Shawn Hamilton does what a lot of college-aged guys do on Christian campuses. He goes to class. He does his homework and reads his Bible. He plays video games, hangs out with his friends, and thinks about prevenient grace. “The Holy Spirit tries to beckon people,” the 22-year-old told CT. “It’s more than just common grace, as Calvin articulates it. It’s the reason why all people can do good things. Because we are totally depraved, but it’s the Holy Spirit continuing in every life... Read More
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Arrested Filipino Pastor Apollo Quiboloy Claims He’s the Messiah
Apollo Quiboloy called himself the “Appointed Son of God.” But to Filipino and American authorities, he was a man wanted for years on charges of sexual abuse and human trafficking. Quiboloy, the 74-year-old leader of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, surrendered to authorities on September 8 after 2,000 security officers descended on the religious sect’s massive complex in Davao City in the Philippines. Thousands of followers gathered at the 74-acre compound to protest Quiboloy’s arrest as... Read More
Egyptian Christians Show ‘Love of Jesus’ to Displaced Palestinians
Almost six months have passed since Issa Saliba boarded a bus in Gaza with 15 other Christians to seek safety in Egypt. But he still relishes how they sang, clapped, and danced as they escaped devastation. The air conditioning cooled his nerves, frayed from the harrowing journey to the border. Later that day, the wayside stop provided his first full meal. As 1.9 million Palestinians—90 percent of Gaza’s population—remain internally displaced, less known is that 100,000 have... Read More
Expert: Ukraine’s Ban on Russian Orthodox Church Is Compatible with Religious Freedom
During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of a fondness for dictators, alleging that he supported a negotiated settlement with Vladimir Putin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump, declining to affirm that a Ukrainian victory would serve US interests, replied that if he were still in the Oval Office, the war would never have happened, and he claimed that he could bring it to an end even as president-elect. Both candidates failed to address the... Read More
Ohio Haitians Feel Panic, Local Christians Try to Repair Divides
On Thursday, Viles Dorsainvil, a former pastor in Haiti and the leader of Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, was getting phone call after phone call from local immigrants feeling “panic” over their safety. The 60,000-person city has felt the strain and culture clash of welcoming 15,000 Haitians over the past four years, most of whom have temporary legal status in the US due to violence in their home country. Those tensions escalated this week as false rumors... Read More
A Pastor’s Wife Was Murdered. God Had Prepared Him for It.
When disaster strikes, it’s easy to comfort ourselves with empty phrases like “It was a freak accident” or “That’s so unlikely to happen.” Much easier, certainly, than acknowledging that none of us are immune to tragedy. We soothe ourselves with statistics of survival, but inside we know the path of our lives has already been determined. Data is no weapon against God’s sovereignty. Those unlikely, catastrophic events do happen—as they did to Davey and Amanda Blackburn.... Read More
Taste and See If the Show is Good
Of this year’s Emmy-nominated television shows, my husband and I have watched all of The Crown, a fair bit of Abbott Elementary, and a couple episodes of Only Murders in the Building. We used to have a Hulu subscription, so we watched the first season of The Bear and several seasons of What We Do in the Shadows. (We’ve since canceled our subscription, so regrettably, no Reservation Dogs.) Ask me what I liked or disliked about any of these shows, and I can tell you: the dialogue, the sets,... Read More
The Church Can Help End The Phone-Based Childhood
As American kids head back to school this fall, many will do so with smartphones in hand. The average age at which American kids receive their first phone is just 11, and most public schools only ban nonacademic classroom phone use—and struggle to enforce even that. We know this is a problem. Research from academics like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge continues to show American young people are in a mental health crisis, and there’s compelling evidence that... Read More
Humility in the Age of Cancel Culture
In a special episode of The Bulletin, Christianity Today’s senior director of CT Media, Mike Cosper, interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Bruni about his book The Age of Grievance. Where polarization has split churches, families, and friendships, Bruni suggests that the root of this polarization is grievance, an animating impulse in our culture that focuses on scarcity instead of abundance. This conversation offers a way forward for Americans or anyone who looks at... Read More
Called to Kenya’s Chinatowns
Daive Njuguna’s first Chinese class at the University of Nairobi was the most fun he’d ever had in college. The teacher was a jovial young woman from China who cheerfully corrected her students as they struggled to pronounce ni hao (hello) and qing (please) and xie xie (thank you). Njuguna laughed throughout the class. He was only vaguely aware that the Chinese government was funding the course via the Confucius Institute, part of Beijing’s “cultural soft power” offensive to... Read More