essential part of our faith, which is not believing the Scriptures are enough.… Continue Reading

On Thursday, March 29, 2022, Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act into law.” He did so over the objection of many progressives who rushed to their keyboards to declare this law yet another example of conservative bigotry and cisgender injustice.

How is it possible that such disparate views exist? On one side of this debate, the governor of America’s “reddest of red states” says that “it’s important to protect women’s sports.”… Continue Reading

This edition of Spotlight is, hands down, the best podcast you will hear all week long, as we are pleased to feature highlighted remarks from Dr. Everett Piper’s address at a recent IFI dinner event. Dr. Piper’s career experience in university administration at Christian universities and as President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, more than qualifies him to speak about classical liberalism, human identity, and education and the silencing of truth.… Continue Reading

Throughout our nation’s relatively short history, powerful people — kings, communist dictators, tribal tyrants, warmongering corporatists — have always resented America. The reason is simple and biblical: America’s success was proof that free people who exercise self-restraint grounded in Judeo-Christian principles of human dignity and ordered society can govern themselves and flourish, unencumbered by totalitarian control.

But we have grown weak, dependent and easily manipulated. In 2008, when Barack Obama was first running for president, I remarked on the similarities between those proclaiming Obama to be a messiah of sorts and the ancient Israelites’ demand for a king.… Continue Reading

What plagues or torments you? Family? Economy? Uncertainty? Crime and chaos in the streets? Political conditions?

When considering why they’re most tormented, most people think in these general terms. Rarely do we consider going beyond the “general” to delve into the depths of the essential criteria; the foundations of our eternal being; the condition of our immortal soul and its relative torment.

We live in a fallen world. In this world, we are all tormented at some level.… Continue Reading

In recent years, there’s been a massive surge of crime in America’s major cities, including violent crimes and murder specifically. For example, there were 397 murders in Los Angeles in 2021. According to Los Angeles Magazine, that was an 11.8 percent increase from the 355 murders in the city in 2020 and a 53.9 percent increase from the 258 murders in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Three hundred ninety-seven murders was the highest total in the city since 395 people were murdered there in 2007.… Continue Reading

America was founded and expanded from sea to sea by rugged individualists, freedom-loving men and women who believed in personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and independence. Our pioneering ancestors had a no-excuses attitude toward life. They believed in working hard, smart, and long to build better lives for themselves and their families, wanted opportunities not handouts, would accept only what they earned, and preferred a government that stayed out of their way.… Continue Reading

On this edition of Spotlight, we feature the inspiring story of Virginia Prodan. Growing up in the communist regime of Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Virginia’s passionate pursuit of truth led her to law school and a career as an attorney. In her interview with Monte Larrick, she describes how God used an appointment with a client to open her eyes to the Truth of the Gospel and relates the amazing story of the encounter that prompted the title of her book, Saving My Assassin.… Continue Reading

I do not feel like a privileged person today when I watch Olympic competitions. These young white, black, and Asian athletes from around the world have been given incredible opportunities to train and specialize in their events. When I should have started such training as a child, I did not even know there was such a thing. When we had a functional television in our home, which was rare, we had atrocious reception.… Continue Reading

To the great sorrow of pro-life, pro-family citizens of Illinois, on December 17, 2021,  Governor JB Pritzker signed into law House Bill 370, thereby repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and eliminating the right for parents to be made aware of a minor daughter’s pregnancy and impending abortion.

Joining me for an important Spotlight conversation are IFI contributors Kenna Rose and Alyssa. Please listen as we discuss the impact of the repeal of the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the repercussions of HB 370, the disingenuously named Illinois Youth Health and Safety Act.… Continue Reading

M. Scott Peck once said that America had become a “people of the lie.” His point was that our nation’s establishment — our leaders in government, media and education, along with the hoard of mindless lemmings who parrot their every decree — have lied so often to others and even to themselves that they have come to believe their own deception.

“The central defect of the evil,” he said, “is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it.” … Continue Reading

2021 is behind us. It has been another year of conflict. Another year of anger. Another year of division. A year of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, the masked versus the unmasked, of us against them. A time of racists calling everyone else racists, men calling themselves women and basically everybody accusing everyone of being the cause of everything that ails us.

How did we get here? How did the United States ever become so divided?… Continue Reading

IFI was honored to have theologian, pastor, and courageous truth-teller Doug Wilson speak at our September 2015 banquet, after which he continued his critique of culture in an interview with Pastor Derek Buikema of the Orland Park Christian Reformed Church. Pastor Wilson addressed the cultural issues to which Christians must respond: abortion and same-sex “mirage.”

