Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and church families. We would be very grateful if you could make a donation of $100, $50, $25, or $10 today towards our work producing these Friday Fives and fighting for your values on the public square!
1. VIEW: Celebration of Carolina Values event
Yesterday, over 300 of you joined us at the Angus Barn in Raleigh for a wonderful night of memories and celebration. Our reasons for gathering were twofold:
- To celebrate the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and
- To celebrate all the hard work we have conducted defending pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religious freedom values.
2. VISIT: NC Values launches beautiful new look and website
At yesterday’s Celebration we also got to share with you the launch of our brand new website and branding. With everything we do, we have you chiefly in mind. Whether it’s equipping you with tools to empower you as a constituent, equip you as a citizen, or educate you as a voter, our new website is simple, intuitive, powerful, and gorgeous. We hope you consider checking it out and saving it to your bookmarks.
In addition to launching the site, we’ve also announced the start of our ComPass monthly membership program. Would you like to support and participate more in our labor defending Carolina values? If so, would you consider becoming an official NC Values ComPass member by signing up to make any-sized monthly donation? Your reoccurring financial support helps make our work possible, and provides us the financial stability necessarily to maintain our coalition’s growth.
In addition to supporting our important work, your NC Values ComPass members communications pass grants you:
- 🧭 Discounted tickets
- 🧭 Early-bird specials
- 🧭 Access to exclusive events
- 🧭 Members only content
- 🧭 and more.
3. VOTE: Early one-stop voting in North Carolina is officially underway
At the NC Values Coalition, we offer you a variety of opportunities to benefit from our political and legal insights, cutting edge technology, and a vast network of clergy and citizens across the state to help you prayerfully select the best candidates who will honor life, family, and religious freedom. We then advance legislation that will support your values in the laws of our state, so that our culture reflects Biblical values.
Your ongoing support of NC Values has allowed us to continue to work with iVoterGuide, one of the nation’s leading, independent organizations to rank candidates based on how closely they share your values by examining their response to values-focused questionnaires, actual voting history, a record of political endorsements, history of financial contributions, analysis of their backgrounds, and panel reviews by experts on how closely they share your pro-life, pro-liberty, and pro-family values.
With early one-stop voting having begun yesterday, we strongly encourage you to check out some of the iVoterGuide, endorsements, legislative scorecard, and other tools we’ve assembled on our NC Values Voter Toolkit located here.
4. THE WASHINGTON STAND: North Carolina must protect girls’ sports. Our safety is on the line.
“Last month, a North Carolina high school girls’ volleyball team was forced to play against a team rostering a biological male on the girls’ team. The trans-identifying player from Highlands High hit the ball directly into the face of one of the female players. Getting hit in the face is not uncommon in volleyball, but because the ball is relatively soft, it rarely results in serious injury.
The Hiwassee Dam High School female athlete was not so lucky. Due to the athlete’s male strength and ability, the swing caused severe head and neck injuries. Reports say her injury left ‘ongoing concussion symptoms, including vision problems.’ Cherokee County’s Board of Education saw the impact and voted 5-1 to cancel any remaining games against Highlands High to protect their female players.”
5. THE ATLANTIC: The state election that could change abortion access in the South
Sometimes, we like to share with you publications from major politically left-leaning media organizations. They offer you an opportunity to hear in their words the importance of this election and our ongoing public policy work from their perspective. This article from The Atlantic is a great example of what is at stake this election. The introductory four paragraphs summarize it succinctly, and our hope is that when you read articles like this, your response is to go vote early to ensure Governor Cooper no longer foils the will of the people and the lives of the unborn.
“The Democrat has vetoed 75 bills in his nearly six years as governor. That’s more than twice as many as every other governor in the state’s history combined. Since its earliest state constitutions, the Old North State has been skeptical of executive power, and the governor only gained veto power in 1996. Cooper is the first governor to seize its full potential.
Cooper has rejected bills to require sheriffs to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to open skating rinks during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, to loosen gun laws, and to tighten voting laws. He has also vetoed bills to restrict his own office’s powers.
The power is not absolute. As in Washington, a supermajority can override the veto—in North Carolina, three-fifths of both chambers of the legislature. Until 2018, Republicans held more than the 30 Senate and 72 House seats they needed to override the governor, and they did: In his first two years as governor, Cooper vetoed 28 bills, but 23 of them were overridden. Two years later, Democrats cut into Republicans’ margins, and since then, every veto has been sustained.
The balance of power in the North Carolina General Assembly is up for grabs in this year’s election. Politicians and experts on both sides of the aisle agree that the real battle is not over whether Republicans can maintain control of the legislature but over whether they can reclaim a supermajority. The GOP needs to win just two seats in the Senate and three in the House to do that. Whether it succeeds will have major implications for the direction of the state, which has often served as an incubator for conservative governance. But the answer could also be pivotal for an even bigger question: how available abortion will be in the region. Most states in the Southeast have abortion laws that are generally more restrictive than North Carolina’s, making the state a magnet for women seeking access—at least for now.
Weekly Prayer: Freedom
LORD, you have blessed us with a spiritual liberty that is so wonderful and beyond description, that it can only be understood through experiencing a life-giving relationship with Christ. However, we also recognize that in your grace, you have blessed our country with a political liberty that enables us to openly proclaim the experience of a life lived in the freedom of the Gospel.
LORD, as individuals and as a nation, may we never take the inalienable right of religious freedom for granted. Right now our country has faced a rapid increase in the number of attacks made against this cherished right. We have seen groups across our public arena increase in boldness and frequency their smears against religious liberty. They claim it is bigotry, when we know it is the security of the greatest of all possible loves.
Be with your people and our country as it continues to protect the constitutional right protected by our nation’s Founders. Be with legislators and the Supreme Court, as they determine through their actions the protection of this particular and fundamental freedom.
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)
“Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.” (1 Peter 2:16)
Amen
North Carolina Values Coalition
