One of the nation's leading evangelists is warning Christian parents that Taylor Swift's newest album contains lyrics that seemingly oppose the faith. Swift released The Tortured Poets Department on April 19.

Taylor Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department, has garnered criticism from faith leaders who have taken to social media this week to express their distaste with the lyrical content that they believe mocks God and Christians.?

Let us not give up meeting together—even when we disagree.Recently, a woman at my church approached me with a question borne out of genuine curiosity. She asked, “You’re a female theologian. Why did you choose to come to our church when women aren’t allowed to preach here?”Since much of my work as a Bible scholar is public, it is no secret that I support women’s full participation in ministry, including in church leadership. So I wasn’t surprised that someone happened to notice my convictions did not match our church’s practice on this issue.It’s a good question, and one I’ve wrestled with regularly—since, at present, I don’t feel I’m able to serve our church in all the ways that God has called and equipped me. I so long for the body of Christ to embrace the gifts of all its members, not only here but around the world. But as CT’s April issue reminds us, the global church is far from united on what women can and can’t do in church.Still, I was glad my friend asked me about our family’s decision-making process, because it’s face-to-face conversations like this that prevent polarization. The role of women isn’t the only issue that divides us today. Approaches to racial reconciliation or diversity initiatives, our posture toward climate change, and politics—particularly when there’s another contentious presidential election in sight—are all areas that threaten to fracture our faith communities.According to The Great Dechurching, a recent book by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge, people are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. Forty million Americans who used to attend church no longer do—that’s 16 percent ...Continue reading...

The rage of the mob is a poor substitute for real community.This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.As Columbia University and other elite campuses erupt into protests against the United States’ diplomatic and military support of Israel’s war against Hamas, US Sen. John Fetterman denounced the antisemitic speech of some of these protesters, remarking on the social platform X, “Add some tiki torches and it’s Charlottesville for these Jewish students.”Whatever one thinks of Fetterman’s analogy or of the Israel-Hamas war, we would do well to listen to the common ring of the Charlottesville chant, “You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!” with the one recorded this week on the Columbia campus: “We have Zionists who have entered the camp!”An observer might have asked in Charlottesville, “What Jews are trying to replace you?” The white nationalists there would no doubt have told such a person that a shadowy cabal was seeking to import immigrants, to commit “white genocide.” Just so, another observer might ask at Columbia, “What Zionists have entered your camp?” Israeli military forces? No. The “Zionists” in question are Jewish students—one wearing a Star of David—attempting to walk on campus.At one level, the video of the students chanting seems almost farcical, like a parody out of an old episode of Portlandia. The leader yells out a sentence; the followers repeat it back—even to the point of repeating back, in unison, “Repeat after me.” Does that part really have to be repeated? Well, kind of; that’s part of what happens in a chant. The message is not reasoned discourse. The rote nature of the repetition ...Continue reading...

Do activists often invest their work with religious significance? All the more reason for Christians to be discerning co-laborers.I love nature documentaries, especially those narrated by David Attenborough. Whether watching with my children or on my own, I love seeing the majesty of the snowy Alps or kelp forests.But I’ve noticed that in recent years, nearly every somber vignette of a species struggling on the edge of survival ends with a call to action. Viewers are beckoned to take responsibility for causing a poor animal’s plight and to consider how they can fix things before the species is gone forever.I understand the impulse to believe that animals’ struggles should move humans to action. However, it is the ethics informing the narrator’s pleas that seem a bit muddled.By many documentarians’ admission, the species we marvel at on screen have emerged out of eons of struggles to survive and adapt to their surroundings. Sometimes, the narrators even remind us that this process has resulted in countless prior species disappearing into extinction.Whether you believe in a young or an old earth, in God’s hand or in meaningless physical forces guiding history, we can all agree that change, death, and selection favoring adaptability are features of life on earth. Witnessing it in real time makes for compelling television drama, but the moral indictment that you and I contribute to grave evil when one of these species goes extinct does not seem to square with the documentarians’ worldview.What compels us to see polar bears possibly going extinct in terms of moral right and wrong? If we take human action out of the equation, isn’t history littered with the bones of countless species that have gone extinct? Are not humans and their actions part of nature?A robust theology of creation careIf we listen closely, ...Continue reading...

