In our essay last month, we proposed that presumed incoming Alabama governor Tommy Tuberville (R) pursue an aggressive and innovative political strategy to stem the growth of Islam in his state. His challenge, however, is no longer confined to the spread of the so-called religion of peace.

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, what had largely been an implicit alliance between Islamist activists and two predominant elements of American progressivism — gender anarchists and racial idolators — has increasingly declared itself in public.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles.

Consider the coalition behind Columbia University’s Gaza encampment in April 2024. Columbia University Apartheid Divest brought together 116 student organizations, including the Muslim Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Genderev, the Black Student Organization, and White Coats 4 Black Lives. Its members made common cause under the banner of fighting interconnected systems of oppression. That January, the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, representing organizations including CAIR and the Muslim American Society, partnered with the left-wing ANSWER Coalition to organize a massive demonstration in Washington.

Strained bedfellows

The alliance is mystifying, to say the least. These two progressive wings treat sex as a social construct and race as the master category of politics. Their Islamist allies adhere to religious traditions that condemn the progressives’ core sexual beliefs. What holds them together is a common enemy: the Western political and cultural order, whose foundations are deeply indebted to the Bible.

Classical liberalism and the freedoms associated with it did not emerge from a vacuum or from secular reason alone. The Declaration of Independence’s assertion of unalienable rights endowed by a Creator tracks the Bible’s claim that human beings bear the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–27). Equality before the law, the restraint of arbitrary power, and the distinction between divine and human authority draw on the Mosaic law’s limits on kings (Deut. 17:14–20) and the New Testament’s insistence that Caesar’s domain is not total (Matt. 22:21; Rom. 13:1–7).

Conscience, proportional justice, the dignity of the individual, and the possibility of ordered liberty under law are human applications, however imperfect, of Old and New Testament teaching. The progressive and Islamist camps challenge this inheritance from very different directions. Progressives increasingly reject biblical moral authority; Islamists seek a political order governed by their interpretation of divine law. Neither has much use for the classical liberal settlement that emerged in the Christian West.

No ‘queering’ the Quran

Gender idolatry begins by denying the created order stated in Genesis. Male and female are not optional social performances; they are the binary given in the text (Gen. 1:27; 2:18–24). The framework that elevates subjective identity over biological sex treats the Bible’s account as an oppressive artifact worthy of dismantling.

Here, traditional Islam and Christianity have considerably more in common with each other than either does with contemporary gender ideology. Both uphold a divinely established sexual order. Both condemn homosexual acts. Their theological foundations differ, but their moral prohibitions frequently overlap.

Traditional Islamic jurisprudence, however, has gone considerably further in the punishments it prescribes. The Quran condemns the conduct of the people of Lot (7:80–81; 26:165–166; 27:54–55; 29:28–29), while one hadith states: “If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.” Iranian law still prescribes the death penalty for certain acts of sodomy. Hamas’ record of repression in Gaza offers little comfort to those whose sexual freedom is celebrated in Western progressive salons.

Yet the alliance endures. At New York City’s 2024 Pride parade, pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route beneath a banner proclaiming, “No queer liberation without Palestinian liberation.” For these activists, solidarity against a common political adversary evidently outweighs profound differences over sexual morality.

‘Race’ to conquest

Racial idolatry performs parallel work. The New Testament’s declaration that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28) supplies an important theological root of the classical liberal rejection of inherited status as the basis of rights. Rights attach to the individual, not to the bloodline, race, or social strata a person is born into.

Intersectionality, as developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 essay “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” examines overlapping systems of discrimination associated with race, sex, and other categories. In contemporary progressive politics, this framework is frequently enlisted to sort political conflicts into hierarchies of oppressor and oppressed. Muslims, once treated as outsiders to the Western political order, now occupy a prominent place in the progressive hierarchy of victimhood.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles. Historical Islamic expansionism and the dhimmi (second-class citizen) system are viewed through the lens of Western imperialism rather than subjected to the same criticism directed at Christianity’s historical entanglements with political power. This produces a selective hierarchy of harms and victims: Islamic religious claims may receive deference even as the Bible’s moral authority is rejected.

RELATED: Is ‘Islamophobia’ irrational?

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A common enemy

The gender and racial wings, therefore, share an enemy with Islamism that is more precise than “conservatism.” Their respective doctrines may be incompatible, but both challenge the Western liberal order, which places limits on the claims of political and religious authority over the individual. Consider Judith Butler’s description of the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians as “armed resistance” rather than terrorism. Butler acknowledged that the attacks were terrible but insisted that they be understood as resistance to oppression. The language makes it possible to place Hamas within a progressive account of political struggle despite the movement’s deeply illiberal religious commitments.

Anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman has documented the longer “red-green” pattern: leftist and Islamist actors finding common cause against Western institutions and Israel while maintaining incompatible doctrines on sex, apostasy, and religious authority. Historical precedents are hardly encouraging. Secular allies were pushed aside after the Iranian Revolution, demonstrating how quickly a revolutionary coalition can dissolve once the question of who will govern has been settled. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, and there is no reason to assume the next stanza will end differently.