Take a break from the holiday bustle to relish and challenged by words that more Christian leaders should be speaking.… Continue Reading

In the ultimate irony, those who get more boosters appear more at risk to get the new variant of coronavirus. At the same time, God appears to be offering natural boosters by making this variant a mild illness that doesn’t cause lung inflammation or blood clotting, and new evidence suggests that it might offer protection against more serious strains of the virus. So why aren’t the public health “experts” taking “yes” for an answer and ending the failed vaccines and panic-induced mandates?… Continue Reading

This past week, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, the man Simon & Schuster canceled for daring to criticize cancel culture, once again inspired the ire of our nation’s intelligentsia. What was the senator’s crime this time? He dared to champion “manhood” and urged men to act like men.

Let’s consider Mr. Hawley‘s own words.

Last month, in an address given to the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Mr. Hawley challenged what he called the trend of American men to withdraw into “enclave[s] of idleness” as the result of being taught that their “manhood is the problem.”… Continue Reading

Throughout the country, parents are concerned that some public schoolboards, administrators, and associations hold them in disdain and fear their input when they raise legitimate questions about the direction of their local schools. Just short of 50 years ago (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that protects parents in the educational choices they make for their children—Wisconsin v. Yoder. Revisiting Yoder nearly a half-century later is more than a historical exercise. … Continue Reading

If you feel as if you are watching the intentional destruction of your culture and your kids, you’re right. It’s not just a bad dream. It is real. It’s planned. It’s targeted. It’s relentless. And it is being carried out in your own back yard in your own public schools.

It doesn’t matter where you live. Whether it be in the crazy land of Gavin Newsom or the bumbling buffoonery of the Beltway, you now reside in Oceania, and your children are Winston.… Continue Reading

One of the greatest barriers to living a life of liberty is fear.

It comes in many forms: Fear of offending others, fear of failing, fear of terrors, real and imagined, and fear of death. The media have become experts in stoking fears of every kind.

Fear of getting involved is another form. Bystanders did nothing this past week while a woman was molested and then raped in a Philadelphia subway car.… Continue Reading

Author and former Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly, has a revealing quiz he has created and shared on his website and in radio interviews. The quiz is rather persuasive for the average non-political person, independent, or swing voter who may have voted for Joe Biden because they didn’t like Donald Trump.

Here is his simple, but revealing 10-question quiz.   Answer “Yes” or “No” in your mind.  Each question starts with:

“Does it make sense .… Continue Reading

This week’s Spotlight features David Smith’s exclusive interview with Nick Richmond, the founder and president of Freedom Initiative. Nick shares how a late-blooming interest in politics and America’s founding documents led to his desire to want to protect and preserve our God-given freedoms for his children and for others. This desire is reflected in Freedom Initiative’s mission to be “in the boundless pursuit of preserving freedoms . . . to amplify concerns, educate and instill fundamental values in our growing community of parents, business owners, medical professionals and more.”… Continue Reading

I think the left is realizing it has a tiger by the tail. The people are getting uppity.

Parents are assailing school boards over critical race theory and transgender madness. So much so that the Biden Justice Department is sending out the FBI to investigate whether, as the National School Boards Association bombastically charges, some parents are guilty of “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Boy, it’s lucky for those BLM/Antifa rioters in 2020 that they refrained from badmouthing teachers and school officials while torching the cities.… Continue Reading

After years of serving as a pastor, Joseph Huss decided to go into business to advance the Kingdom of God through commerce, he explains in this interview on Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Big business across America is funneling endless amounts of money into evil causes–abortion, perversion, ate, and more.

But Huss decided to give part of the proceeds from the sales at his “Generous Joe’s Coffee” to good causes instead: pro-life, pro-family, and so on. … Continue Reading

Coca-Cola, Google, Delta Airlines, Blackrock, Unilever, and Facebook. On its face, this list may sound like a great investment portfolio. Instead, as shown in a new book by former biotech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy, these companies serve as the posterchildren of woke capitalism.

Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc.- Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, uses examples from these companies, and many others, to assert his belief that woke organizations who signal commitments to various social causes do so to scam consumers with “the illusion that by engaging in normal acts of consumption we’re fulfilling our social obligations.” … Continue Reading

Anyone still doubting that we’re in the grip of Marxist handlers in the White House might want to know about President Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency. And, for something more encouraging, they might also want to check out what happened this past week in Loudoun County, Virginia. More about that later.