The U.S. Senate is sending $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel as part of a $95 billion foreign aid package on Tuesday. With the bill approved in the Senate ... Read MoreThe post Senate To Give $26 Billion to Israel's Defense appeared first on The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

The plan would organize UMC churches in four global regions, with each given more leeway around same-sex marriage and other theological issues.The top legislative body of the United Methodist Church passed a series of measures Thursday to restructure the worldwide denomination to give each region greater equity in tailoring church life to its own customs and traditions.The primary measure, voted on as the UMC General Conference met at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina, was an amendment to the church’s constitution to divide the denomination into four equal regions—Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and the United States.According to the plan, each region would be able to customize part of the denomination’s rulebook, the Book of Discipline, to fit local needs. While church regions in Africa, the Philippines, and Europe have already enjoyed some leeway in customizing church life, the United States has not.The vote on the constitutional amendment passed 586–164, or by 78 percent, which means it surpassed the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional amendments. It must now go before each smaller church region, called an annual conference, for ratification by the end of 2025.If ratified by two-thirds of delegates to the annual conferences, the restructuring would allow the four regions to set their own qualifications for ordaining clergy and lay leaders; publish their own hymnal and rituals, including rites for marriage; and establish its own judicial courts. A new Book of Discipline would have one section that could be revised and tailored for each of the four regional conferences.The two-week worldwide meeting is the first meeting of the General Conference in five years, due mostly to delays associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows a painful schism that has split some 7,600 US-based churches from the denomination—a ...Continue reading...

The plan would organize UMC churches in four global regions, with each given more leeway around same-sex marriage and other theological issues.The top legislative body of the United Methodist Church passed a series of measures Thursday to restructure the worldwide denomination to give each region greater equity in tailoring church life to its own customs and traditions.The primary measure, voted on as the UMC General Conference met at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina, was an amendment to the church’s constitution to divide the denomination into four equal regions—Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and the United States.According to the plan, each region would be able to customize part of the denomination’s rulebook, the Book of Discipline, to fit local needs. While church regions in Africa, the Philippines, and Europe have already enjoyed some leeway in customizing church life, the United States has not.The vote on the constitutional amendment passed 586–164, or by 78 percent, which means it surpassed the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional amendments. It must now go before each smaller church region, called an annual conference, for ratification by the end of 2025.If ratified by two-thirds of delegates to the annual conferences, the restructuring would allow the four regions to set their own qualifications for ordaining clergy and lay leaders; publish their own hymnal and rituals, including rites for marriage; and establish its own judicial courts. A new Book of Discipline would have one section that could be revised and tailored for each of the four regional conferences.The two-week worldwide meeting is the first meeting of the General Conference in five years, due mostly to delays associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows a painful schism that has split some 7,600 US-based churches from the denomination—a ...Continue reading...

One of the nation's leading evangelists is warning Christian parents that Taylor Swift's newest album contains lyrics that seemingly oppose the faith. Swift released The Tortured Poets Department on April 19.

By The Freedom Articles War is waged by each ruling group primarily against its own subjects, to keep the ruling class powerful and in power,...At the Top, They’re ALL on the Same Side – Part 1 – Video #103

The world is realizing anew that our faith has tangible benefits. This is an opportunity for the gospel.As Christianity continues to decline in the West, the broader world has begun to notice something’s missing. There seems to be a growing awareness that—for all the scandals and failings of the church—the loss of a Christian culture leaves us all worse off, and that there are benefits to being a Christian and to living in a Christian society.For example, Derek Thompson recently wrote in The Atlantic about the loss of community that comes with declining church attendance. “Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall,” he concluded, “hold[ing] back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence.”Likewise, Harvard scholar Tyler J. VanderWeele has extensively researched the benefits of participation in religious services, finding that it leads to improved mental and physical health, happiness, and sense of meaning. Statistically, going to church regularly will help you flourish as a human being. As Brad Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia, has shown, regular church attendance even correlates with a more satisfying sex life!And then you have those like former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali who explain their conversion to Christianity at least partly as a response to the decay of the contemporary world, a world threatened by “woke ideology,” “global Islam,” and authoritarianism. “The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” Hirsi Ali said in an essay announcing her new faith. Famous atheist Richard Dawkins objected to Hirsi Ali’s conversion yet seems to ...Continue reading...

