Sometimes when I hear people ask for prayer, it seems kind of cliche. Whether it’s praying for someone else or them praying for you, it’s easy to take prayer for granted. But we firmly believe that prayer does matter, that we worship a God who cares for us personally and answers prayer.
We posted a reader survey a few weeks ago, and the results have been illuminating. We believe a reader survey is the best way to get real, useful, concrete data on the people we want to serve best: you.
After analyzing the results of the surveys, I want to share the results with you, along with how we plan to use the feedback to meet your needs and exceed your expectations in the coming year.
Equal Rights Institute is 
focused on teaching pro-life advocates practical dialogue tips, rigorous philosophy, and relational apologetics. When we use the phrase “relational apologetics,” we mean trying to change a person’s mind about a core belief in the context of genuine friendship.
Most people will not change their minds about a serious subject after one conversation, so an ongoing dialogue with a friend can be really helpful.
When I speak about relational apologetics, I usually illustrate with the story of my friend Deanna Unyk, who began dialoguing with me about abortion two years ago, and began self-identifying as pro-life one year ago.
Click here to read what changed Deanna’s mind about abortion. If you want to learn more about why I think guy-girl friendships can be virtuous, God-honoring friendships, and what boundaries I think should be in place, click here.
When the pro-life club at the University of Portland heard Deanna’s story, they asked Deanna and me if we would be willing to do a public discussion about relational apologetics (in addition to being a great opportunity, this was also a personal blessing because it gave us the chance to finally meet in person). We sat on stage, told our story, and encouraged the audience to cultivate friendships among people with whom they had serious disagreements. The event was a great success, with around 80 in attendance from both sides of the abortion debate. Many people came up afterwards, saying that they had never been to an event like this, and that it helped them to think about abortion and relational apologetics in a new way.
Photo Credit: Andie Jael
During the event, Deanna and I offered practical tips for cultivating friendships with people who disagree with you about important issues. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Photo credit: M.O. Stevens. Creative Commons license.
Trigger warning: This post details our experience of going to a museum exhibit that featured preserved bodies of actual miscarried unborn children. None of them were aborted. Their bodies are whole and carefully preserved. Depending on your sensibilities/past experiences, the descriptions and/or pictures of the exhibit that I’ve included may be a trigger for you.
Last year during my first speaking trip in Portland somebody told me that I couldn’t leave without seeing the Prenatal Exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or OMSI. Due to scheduling reasons I couldn’t pull it off, but I called the museum a few weeks ago to ask whether the exhibit was still there. Upon finding out that it’s there until May 6, I made sure that my staff and I had time to visit the exhibit during our recent trip to Portland where we trained the student club from Portland Community College with a seminar followed by a two-day outreach on their campus.
The exhibit was created by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, the person behind the controversial “Body Worlds” exhibit. He uses a plastination technique to preserve animal and human bodies and sets up exhibits in an effort to educate people about anatomy in a way that books can’t. The exhibit is controversial because in the case of the human bodies, these were real people who arguably should have been buried. My staff and I have unresolved concerns about that aspect of it.
In the case of the prenatal development exhibit at OMSI, they only have babies who were miscarried and then preserved, presumably with the parents permission. (This exhibit isn’t to be confused with “Bodies: The Exhibition,” which is similar but whose bodies all came from China, adding to the controversy.)
A friend of mine posted a question on Facebook asking for help understanding why people in Baltimore are rioting. Here was my attempt. Interested in additional thoughts from all over the political spectrum.
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Okay, here’s my best shot. The more peaceful protesters are black people who feel like the lingering societal effects of slavery and segregation still last, resulting in it being harder for them to get good jobs, live in nice neighborhoods, etc.
There has been a lot more documented police brutality than before when cell phone videos weren’t a thing, and some police agencies aren’t responding appropriately to that. This means that they feel real physical danger when stopped by police.
They also believe that unlike white, privileged people, their voices aren’t really heard, so they do the next “louder” thing: get together and protest, *just like we do in DC every January!*
The violent rioters? I think some of them are described above but their feelings about it are so strong that it has turned to anger and even hatred of police/the government/anyone they believe is too powerful.
I think there’s a third group of people who just want to watch the world burn. They don’t care so much about racism and police violence as they do the fun of participating in a riot and burning stuff.