A branch of the Treasury, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, “charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks,” according to its website.… Continue Reading

If you’ve taken five seconds to follow the culture wars currently plaguing our nation, you can’t help but see that the fundamental cornerstones once thought essential to our constitutional republic are no longer understood in our body politic. The essential virtues that once served as the bedrock upon which our nation was built are no longer even recognized in our public square. When it comes to understanding why John Adams once admonished that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” we are truly clueless.… Continue Reading

Sometimes it seems as if the institutions of our seasick culture have embraced the same way of thinking, that is, that every problem is a public-relations problem crying out for a public-relations solution. This obsession with creating appearances instead of addressing realities infects the media, the academy, the entertainment industry, and is currently seen in the hilariously cynical cover-your-backside missives of giant corporations. “We at Verizon. . .,” “We at Spectrum …,” “We at Citigroup …”—all reflexively professing to be driven by DEI values: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (and to which recently, a fourth “value” has been added—Belonging.… Continue Reading

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his “husband” Chasten recently created a stir by announcing that they had adopted newborns Penelope Rose and Joseph August. In a rather uncomfortable photo-op, the two men are pictured in a hospital bed as if one of them had just given birth, despite the glaringly obvious fact that neither of them ever have or ever will. Not pictured, somewhere, out of frame, Penelope and Joseph have a mother who recently brought them into the world.… Continue Reading

As a parent, what is your #1 mission in life and what do you need to do to fulfil that mission? On this episode of Spotlight, Monte Larrick and Dr. Rob Rienow, c0founder (with his wife Amy) of Visionary Family Ministries, consider these questions as they examine the distinctives of a visionary family. Monte and Dr. Rienow also discuss how best to pursue a prodigal child, as well as how to relate and interact with a child who professes Christ but espouses a non-Christian worldview of “hollow and deceptive philosophies,” especially those of a scientific, sexual, and/or political nature.… Continue Reading

This week, Spotlight podcast features Monte Larrick’s exclusive interview with Dr. Eric Wallace, president and cofounder of Freedom’s Journal Institute and cofounder of Black Families Matter. Dr. Wallace speaks to the need for public policy that supports and strengthens families rather than current policy that aims to redefine “family” and severely restrict parental rights and responsibilities. Monte and Dr. Wallace consider a long-term solution to violence in Chicago, the importance of school choice, and the role of the Church and pastors in encouraging and discipling traditional families.… Continue Reading

Before we get to the more upbeat portion of this column, here’s a brief recap of what we’re facing.

Democrats are ramming through a multi-trillion-dollar socialist agenda and hope to kill voter ID laws and other state election safeguards to usher in a one-party government, for starters.

Republicans are trying to decide whether to be at least a speed bump to this coup or to bask in the glow of media praise for “bipartisanship.”… Continue Reading

If nothing else, the pandemic has exposed the contempt that government health officials, the Democrats and their media have for the public.

They routinely cover up real scandals and lie by omission. Their thirst for power and coercion is bottomless. Often, the untold story is so damaging that its retelling is suppressed.

For nearly two years, the media and Big Tech actively censored any discussions about the possibility of the Wuhan virus having come from the military-run bioweapons lab in Wuhan, China.… Continue Reading

America bashing has become the favorite pastime of the far Left. So-called “progressives” who, in reality, are Marxists excoriate America as a nation founded by White men for White men.  They even reject the Declaration of Independence, labeling it a racist document. These ideologically blind politicians claim our country is guilty of systemic racism and perpetuating “White privilege.” According to them, Black Americans are still in bondage in the United States.… Continue Reading

Last week, I wrote an article about the recent research of George Barna, who has concluded that America’s religion is no longer one of orthodox belief but rather a new syncretistic faith that he called moralistic therapeutic deism – a nonjudgmental don’t-worry-be-happy “fake Christianity” where self-actualization and personal affirmation are now our highest goods. The result of my article? My critics came unglued.

“First and foremost, you need to get your facts straight,” said one.… Continue Reading

Earlier this month, the Western Journal reported that the “American Church Has Fallen: Shocking Poll Shows ‘Fake Christianity’ Has Supplanted the Biblical Worldview.”

Writing for the Journal, Rachel Bratton said this: “American Christianity has fallen. Thanks to cultural corrosion and a lack of biblical literacy, a new ‘fake Christianity’ is now being preached within the American church.”

“This counterfeit religion is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” stated Ms. Bratton, “a worldview that has quickly gained prominence and given many Americans a theology that looks nothing like historical Christianity, despite what they may claim.” … Continue Reading

Five years ago, on Sept. 11, 2016, the National Football League unveiled a remarkable two-minute video, “Football Is America.” Featuring well-known black and white players, the video saluted the military, first responders, and the idea of e Pluribus Unum – out of many, one. They didn’t actually use the phrase, but it was clearly the message.

Football, the players said, was a great healing agent following the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attack 15 years earlier.… Continue Reading

If the shutdown of schools was the evilest part of the lockdown, the shutdown of the court system is a close second.