Beyoncé's right. Whether listening to Cowboy Carter or reading theology, diversity is a good thing.I wasn’t planning to listen to Cowboy Carter, the eighth studio album from American singer and songwriter Beyoncé. I’ve always had a love for her music—but country has never been my thing.Plans changed when I started to read what people were writing about the record, from comments on social media to reviews in major publications. Their reactions were bitter, even cruel. “Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ isn’t a country album. It’s worse,” proclaimed one review in The Washington Post. “Beyoncé has chosen to do Dolly Parton karaoke,” writes the reviewer. “She sounds like she’s doing Wild West bedroom cosplay in outer space.”“The lefties in the entertainment industry just won’t leave any area alone, right?” asked an interviewer on a One America News program. “They’ve got to make their mark, just like a dog in a dog walk park,” responded the interviewee.It’s not that Cowboy Carter is exempt from criticism. Its genre-blending experimentation won’t be to everyone’s taste. Some listeners may have reservations about Beyoncé’s departure from her earlier pop and R & B records. That’s fine. Music, like all art forms, is subjective. Thoughtful critique can serve as a means for musicians to grow as artists, and to engage audiences in meaningful ways.But that’s different from implying that Beyoncé can’t and shouldn’t sing country music simply because of who she is: not a white man from a rural small town, but a Black woman raised in Houston. A “stay in your place” undercurrent cuts through how critics have spoken about her ...Continue reading...

By The Conscious Resistance Documentary film maker Derrick Broze recently crowdfunded to complete his 17-part docu-series, The Pyramid of Power. He used traditional crowdfunding AND...I Funded My Documentary Without Banks or Debt! #CultDAO

By The Conscious Resistance Documentary film maker Derrick Broze recently crowdfunded to complete his 17-part docu-series, The Pyramid of Power. He used traditional crowdfunding AND...I Funded My Documentary Without Banks or Debt! #CultDAO

The leading third-party candidate for president of the United States has revealed a new position on abortion that includes a proposal to expand childcare benefits, prompting mixed reactions from pro-life groups.?

The U.S. Department of Justice's Inspector General maintains that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing or demonstrate hostility toward religion by circulating an internal document warning about connections between "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists" and "radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology."?

The co-founder of The Satanic Temple has challenged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to a debate on religious freedom in America after the governor said this week that Satanists couldn't be part of a recently approved chaplains program for public schools.?

Rep. Ilhan Omar's daughter claims she's been locked out of her housing on campus and can no longer use her dining plan for meals following her suspension as a result of her participation in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University and subsequent arrest for refusing to leave an encampment.

A Christian woman who survived a communist concentration camp in Europe recently explained how she is making preparations to die in an American prison after being charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for protesting at abortion clinics.

After lobbying from fellow Southern Baptists and Christians affected by the war, the House speaker moves a package forward. When deciding whether to protect his place in leadership as House speaker or go against his party to do what he believed was right, Mike Johnson turned to prayer.It had been weeks of hearing intelligence briefings and pleas from fellow Christians when Johnson ultimately sided with his convictions rather than conceding to the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. He backed a $95 billion foreign aid package that, despite the opposition of 112 GOP legislators, overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last weekend.Like many of his fellow Republicans, Johnson had initially opposed further aid to Ukraine, voting against it prior to becoming speaker and waiting months to move forward with an aid package after the Senate approved its version in February.He “went through a transformation,” according to one GOP colleague, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul. The shift may have come in part due to the influence of Ukrainian evangelicals, fellow Christian leaders, and his personal faith.“He got down on his knees, and he prayed for guidance and said, ‘Look, tell me. What is the right thing to do here?’” the Texas congressman told NOTUS’s Haley Byrd Wilt. The next day, Johnson said to McCaul, “I want to be on the right side of history.”The House vote on the Ukraine provisions, around $61 billion, was 311 to 112; a majority of Johnson’s colleagues voted against the measure, while aid to Israel and Taiwan had broader support. The Senate cleared the package Tuesday in a bipartisan 79–18 vote. Now the measure heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.Ukrainian leadership had grown more vocal about depleted weapons ...Continue reading...

