{"id":39296,"date":"2025-04-20T15:55:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/20\/childrens-author-says-his-faith-based-books-are-a-way-to-fight-the-culture-war-kids-are-on-the-frontline\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T15:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:55:17","slug":"childrens-author-says-his-faith-based-books-are-a-way-to-fight-the-culture-war-kids-are-on-the-frontline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/20\/childrens-author-says-his-faith-based-books-are-a-way-to-fight-the-culture-war-kids-are-on-the-frontline\/","title":{"rendered":"Children&#8217;s author says his faith-based books are a way to fight the culture war: &#8216;Kids are on the frontline&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/easter-monday-could-soon-become-federal-holiday-under-new-proposal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">As Easter <\/a>serves as a reminder of renewal and hope for many in the Christian faith, the author of a series of new children&#8217;s books warns that the culture war and the fight for family values isn&#8217;t over.<\/p>\n<p>Anthony DeStefano is a bestselling author renowned for his Christian-themed books for adults and children. His books often bring Biblical stories to life through vivid, animated storytelling. His latest, &#8220;From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine,&#8221;<i> <\/i>introduces children to the Eucharist\u2014a central element of Catholic and Orthodox communion\u2014in a way that\u2019s simple and accessible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the electorate rejects wokeism, what other options does the left have? What&#8217;s their most effective strategy? It&#8217;s to go after the kids,&#8221; DeStefano told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s true that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American voters <\/a>have rejected the physical mutilation of children&#8217;s bodies through puberty blockers, sex hormones and irreversible gender transition surgeries,&#8221; DeStefano said. &#8220;But they also must recognize that the woke left, through the entertainment industry, is just as determined to mutilate the minds and souls of children through ideological propaganda. That&#8217;s a tough statement, but it&#8217;s true. Wokeness is not just about mutilating children&#8217;s bodies. It&#8217;s about mutilating children&#8217;s souls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/pope-francis-had-peaceful-night-hospital-skip-sunday-noon-blessing-while-continuing-recovery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><u>POPE REMARKS ON \u2018BLESSING\u2019 THAT COMES WITH FRAILTY; SAYS \u2018WAR APPEARS EVEN MORE ABSURD\u2019 IN HIS CURRENT STATE<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>DeStefano&#8217;s works have been published in 18 countries and translated into 12 languages. For him, the path to becoming a children&#8217;s book author wasn&#8217;t so clear-cut from the start.<\/p>\n<p>A native<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\/us-regions\/northeast\/new-york\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> New Yorker<\/a>, he attended Manhattan\u2019s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, known for its rigorous academics programs\u2014and where he met his English teacher. That teacher, Frank McCourt, won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir &#8220;Angela\u2019s Ashes,&#8221; later adapted into a film.<\/p>\n<p>McCourt&#8217;s influence on DeStefano was immediate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He assigned us to write children\u2019s books,&#8221; DeStefano recalled. &#8220;He wanted to force us to stop writing elaborately, as teenagers often do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had always wanted to be a doctor,&#8221; he said. &#8220;A surgeon, to be exact.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet, obstacles like organic chemistry and integral calculus led him to reassess his goals, he joked.<\/p>\n<p>In his mid-to-late twenties, DeStefano\u2019s life took a turn in another direction, though. He found a deep connection to the Catholic faith, influenced by the writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, which led him back to writing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought, &#8216;Ah, maybe, maybe there&#8217;s a way to combine both these great desires to be a writer and to be a doctor.&#8217; Maybe what God really wants me to do is to be a healer of some kind, but to heal people, not with surgery, but through my writing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/faith-values\/catholic-bishop-orthodox-artist-discuss-materialism-scientific-arguments-christ-reunification\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>CATHOLIC BISHOP AND ORTHODOX ARTIST DISCUSS MATERIALISM, SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS FOR CHRIST, REUNIFICATION<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the genesis of my whole writing career, and writing simply,&#8221; DeStefano said. &#8220;And then, of course, as I got older, and I recognized more and more that there was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/culture-trends\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a culture <\/a>war going on, I realized that children represented the front lines in that cultural war. And so I thought to myself, if I could write books that help instill timeless traditional values at an age when kids are still open, curious and impressionable, then I would be doing something meaningful to counterbalance the secular messages that bombard them from the legacy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media and<\/a> the entertainment world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, DeStefano deviated from writing children&#8217;s books and wrote &#8220;Inside the Atheist Mind: Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There Is No God,&#8221; which immediately drew criticism and negative reviews online.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Of that experience, he said, &#8220;it was exhilarating,&#8221; adding that &#8220;if you&#8217;re attacked by the secular culture, then that means you&#8217;re doing your job.&#8221; For DeStefano, restoring &#8220;objective truth&#8221; of family values and faith to the current social landscape is one of the keys to reject &#8220;moral relativism&#8221; prevalent in the culture today.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/concerned-parents-trans-kids-compared-hate-groups-colorado-dem-wouldnt-ask-kkk-opinion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>CONCERNED PARENTS OF TRANS KIDS COMPARED TO &#8216;HATE GROUPS&#8217; BY COLORADO DEM: WOULDN&#8217;T &#8216;ASK THE KKK&#8217; FOR OPINION<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/download\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><u>CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/president-trump-bids-happy-easter-christian-holiday-approaches-we-need-god\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Now, Easter<\/a> is the celebration of the resurrection, and that&#8217;s the ultimate proof that light conquers darkness,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The same power that rolled away the stone on Easter morning is available to us as we push back against the lies that are being fed to us.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Easter serves as a reminder of renewal and hope for many in the Christian faith, the author of a series of new children&#8217;s books warns that the culture war and the fight for family values isn&#8217;t over. Anthony DeStefano is a bestselling author renowned for his Christian-themed books for adults and children. His books &#8230; <a title=\"Children&#8217;s author says his faith-based books are a way to fight the culture war: &#8216;Kids are on the frontline&#8217;\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/20\/childrens-author-says-his-faith-based-books-are-a-way-to-fight-the-culture-war-kids-are-on-the-frontline\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Children&#8217;s author says his faith-based books are a way to fight the culture war: &#8216;Kids are on the frontline&#8217;\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}