Throughout the past year, liberals have wrongly blamed skyrocketing crime on the pandemic rather than on their criminal release policies and BLM rioting. However, there is one important way that the pandemic — or more aptly put, the response to the pandemic — will continue to contribute to more crime for years to come.… Continue Reading

One of the most disturbing bits of news in recent weeks comes from Washington, D.C., and the National Archives Task Force on Racism.

In a little-noticed report issued in late June, this task force argued that our nation’s Capitol Rotunda is an example of “structural racism.”

The proposed solution to America’s sin of stating that all men are created equal and endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights is to “reimagine the Rotunda” and to post “trigger warnings” to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.”… Continue Reading

Most people sense that America is under assault by America-hating forces and worry that our freedoms are actually in jeopardy. Mark Levin‘s new book, “American Marxism,” confirms those fears, exposes the chilling aims and methods of these malicious groups, and provides a blueprint to restore America to a path of recovery.

Levin has a gift for distilling abstract ideas into understandable terms for lay consumption. I’ve personally written and discussed many of the ideas he addresses in this compelling book but had not considered the term “counterrevolution” to describe what we’re witnessing.… Continue Reading

The latest USA Today/Ipsos poll revealed that President Joe Biden and Democrats are not pushing popular policy when it comes to Americans’ safety and well-being.

“In the survey, 7 in 10 supported increasing police department budgets; 77% said they would like additional police officers deployed on street patrols,” the USA Today/Ipsos poll disclosed.… Continue Reading

It has been said that he who frames the debate wins the debate. I think the “progressives” were brilliant to coin this term. But in reality, it’s one big lie.

Progress is a good thing, but many of the policies of the so-called “progressives” is anti-progress. “Progressive” is a misnomer.

As my boss, Dr. Frank Wright notes, “Using the fraudulent manipulation of language, Leftist progressives aim to advance their political, environmental, quasi-scientific, and socialistic agenda.”… Continue Reading

As absurd, extreme and reckless as the American left has been on race, and despite growing public disapproval of their antics, they are doubling down rather than pulling back.

On the Fourth of July, Utah’s Black Lives Matter chapter described the American flag as “a symbol of hatred.”

“When we Black Americans see this flag we know the person flying it is not safe to be around,” it declared. “When we see this flag we know the person flying it is a racist.… Continue Reading

I am going to say it.

Something that few people appear to be willing to say.

But yet, something almost everyone believes.

Please stop talking about “White” people and “Black” people.

Millions of us just don’t care what color you are.

This racist nonsense is destroying America.

Please stop saying that “White people don’t see Black people as human beings.” — CNN’s Don Lemon.

Please stop saying that “racism is unconscious in everyone.”… Continue Reading

There were more mass shootings in Chicago last weekend. The irony of these shootings, in which 54 were shot and 8 died, is the weekend itself….Father’s Day weekend.

Some sociologists note that what we’re seeing in large part are quite often the results of fatherlessness in America.

Mark J. Perry, a scholar with American Enterprise Institute, put out a chart on March 30, 2021 on fatherlessness in America. He compiled the statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, and the chart compares the “percentage of U.S.… Continue Reading

It’s shameful that it took so long to declare a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. But the nation’s first official Juneteenth holiday weekend got off to an inauspicious start, to say the very least.

CNN reported gun violence in multiple locations, including my own small town of Granger, Indiana. My teenage son works at the family-owned grocery store in the same little shopping center where five people were shot (one fatally) at a “Juneteenth Summer Bash” party held at a tavern.… Continue Reading

It’s no secret that families depend in many ways on the involvement of fathers.

A striking illustration of this can be found in America’s prisons, where charitable groups donate greeting cards for inmates. Mother’s Day cards are quickly snatched up, while Father’s Day cards go unclaimed. Most of the inmates either had a bad relationship with their dads or never knew them.

Likewise, we can trace many social ills to the demise of strong marriages and the absence — physical or emotional — of husbands/fathers in the household.… Continue Reading

Can anybody name a square inch spot on the planet anywhere where Marxism has brought anything good? Anywhere?

Certainly not in

• China,
• Russia,
• Cambodia,
• Vietnam,
• Cuba,
• Venezuela.

And now, Marxism is allegedly making inroads into the U.S. military at present? So says a whistleblower, who just got fired from the military.

Critical Race Theory, which is now being taught in many of schools and even some churches, is the mean by which Marxism is allegedly gaining ground in the military.… Continue Reading

This past week the Fraternal Order of Police issued a report on the skyrocketing murder rates in urban settings across the United States. The report focused specifically on cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., which have all experienced exponential increases in homicides compared to the same time last year.