After lobbying from fellow Southern Baptists and Christians affected by the war, the House speaker moves a package forward. When deciding whether to protect his place in leadership as House speaker or go against his party to do what he believed was right, Mike Johnson turned to prayer.It had been weeks of hearing intelligence briefings and pleas from fellow Christians when Johnson ultimately sided with his convictions rather than conceding to the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. He backed a $95 billion foreign aid package that, despite the opposition of 112 GOP legislators, overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last weekend.Like many of his fellow Republicans, Johnson had initially opposed further aid to Ukraine, voting against it prior to becoming speaker and waiting months to move forward with an aid package after the Senate approved its version in February.He “went through a transformation,” according to one GOP colleague, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul. The shift may have come in part due to the influence of Ukrainian evangelicals, fellow Christian leaders, and his personal faith.“He got down on his knees, and he prayed for guidance and said, ‘Look, tell me. What is the right thing to do here?’” the Texas congressman told NOTUS’s Haley Byrd Wilt. The next day, Johnson said to McCaul, “I want to be on the right side of history.”The House vote on the Ukraine provisions, around $61 billion, was 311 to 112; a majority of Johnson’s colleagues voted against the measure, while aid to Israel and Taiwan had broader support. The Senate cleared the package Tuesday in a bipartisan 79–18 vote. Now the measure heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.Ukrainian leadership had grown more vocal about depleted weapons ...Continue reading...

The human rights group Christian Solidarity International has appealed to the UN Human Rights Council to ensure that the Muslim-majority nation of Indonesia implements immediate reforms to protect Christians in West Papua, a region located in the archipelago's easternmost part, where indigenous people are predominantly Christian.

C.S. Lewis recommended discernment over diatribes in exactly the moments we're most eager to indulge in critique.I’d just finished reading one of C. S. Lewis’s lesser-known books, Studies in Words, when I happened upon a recent New York Times report on evangelical support for Donald Trump. The former president’s summer of legal woes is off to an early start, and many have asked whether the present trial (or another) will lose him support ahead of Election Day. The answer—among his base, anyway—is undoubtedly no.If anything, the opposite is true: In some circles, his adversities are hailed as a kind of vindication, his endurance on the campaign trail as a sign of divine blessing. “For some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, the political attacks and legal peril he faces are nothing short of biblical,” the report said. “They’ve crucified him worse than Jesus,” one Trump enthusiast told the Times.Now, the Lewis book is mostly fascinating linguistic history, but the last chapter examines how we use language to dispense criticism, and its final two pages are precisely the warning our political culture needs as we plod through another contentious election. It’s certainly the warning I need and the warning I hope fellow Christians will heed, particularly those of us in politically diverse families, friend groups, and congregations.I realized how much I needed it as I read that Times article. It published on Easter Monday and I read it the same day, the drama of Easter weekend fresh on my mind. Suffice it to say, the crucifixion line did not sit well with me.“Worse than Jesus”! I remember thinking. I agree some of this legal stuff is far-fetched, but are you kidding me? Do these people not know what crucifixion entails? Do they not know Trump probably sleeps on silk ...Continue reading...

By The Conscious Resistance Documentary film maker Derrick Broze recently crowdfunded to complete his 17-part docu-series, The Pyramid of Power. He used traditional crowdfunding AND...I Funded My Documentary Without Banks or Debt! #CultDAO

President William Ruto commissioned church leaders to meet with Haitian law enforcement, military representatives, and a gang leader to discuss Kenya's security mission.Kenya’s leaders aren’t saying much publicly about the security force they plan to send to gang-embattled Haiti. But they’re talking a whole lot with God.Last month, as armed groups escalated their insurgency in Port-au-Prince and plunged Haiti deeper into a historic humanitarian crisis, pastors advising Kenya’s government met for three days at a hotel in Nairobi to pray.In a sky-blue conference room at the Weston Hotel, three Kenyan pastors joined Haitian and American ministry leaders and Kenya’s first lady, Rachel Ruto, to plead for divine assistance for the beleaguered Caribbean country. They prayed for the 2,500-person multinational police force Kenya has volunteered to lead to help Haitian law enforcement. At one point, meeting participants told CT, group members wept.After two days of prayer, the first lady dropped in on an album release party in another part of the Weston, which President William Ruto owns, and announced her office had formed a prayer committee for Haiti. “We cannot allow our police to go to Haiti without prayer,” Rachel Ruto told fans of the Kenyan gospel group 1005 Songs & More.Kenya agreed last October to spearhead a UN-authorized international security mission to Haiti, but the deployment has faced various delays, including legal challenges and questions about funding.The prayer marathon was part of a broader effort by the Ruto administration to strategize “a spiritual solution for our police and people of Haiti,” according to the first lady. The initiative, coordinated by the administration’s “faith diplomacy” office, has so far included a national prayer gathering, a 40-day prayer guide for Haiti, and an official fact-finding ...Continue reading...