Category: Christian news

A decade ago, Barack Obama was president. Louis C. K. was hosting Saturday Night Live. And the first film in the God’s Not Dead franchise was in theaters. You may know the concept: A college student stands up to an atheist philosophy professor who’s trying to bully his class into denying God. The two engage in several debates; the student successfully defends God’s existence. The professor ends up turning his life over to Jesus before he’s hit by a car and killed. The movie was a... Read More

In June, Kirk Franklin and Maverick City Music’s Chandler Moore performed with actor and rapper Will Smith at the BET Awards. Smith premiered his single “You Can Make it” on a dark, smoke-filled stage, standing in a circle of fire with a small choir of vocalists in a raised semicircle behind him. The performance incorporated the sound of a gospel choir and solos by Franklin and Moore, but those nods to Christian music seemed to be in service of a message that was only vaguely spiritual,... Read More

Donna Freitas’s spiritual autobiography, Wishful Thinking: How I Lost My Faith and Why I Want to Find It, stands in the tradition of the “dark-night-of-the-soul” memoir. But unlike mystics such as St. John of the Cross, who found their way through dark times into the light of faith, Freitas is unsure whether she ever believed in God to begin with. A successful scholar and author of teen and adult fiction, Freitas was raised in a devout Catholic home in Rhode Island. She writes... Read More

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here. Since by nature of my work I’ve had to weigh in on a lot of controversial issues over the years, I’ve been cussed out a time or two. Sometimes, I’ve been yelled at with, “God damn you!” When an unbeliever says that, it’s one thing. Christians, though, mean it literally. A family I know and love was rattled recently to get a note from someone they considered a longtime friend suggesting that the... Read More

From wherever you’re sitting, this likely feels like a low point for the church in America. (Elsewhere it’s a different matter.)  Some of our neighbors see the church as an agent of reaction, pressing the brakes on every major movement for progress since the country’s founding. Others believe the church is a wolf in the process of losing its sheep’s clothing, finally being revealed as toxic, abusive, and self-protective. For still others, the church is a nonstarter, even... Read More

We’re in the last couple months leading up to an election some say is the “most important” of our time. As political presidential candidates vie for our votes, divisiveness and vitriol are at an all-time high in our country—not just in the public square but in the church as well. It’s more important than ever for God’s people to lay aside the wrathful ways of the world and take up the ministry of reconciliation and intercession on behalf of our nation. We must... Read More

Colombian cyclists often refer to themselves as escarabajos or “beetles,” drawing a comparison between the journeys of the small bugs across their varied terrain with those of bicyclists pedaling up and down their country’s mountainsides. For one of Latin America’s most popular Christian artists—a self-proclaimed escarabajo—a grueling ride can help generate a new song. “There is no recipe. I don’t have anything special. While I’m riding my bike, there’s a melody, a theme... Read More

After decades of resettling refugee families and placing unaccompanied refugee children in foster homes, Bethany Christian Services announced Tuesday that it is suing the state of Michigan for denying its contracts due to long-standing faith-based hiring practices. Bethany—the country’s largest Christian adoption and foster agency and one of ten refugee resettlement agencies in the US—says Michigan’s requirement that partners must hire from across faith traditions is discriminatory... Read More

On September 4, the US state department informed adoption service providers and waiting families that the People’s Republic of China (PRC), would “no longer carry out foreign adoption work,” except in a few narrow cases. Several hundred American families have been matched with children in China. Many families were scheduled to bring their children home in January 2020, the same month that China closed down due to its zero-COVID policy and have been waiting for over four and a half years... Read More