American progressives appear confident that the alliance can be sustained indefinitely through the shared vocabulary of equity, anti-imperialism, and opposition to patriarchal power. Islamists, meanwhile, have learned to employ that vocabulary in Western academic and media institutions without abandoning their own religious commitments concerning women, homosexuals, or nonbelievers.

The net result is that the classical liberal inheritance, rooted in the Bible’s promises about the dignity of the individual and the limits of coercive state or ethnic power, remains their common obstacle. Our proposal that Alabama initiate a constitutional debate, insisting that the state’s history and tradition are not interchangeable with Islamic teaching, is one political means of defending that inheritance.

Progressives will always default to acting as though the obstacle is invisible as long as there are constituents who can claim status as victims. Thus, they hope that a shared basket of purported miseries will be sufficient to sustain what is otherwise a shallow alliance of convenience.

The progressives will discover, too late, that the doctrines they dismantled in the name of anarchy and equity were all that stood between them and the caliphate’s scimitar. They will also learn that a fungible hierarchy of victimization offers no sanctuary once the victors decide to rewrite the list.

​American muslim task force, Biblical foundations, Cair, Christianity, Classical liberalism, Gender ideology, Hamas attacks, Intersectionality, Islam, Islamophobia, Lifestyle, Faith 

The new trailer for Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” promises a dazzling sight: a world coming into being. Fans of C.S. Lewis will be watching Aslan and the White Witch. I’ll be watching Uncle Andrew. He may be the book’s most disturbing character because he teaches himself to deny what he knows.

Andrew’s talent for explaining away unwelcome truth raises an uncomfortable question about Gerwig’s adaptation. Will she allow Lewis to tell his Christian story, or will she explain its Christian meaning away?

God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at self-defense that he loses the ability to listen.

As a philosophy professor and Christian pastor, I recognize the temptation. Education can help us discover truth. It can also equip us with elaborate excuses for resisting it. An impressive vocabulary does not guarantee an honest mind.

Lewis introduces Uncle Andrew as a man convinced that intellectual distinction exempts him from ordinary duties. Keeping promises is for lesser people. Andrew knows the secrets of the occult, so he imagines he can send children into dangers he refuses to face himself. He calls his cowardice greatness.

The vice is familiar: Exceptional ability supposedly confers exceptional moral privileges. A radical professor who believes his political vision justifies tearing down inherited institutions uses Andrew’s logic. So does the politician who excuses the dangers of communism or socialism because a glorious future allegedly demands sacrifices now. The superior mind claims authority to break rules it imposes on everyone else.

Then Uncle Andrew meets Aslan.

At first, Andrew hears the Lion’s song as music. It stirs thoughts and feelings he does not want to entertain. He then tells himself that no lion could possibly sing. He must have heard roaring. The longer Aslan sings, the harder Andrew works to believe his own explanation. Eventually he hears only animal noises, even when Aslan speaks.

Lewis gives us the verdict: “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

Notice the order. Andrew recognizes something, resists it, and finally loses the ability to recognize it. His ignorance is learned. What looks like an intellectual limitation begins as a moral refusal.

RELATED: The lion, the witch, and the worldview war

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That’s why I worry about the film. A director can admire Lewis’s portals, creatures, and cosmic song while rejecting the Creator who gives them meaning. She can retain the scenery and rewrite the moral order. The result may look like Narnia without being Lewis’ Narnia.

A story has more than recognizable characters and scenes. It tells us what is good, what has gone wrong, and what would make things right. For Lewis, creation has a good and authoritative Creator. Sin requires repentance. Redemption answers a need human beings cannot overcome by declaring themselves enlightened.

Could a filmmaker present that vision faithfully without sharing Lewis’ faith? Certainly. But she must first let the author challenge her own assumptions. If Gerwig turns his Christian account of creation into a comfortable endorsement of modern cultural priorities, she will have made Uncle Andrew’s mistake: hearing the song and insisting it is merely roaring.

The trailer cannot settle that question, and I will judge the finished film when it arrives. My concern is what Hollywood so often does to stories whose moral claims it finds inconvenient. An adaptation should not become an exercise in correcting the author.

RELATED: Netflix ‘adapts’ Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ — and Satan gets a sympathetic makeover

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Christians, however, should not congratulate themselves too quickly. Uncle Andrew is more than a stand-in for a leftist professor, a politician, or a Hollywood director. Lewis’ warning reaches the church as well.

In Romans 1, Paul writes of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God reveals himself through creation, but human beings refuse to honor him or give thanks. Their reasoning becomes futile, and their hearts grow dark. They claim wisdom as they become fools.

Paul does not describe every unbeliever as someone who merely lacks information. Our desires shape what we are willing to admit. We can demand more evidence while insulating ourselves from the implications of evidence already before us.

Christians can do this, too. We acknowledge God’s revelation in creation, then find reasons to disregard it. We know a biblical command, then use our intelligence to argue that our circumstances make us the exception. We defend Christian books without accepting their correction. Praising Lewis’ theology is easier than submitting to the God he confessed.