Murders in our nation’s capital, for example, are up 35 percent as of May 25, 2021. Philadelphia has increased 40 percent. … Continue Reading

This week, the Biden White House hosted the family of George Floyd to mark the one-year anniversary of his death in police custody. His brother, Philonise, expressed hope that things are “slowly” moving in the right direction and that they are “making progress” in their war on cops. However, what is not going in the right direction is justice for victims of crime thanks to the agenda spawned by their movement.

Thanks to the pandemic and less social mobility, crime has been decreasing in most countries.… Continue Reading

We’re clearly living in a time of “doublethink.”

That’s when someone believes two mutually contradictory beliefs. The term comes from George Orwell’s novel “1984,” in which the government ruling party issued absurd dictums such as “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Anyone not going along with this was in for a rough time, including the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith.

The psychological name for this is cognitive dissonance. One form of it is accepting as reality something that clearly conflicts with reason, sensory perception and common sense.… Continue Reading

Just when you think racial agitators can’t get more outrageous and ridiculous, they do. We see fruits of this evil obsession every single day.

Throughout the pandemic, the media preached that historical racism in the United States disproportionately impacted African Americans. Hollywood bombards us with race-shaming on show after show, using fictional characters to lecture us on the pervasiveness of white supremacy, stirring racial resentment and division in the name of healing.… Continue Reading

When I occasionally complain about the left politicizing race, fellow conservatives often say to me, “Don’t worry about this. They’ve lost all credibility on the issue, trivializing it by overuse. They’re getting no traction with it.” Oh?

You’d have to be blind and deaf to deny that this tactic is working for the left politically and that it has caused great harm. Democrats and the left bring up race every five minutes to demonize Republicans and profit politically.… Continue Reading

When helping my daughter with her AP World History class recently, I was struck by the similarities between the present day and the troubled years between the first and second world wars. This similarity was driven home even more strongly by the recent death of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s spouse of almost 74 years. Philip’s passing reminds us that we will eventually lose Elizabeth herself, who, at 94, is the longest-reigning monarch in British (and world) history.… Continue Reading

While America has unquestionably had deep racial problems and an agonizing history of oppressing Black people through slavery, Jim Crow, and other outrages, it seems that there are some among us who do not ever want to see the problems solved—or to admit progress in any form. There are those who make enormous profits, both monetarily and socially, by perpetuating the friction caused by America’s racist past, in contrast to Martin Luther King Jr.… Continue Reading

It’s a fact – all laws discriminate. While discrimination based on ethnicity or skin color is never acceptable, discrimination based on behavior is appropriate. Speaking at IFI’s 2017 Worldview Conference, Dr. Frank Turek highlights the lies and hypocrisy surrounding the establishment of protected classes of individuals, public bathroom policies, and transgenderism.

The second half of this podcast features a lively Q&A session that covers immigration, open borders, refugees, diversity, the disinclination of the Church to address difficult issues, and more.… Continue Reading

I confronted someone recently. I spoke honestly. I was candid.

Maybe I was even a bit harsh. I didn’t pull punches. My goal was not to comfort but to challenge. Frankly, tolerance wasn’t on my mind; truth was. And, what was my friend’s response? “I don’t feel loved.”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of decades, it’s hard to deny that the basic values that once served as the foundation of our republic have vanished like dust in the wind.… Continue Reading

Conservatives have canceled their own culture. Glenn Beck was a recent example, blasting anti-communist U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy and warning of a new “Red Scare” targeting conservatives. We should have taken the old Red Scare more seriously and could have avoided our current fate.

That fate, recently described by federal Judge Laurence Silberman, is the “ideological consolidation” of the media in the hands of the Democratic Party and its allies. Marx called it the centralization of the means of communications in the hands of the state.… Continue Reading

In early March 2021, IFI partnered with several other groups to commission a poll of 600 registered Illinois voters who were not employed by any political campaign. Nine questions were asked of the respondents along with eight demographic questions. The results are enlightening.

Of those surveyed only 34% attended church weekly or more than once a week. In terms of political affiliation, 42% identified as Democrat, 20% Independent, and 32% Republican. And in terms of race, Hispanics comprised 6%, blacks 14%, and whites 75% of those polled, which reflects Illinois population demographics*.… Continue Reading

Every day seems to bring new examples in the news of our cancel culture. Cancel culture is a cancer to our culture.

The examples border on the ridiculous:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “Psycho” is sexist.
• The Muppets require a disclaimer from Disney.
• Dr. Seuss, the famous children’s author, becomes radioactive for reportedly having engaged in racist drawings.
• Mr. Potato Head is sexist.
• Disney classics Dumbo and Peter Pan allegedly perpetuate racist stereotypes.
• Cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew is a rapist, and Speedy Gonzalez embodies an anti-Mexican message.

