Author: Christianity Today - via RSS feed

When we moved to the small town of Canton, North Carolina, last fall, we heard stories about flooding. Living in the mountains spells unpredictability. In 2021, Tropical Storm Fred flooded the river that runs through our city, destroying significant portions of the downtown area. Some homes and businesses were lost. So when we heard that Hurricane Helene had headed our way, people took it seriously. It seemed our little city was on guard and prepared for the storm. But on Friday morning, we... Read More

When Kori Koss heard that Donald Trump was coming back to Butler, she felt her stomach sink. It’s been less than three months since a would-be assassin’s gunshots narrowly missed the former president. The shooter killed one man, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, and gravely injured two others.  Koss lives down the road from the Butler Farm Show grounds, close enough that she and her kids had set out chairs and set up a livestream of the July 13 rally. Close enough that at 6:11 p.m.,... Read More

Several hundred people on the National Mall in Washington cheered Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance as he headlined an October 7th memorial rally, punctuating his remarks on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war with shouts of “yes” and “amen.” “I know that in this crowd some of us are Christians, some of us are Jews, some of us are people even of no faith,” Vance began. “But we are united in the basic, common-sense principle that we want the good guys to win, and we want the... Read More

Americans tend to be optimists about technology. We see it as a means of progress, comfort, wealth, and discovery. And why not? Technology has treated us well, and very few among us would pooh-pooh the engine, the hot water heater, the refrigerator, the word processor, the text message. In technology—it might be a mild blasphemy to say—we live and move and have our being. Technology shapes how we work, travel, and eat—even how we think and write and speak to one another. And technology... Read More

The Christian public witness has raised a voice of emancipation in American history. Our faith has provided the civic muscle to build schools for the poor and hospitals for the sick. Christians have visited the lonely and comforted the dying. The church has confronted sex trade pimps and run off neighborhood dope peddlers. It’s no exaggeration to say that no other institution in America has a comparable record of service. At our best, Christians have illuminated the way toward justice and... Read More

By the time Hilary Clinton “put half of Trump’s supporters” into “the basket of deplorables” in 2016, I confess I was frustrated enough to largely agree with her—even though she was talking about people I cared about in communities like mine. It seemed simple to me at the time: If you don’t want to be called “deplorable,” maybe don’t behave so deplorably.  Eight years later, I don’t need to rehash all the reasons I’d come to feel that way. The excesses of... Read More

On the morning of Friday, September 27, I sent a frantic text message to my cousin Paul: “Been thinking of Granny’s house and hoping it survives this storm! Let us know!” It wasn’t long after I sent the text that the lights went out, along with the internet. And cell signal, already spotty in the mountains, seemed to drop altogether. There we were: me and my husband and our two small children, alone with the wind, the rain, and our worry. I live in the mountains of Western North... Read More

One of the biggest Christian charities in the United Kingdom is being investigated by regulators following reports of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and escalating internal tensions. After opening a statutory inquiry into Barnabas Aid—a nonprofit that brings in £21.6 million ($28.3 million) a year to assist persecuted Christians—the UK’s Charity Commission announced last week that it had issued financial sanctions against the group. “Due to concerns that the... Read More

When Jesus told the 12 disciples to shake the dust off their feet in protest of any town that did not receive them, it is easy to forget their mission was among fellow believers in Yahweh. Jews were speaking to Jews, and the message was simple: The kingdom of God is near. But Jesus foresaw even greater opposition than rejection, according to Matthew 10. His disciples would be dragged before councils, flogged in the synagogues, and betrayed to death by their own brothers, he warned. “I am... Read More

Questions of bishops stirred controversy in Costa Rica. Amid the joy of the convening General Conference of the Global Methodist Church as the new denomination ratified and modified the provisional decisions of its transitional leadership, the episcopacy emerged as the one issue that could rouse serious disagreement.  Who would be in charge of the new church? How many bishops would there be? How would they be elected, and how long would they serve? What would they do, specifically? How... Read More