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House Defunds Planned Parenthood, Spener Starts Pietism, and Judas Hangs Himself
The bill that could defund Planned Parenthood but spare some other abortion providers, the father of Pietism, whether Judas hanged himself or fell headlong, and much more.
Anthony Langer
May 24, 2025
It’s Saturday, May 24, 2025.
Today’s edition covers the bill that could defund Planned Parenthood but spare some other abortion providers, the father of Pietism, whether Judas hanged himself or fell headlong, and much more.
“Whoever says to the wicked, ‘You are in the right,’ will be cursed by peoples, abhorred by nations, but those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, and a good blessing will come upon them.” (Proverbs 24:24-25)
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Of Christian Concern
THE HOUSE VOTES TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD, SPARES SOME OTHER ABORTION PROVIDERS
Image: City Xcape
The U.S. House of Representatives voted early Thursday morning to pass a bill that includes a provision that would defund Planned Parenthood. The provision comes as a part of what marketing master President Donald Trump dubbed “The One Big Beautiful Bill,” a “tax and spending package” of tax cuts, tax breaks, changes to social safety programs, and more.
Among the “prohibited entities” that would not be allowed to receive federal payments for the next decade, the bill includes “an entity” that “provides for abortions” and received more than $1 million from Medicaid in 2024. That certainly includes Planned Parenthood, whose recently released annual report reveals it received $792.2 million from “Government Health Services Reimbursements & Grants,” including from Medicaid, in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
While the Big Beautiful Bill would block the nation’s largest abortion provider and others from receiving taxpayer funds, the language of the bill allows tax money to go to abortion providers who did not receive over $1 million from Medicaid in 2024, or who only provide abortions in the cases of rape, incest, or risk to the mother’s life. In other words, the bill takes aim at some but not all abortion providers, and also not at abortion itself.
The bill now goes to the Senate. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says, “We've been working closely with Leader Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the President's desk by our Independence Day, that's July 4.” To voice your opinion about the bill to your senator, call 202-224-3121.
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Also Noteworthy
The U.S. Supreme Court Building. (Photo: Malcolm Hill)
→ The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state court ruling in a 4-4 decision that prevents “the creation of a taxpayer-funded charter school in Oklahoma”, Just the News reports.
→ The U.S. Supreme Court restored Maine Rep. Laurel Libby’s power to vote in Congress, after Democrats censured her for a social media post about a “transgender” athlete.
→ Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, the two Israeli Embassy staff members in Washington who were shot to death in an alleged antisemitic attack on Wednesday, were “Messianic believers,” confirmed ONE FOR ISRAEL. “Yaron was well known among the believing community in Israel and will be deeply missed,” the Israeli evangelistic ministry wrote.
→ ONE FOR ISRAEL, accused of illegally targeting minors in Israel with their evangelistic videos, reported in a newsletter this week that their trial went well. The charge against them “was strongly refuted,” though there remain efforts “to use this trial to delegitimize, demonize, and silence the Body of Messiah in Israel.” The judge’s final verdict will be known within at least 12-24 months.
→ Christian leaders sent a letter to President Trump on Wednesday, urging him to establish “an advisory council” on artificial intelligence (AI), involving “people of faith, ethicists, and others.” The letter characterizes AI technology as “an opportunity of great promise but also of potential peril especially as we approach artificial general intelligence”—that is, “autonomous smarter-than-human machines that nobody knows how to control.”
→ President Trump signed into law the “bipartisan, bicameral” TAKE IT DOWN Act, which “criminalizes the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including AI-generated NCII (or ‘deepfake revenge pornography’), and requires social media and similar websites to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from a victim.”
Content Catch-Up
Recent notable content of Christian interest.*
Screenshot of the Bibledingers’ debate’s YouTube cover image
→ Abolitionism vs. Smashmouth Incrementalism: Activist T. Russell Hunter and Pastor Doug Wilson had their second debate hosted by Bibledingers over anti-abortion activism strategy (to see my write-up about the first debate, click here)—only this time they brought friends: John Speed and Joe Rigney, respectively. (Debate)
Screenshot of the Faith News Brief cover image.
→ Should Josh Buice’s content be canceled?: On Project 18:15’s YouTube channel, Faith News Brief, I (Anthony Langer) share my opinion on whether now-disgraced Pastor Josh Buice’s content should be removed from G3 and other ministry websites. (Video)
*Not necessarily an endorsement
Church History Tidbit
The Father of Pietism
Philipp Jakob Spener (Public Domain)
Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) was a German theologian and the father of Pietism, a movement emphasizing personal faith and spiritual renewal within Lutheranism. Born in Ribeauvillé, Alsace, Spener studied theology at Strasbourg and became a pastor in Frankfurt in 1666. Concerned by the spiritual apathy in the church, he published Pia Desideria (1675), a seminal work advocating for heartfelt devotion, Bible study in small groups (collegia pietatis), and practical Christian living over rigid dogma. His reforms aimed to revive authentic faith amid post-Reformation stagnation.
Spener’s ideas sparked both enthusiasm and controversy. Supporters formed Pietist communities, but critics accused him of undermining Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1686, he moved to Dresden and later Berlin, where he influenced the founding of Halle University, a Pietist stronghold. His emphasis on lay involvement and experiential faith shaped later Protestant movements, including Methodism and evangelicalism. Spener died in Berlin in 1705, leaving a legacy of spiritual reform that prioritized personal piety and social engagement.
Written with Grok.
The Bible, Briefly
Did Judas Hang Himself, or Fall Headlong?
“And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.” (Matthew 27:5)
“Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.” (Acts 1:18)
The two verses above both refer to Judas Iscariot after he betrayed Jesus. Matthew says he hanged himself, while Acts says he fell headlong and burst open. Critics of the Bible have often said these two accounts contradict each other. Do they? Twentieth-century theologian William Arndt addressed the accusation:
“But is there a discrepancy here? Does Matthew say that Judas did not fall? Does Peter say that Judas did not hang himself? The reader will immediately see that here we have no case where yes is opposed to no. This is simply another instance where both versions are true, one supplementing the other.”
In other words, since neither account denies the other, there is no logical contradiction. So, how can the verses be harmonized? Arndt quotes Haley:
“Probably the circumstances were much as follows: Judas suspended himself from a tree on the brink of a precipe overhanging the Valley of Hinnom. The limb or the rope giving way, he fell and was mangled as described in Acts."
“Whether this explanation commends itself to us in all particulars or not,” Arndt comments, “it is at least perfectly clear that the two accounts of the death of Judas need not be contradictory.”
In addition, online apologist InspiringPhilosophy (IP) points out the possibility that Matthew was not writing literally. In writing that Judas “went and hanged himself,” he could have been using an idiomatic allusion to the Old Testament story of another traitor, Ahithophel (2 Samuel 17:23). Matthew’s original audience may have understood not to take the phrase literally but as an expression meaning Judas died a traitor’s death.
“It would be sort of like today,” IP suggests, “if I said someone ‘bit the dust.’ It is a cultural expression to denote that someone died, not that someone literally bit dust.”
Either way, since possible resolutions can be offered, there is no contradiction in the text.
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