It’s not just when you’re having fun that time flies. I can’t believe it’s nearly 11 months since my first article noting that locking down and masking children is a crime against humanity divorced from all science. Yet here we are almost a year later, entering a new spring season, with children being forced to mask in school (assuming they are even in school) and being wrongly treated as vectors of spread rather than the future of our country.… Continue Reading

It’s “1984,” and we are living in schizophrenic times. Orwellian times. The best of times, but yet the worst.

Times where we demand the truth while reveling in our lies. Times of great material gain but even greater moral loss. Times of calling good evil and evil good; bitter sweet and sweet bitter. Times of the “tolerant” not tolerating what they find intolerable.

These are times of significant technological advancement and, yet, shocking mental decline.… Continue Reading

On his first day as president, Joe Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees must now explain whether this commitment to “equity” means they intend to abolish “equal treatment under law.” Their answers are a confused mess.

Arkansas U.S. Senator Tom Cotton raised the question explicitly in confirmation hearings. Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland responded: “I think discrimination is morally wrong. Absolutely.”… Continue Reading

As much as conservatives in America love capitalism, many U.S. capitalists sure seem to hate conservatives—especially Christian conservatives. On virtually every issue important to conservatives of all stripes, large U.S. corporations (“Big Corp” for this column) stand opposed—almost unanimously!—to American conservatives.

In other words, to the detriment of America and the truth, Big Corp has gone “woke.” Coca-Cola provides the most recent and egregious example of gross corporate wokeness. According to a whistleblower, Coca-Cola is forcing its employees to complete online training that instructs them on “What it Means to Be White” and how to “Try and be less white.”… Continue Reading

Successful plans are best built on a foundation of strategic thinking. When it comes to political involvement, Christian apologist Dr. Frank Turek states that Christians ought to focus their efforts on motivating and mobilizing the citizens who share their worldview on the most critical issues of the day. Speaking at the 2017 IFI Worldview Conference, Dr. Turek also poses and answers these key questions: what is the purpose of government; can morality be legislated; how can we counter self-defeating statements; and what’s at stake and what should we do?… Continue Reading

A dark cloud looms over the United States today — a storm cloud of tyranny. All the rest is noise — a diversion.

If self-congratulatory pats on the back could cause skin damage, Trump haters would have leprosy. Having been on a witch hunt to burn him at the impeachment stake since he took office, they believe they are vindicated forevermore.

But apart from their brutal mistreatment of President Donald Trump from the beginning through their coordinated and malicious hoaxes that incidentally rejected lawful election results (in 2016), and apart from the question of whether they have some legitimate complaints against him, this is still not mainly about him.… Continue Reading

For our first Spotlight of 2021, we begin with a topic that is at the heart of the mission of IFI: the family. Monte Larrick and Dr. Allan C. Carlson, founder of the World Congress of Families, begin by defining social conservatism and contrasting it with “decadent liberalism.” Dr. Carlson offers advice to pastors and churches to abandon the losing strategy of settling for religious exemptions and opting for isolationism, and instead take a stand for Christian family ethics and Christian sexual ethics.… Continue Reading

I have long believed that the radical left represents an existential threat to the republic. Indeed, my last book, “Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win,” was based on that premise. So now what?

Since it appears that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take office in less than three weeks, my deepest fears should only be intensifying. Right?

We needn’t carry on this disingenuous debate about whether Biden is a centrist, because his growing mental incapacity makes it a moot point.… Continue Reading

It may be Christmastime, but our ruling elites are keeping up their campaign of cultural cleansing.

Not even Honest Abe is safe.

In San Francisco, a committee tasked to rid the school system of now-disgraced public figures at 44 sites says that a high school named after Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves and held America together through the Civil War, ought to drop the Great Emancipator.

“Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building,” explained first-grade teacher Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee.… Continue Reading

“Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification.  Because identity politics supposes that we are our identities, politics does not consist in the speech, argument, and persuasion of normal politics but instead, in the calculation of resource redistribution based on identity—what in Democratic parlance is called ‘social justice.’”—Joshua

In his classic work, “The Book of Virtues,” former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett recounts the story of a young boy who brought death and ruin upon himself and his community by his lies. We have all heard the tale over and over again in our youth. It goes like this.

“There was once a shepherd boy who kept his flock at a little distance from the village.… Continue Reading

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving, but is this holiday becoming so politically incorrect that one day it will be doomed to be sent down the “memory hole”?

There is a war on American history. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Antifa and other leftwing groups toppled more historical statues. Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media (11/28/20) describes the extent of this vandalism, which included the spray-painting of anti-Thanksgiving messages and statues torn down in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and Spokane.… Continue Reading

A lot of things worry me about a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, but nothing troubles me more than that it will accommodate the left’s disturbing march toward selective suppression of free speech.

Much of the war against this sacred liberty occurs at the level of our culture, but when a leftist-friendly administration is in power, our efforts to combat this culturally will be more difficult.

As a result of structural and technological changes in our society, threats to free speech no longer come from government alone, and so, our constitutional guarantees against encroachments are now inadequate.… Continue Reading

Thanksgiving and Christmas might be canceled for the first time ever by tyrannical governors and mayors, but they won’t cancel the weekend shootouts that are increasingly victimizing children in major cities. Those shootings tend to be the worst over holiday weekends. Yet, in what has become the ultimate dystopian governing outcome, our elected officials are criminalizing life itself while greenlighting violent criminal activity.

The Philadelphia mayor recently announced with the flick of a pen that all indoor gatherings would be canceled for the remainder of the calendar year.… Continue Reading

Not that long ago, surveys reported that over 90% of Americans claimed to believe in God and to be moderately religious. However, with the ascendency of the Left and the vitriol of the media and academia against Christianity over the last few years, the percentage of Americans identifying with Christianity has dropped significantly. But the Left is no longer content to merely mock Christians. They now openly hate us and seek to silence us.… Continue Reading

As a Christian and a pastor, I have spent a lot of time getting to know God. It goes with the territory! But it raises a serious question in my mind. Why do so many have such a visceral hatred for God? Of course, I know the answer, but I think everyone needs to understand what this attitude is really about.

First, I have known since I was young that God is good, but my studies have helped me to understand more accurately how good He is. … Continue Reading

The fascist left regularly typifies the very qualities it professes to abhor. The only thing more pronounced than its totalitarianism is its stunning lack of self-awareness.

It’s ironic that leftists think of themselves as liberals, as the term “liberal” is historically and etymologically connected to the concept of liberty. Not only are they merely selective champions of liberty but the logical extension of their agenda is an eradication of liberty, from socialism to U.S.… Continue Reading

So, Colin Kaepernick is the current face of American professional sports.

This is the guy widely panned four years ago for his protests during the playing of the National Anthem at National Football League games.  Now he’s the bee’s knees.

That’s the picture from a Washington Post poll that says a majority (56 percent) of Americans actually approve of athletes kneeling in protest when the Star-Spangled Banner is played.  Only 42 percent of those polled say it’s “not appropriate.”… Continue Reading

This week’s IFA Spotlight podcast revisits the recent Black Families Matter rally that was held in south suburban Flossmoor, right next door to the Planned Parenthood abortion center. Latasha Fields delivers a passionate, well-reasoned, and biblically based call for Christian parents to stop advocating for public education and instead take personal responsibility for their children’s instruction. She also addresses the destructive agenda and influence of groups such as Black Lives Matter at School and the New York Times 1619 Project’s K-12 Black History Curriculum in government schools – and their intent to undermine and dismantle the Black nuclear family.… Continue Reading

The Black Lives Matter movement is a shallow movement, one which has taken up a sledgehammer to address a complex problem in need of a more skillful approach. Speaking at a Black Families Matter rally held in Flossmoor (in front of Southland Smiles Dental and across from the new Planned Parenthood facility), Rev. Dr. Eric Wallace stressed that while black lives, white lives, all lives matter, what is foundational and truly vital to our nation right now are strong families parented by a mom and a dad.… Continue Reading

Better late than never. And I’m serious.

I’ve been adamant about holding woke warriors like outspoken NBA coach Steve Kerr accountable for his inexcusable moral hypocrisy when it comes to matters of social justice.

Kerr’s persistence in pointing out to everyone how sensitive he is to the plight of those treated unjustly counterbalanced against his flagrant unwillingness to say a single word on behalf of the most oppressed and mistreated victims of systemic injustice in the world is mindless.… Continue Reading

As we dive into the last month of summer, David Smith and Monte Larrick welcome Jim Davids, attorney and chief counsel for the newly-formed Justice & Freedom Law Center, to this week’s Spotlight. Jim, David, and Monte explore the concept of “muscular Christianity” and a possible Christian “protest” response – Jesus’ Life Mattered. They also consider J.B. Pritzker’s executive orders that have limited religious liberty, recent legal cases involving religious discrimination and restriction of religious freedom, and concerns regarding how legal rulings that were made during the pandemic might affect a post-pandemic world.… Continue Reading

How do we make sense of the nonstop craziness going on in our society? Is there a common denominator, or is it all happening randomly?

Well, it’s unlikely that multiple sectors of society just happen to be imploding at the same time without some causal forces behind them. And you don’t have to be a garden-variety conspiracy theorist to realize that some kind of intelligent design is at work here.

I personally think we’re in the throes of spiritual warfare.… Continue Reading

Wow, these Maria cookies made by Goya sure are crispy.  And only 25 calories each.

We’ve got a boatload of Goya products in our pantry now, one of our pushbacks against the Left’s increasingly aggressive culture war on America.

Goya Foods came under attack merely because its CEO, Robert Unanue, visited the White House and made some positive comments about President Trump.  The Left has called for a boycott of the company, which specializes in Hispanic foods.… Continue Reading

It’s official. We are now a racist nation. And it happened almost overnight.

Consider the following examples.

Yusra Khogali, a Black Lives Matter leader, recently wrote that “white people are a genetic defect of blackness,” and that “whiteness is not humanness. In fact, white skin is sub-human.”

Ms. Khogali added, “White people are recessive genetic defects. This is factual … Black people simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”… Continue Reading

Several years ago I was approached in the grocery store by a gentleman from our community that I knew through acquaintance. He had learned that I was the new government teacher at our local high school and wanted to see if I was willing to accept a guest speaker. I told him I was open to the idea but was curious who he had in mind.

We set up a meeting days later where he introduced me to Zamir, a man who as an adult had escaped the communist regime of Albania and made it to the United States.… Continue Reading

In his opening address at the recent IFI Worldview Conference, Dr. Robert Gagnon poses the question “Is ‘LGBTQ’ Pressure Beginning to Crack the Evangelical House?” Dr. Gagnon believes that exposure to the daily indoctrination of culture is resulting in a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts among our youth, even those in evangelical churches, and he considers whether this same phenomenon is afflicting evangelicalism as a whole.

Emphasizing a reliance on Scripture, he encourages Christians, both in the pews and at the pulpit, to refute the false narrative of the LGBTQ agenda and stand firmly against immorality.… Continue Reading

When was the last time we saw governments embrace the violent, racialist political agenda of a specific racist organization and make the citizenry obey it by force of law while exempting its adherents from the actual laws on the books? If you are conjuring up images of the KKK during the Jim Crow days in the South, you are not missing anything. So why is this suddenly OK when it comes to an organization that names itself Black Lives Matter?… Continue Reading

Sadly, fireworks were not the only munitions shot over the July 4 weekend. Statues weren’t the only things felled by anarchists and criminals roaming free in the streets. This weekend was a bloody one across the country, with endless shootings in America’s cities, including New York City, which was considered the safest American city for a generation. Once again, African-American victims, including a number of young children, paid the price while the anarchy was excused and even legitimized by the media and politicians.… Continue Reading

Among other places, it recently showed itself in CHAZ, or CHOP, or whatever name the anarchists in Seattle ended up calling their little exercise in autonomy that predictably ended in murder, theft, and humiliating failure.

And don’t think I was rooting against them.

For someone who has always thought it is much easier to point out the superiority of conservative thought by being able to point to actual examples of leftism-in-action rather than arguing against theoretical concepts being taught by unserious utopian dreamers in campus lecture halls to doe-eyed freshmen who are incapable of resisting conformity, I was all for CHAZ continuing in perpetuity.… Continue Reading

“The proudest boast of a citizen of ancient Rome was, “I am a Roman.” The proudest boast of any patriotic citizen of this free country of ours should be, “I am an American.” God grant this boast may ever be ours.” ~J. Reuben Clark, Jr. “Let Us Not Sell Our Children Into Slavery,” (Address to the Utah State Farm Bureau Federation, November 21, 1952)

America is being ripped apart by two diametrically opposed worldviews – Americanism and communism.… Continue Reading

Are you missing the crack of the bat that is the hallmark of “America’s Pastime?” If so, we have a different sort of power lineup for you on this edition of Spotlight. We lead off with Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel of First Liberty Institute. In remarks made prior to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, Mr. Shackelford lauds President Donald J. Trump and his administration for protecting and promoting religious freedoms and securing conservative appointments to key judicial seats.… Continue Reading

At a Black Lives Matter protest in Cary, North Carolina, a white woman takes to her megaphone. “We repent on behalf of, uh, Caucasian people,” she shouts, as she calls upon the crowd to kneel before two Black pastors seated before them on a park bench. Several audibly weep as they bow in obeisance.

At a church in Atlanta, Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, genuflects before a Black colleague while shining his shoes in a ritual atoning for the collective “shame” of being White.… Continue Reading