That is why Uncle Andrew belongs in a Christian reflection rather than merely a debate over a Netflix film. We should ask whether our explanations clarify the truth or protect us from it. Can we admit that our clever argument was an excuse? Will we confess when God’s Word confronts something we want to keep?

Christ offers forgiveness to sinners who have spent years defending their sins. His grace frees us to abandon our excuses instead of perfecting them.

I hope Gerwig gives Lewis a faithful hearing. The finished film will show us whether she has. Meanwhile, our own hearing deserves examination. God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at defending himself that he loses the ability to listen.

​Aslan, Cs lewis, Education, Filmmaker, Greta gerwig, Moral order, Narnia, Occult, Hollywood, Lion, Netflix, Moral authority, Sin, Redemption, Faith, Christian, Scripture, Opinion & analysis 

My aunt recently passed away after a long, grueling battle with cancer. An incredibly decent woman, she spent her final years insisting that time is our only non-renewable asset and that the hands on the clock move faster every year you stay alive.

When I was younger, I dismissed this as little more than garden-variety elder sentimentality. Standing at her grave on a rainy Sunday morning, I finally understood what she meant.

We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

In the 19th century, a French philosopher named Paul Janet offered a mathematical explanation for the subjective acceleration of time. He argued that each passing year feels proportionally shorter for a very specific reason. To a 2-year-old child, twelve months equals 50% of all known reality. By the time a person hits 50, that same year accounts for a rather pathetic 2% of their personal timeline. Janet’s arithmetic offers an elegant explanation for why the years seem to shrink, though it doesn’t tell us much about what is happening inside our skulls.

Reeling in the years

A study published earlier this year offers a more complicated explanation. Researchers have long suggested that time seems to accelerate as we age because adulthood lacks the novelty of childhood and adolescence. When every day resembles the last, we have fewer distinctive memories to look back on, making entire years seem to disappear.

Researchers examined 120 adults, ranging in age from 20 to 91, and found no significant relationship between how quickly participants felt the previous decade had passed and either the number of personal memories they recalled or the importance they attached to those memories. Instead, the sensation of accelerating time was associated with poorer cognitive performance, particularly on a test of delayed memory recall.

The findings suggest that our ability to form new memories may help explain why time seems to speed up as we age. They also raise an uncomfortable question about how much of our lives we actually remember.

Wasted on the way

Consider the difference between stepping onto an airport shuttle in a strange city and making your daily commute to work. In the unfamiliar city, you notice everything: the smell of diesel, the strange angle of the streetlights, the driver’s odd accent, and the dodgy-looking individual eyeing your wallet. Decades later, you may still remember that seven-minute ride.

Contrast that with your daily commute. You have driven that specific stretch of road thousands of times. The route is so familiar that you barely need to think about it. You arrive at your desk with 40 minutes missing from your conscious existence, unable to recall much of what happened between your driveway and the office.

Smartphones have given us another remarkably efficient way to make hours disappear. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions around the world spend their afternoons tapping on glass screens, watching short videos of strangers selling snake oil or arguing over trivial issues. The ultimate joke of the digital age involves paying hefty sums for a device that competes so relentlessly for our attention that we barely notice our own lives passing.

Even our attempts to preserve memories can interfere with forming them. In a 2014 study, psychologist Linda Henkel found that people who photographed objects during a museum tour subsequently remembered fewer details about them than people who simply observed them. The effect wasn’t universal — taking more focused photographs produced different results — but the finding raises an interesting possibility. A parent filming a child’s piano recital might come away with a beautiful MP4 file and surprisingly little memory of the performance itself.

RELATED: The Ireland I grew up in is gone

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Where the time goes

Family life has its own peculiar relationship with time. Raising kids feels like an endless march through tedious chores — changing diapers, insisting that Legos not be put in one’s mouth, packing lunch boxes, folding laundry, and driving to soccer practice. Yet parents, from Boston to Brisbane, are shocked by how quickly their toddlers turn into college freshmen.

Kids force constant novelty into a household through broken bones, lost teeth, spontaneous questions about death, and the unexpected introduction of garden creatures into the living area. Individual days can feel agonizingly long because every hour requires attention, yet the years somehow fly by in retrospect.

Modern society has, in many ways, made convenience the guiding principle of daily life. We tap an icon to order takeout. We stream movies dictated by predictive algorithms. We substitute memes and text messages for actual human voices. We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

And yet some of our most enduring memories come from doing the same things over and over again. Repeating specific holiday meals or annual camping trips may seem like a mindless, even pointless, routine to an outsider. It is not. Those moments become lasting markers in our memories. No one remembers a random Tuesday from six years ago, but everyone remembers the Thanksgiving when the oven exploded or the road trip when the radiator burst and Dad used some colorful language to convey his thoughts. Traditions give us memorable moments to return to as time moves on.

Now that my aunt is gone, I keep thinking about those Sundays at her house. I think of the roast dinners, the endless slices of cake, the hot tea, and her constant reminders to do something useful with my life.

At the time, I thought those Sundays would go on forever.

​Ancestors, Cognitive performance, Culture, Death, Family, First-person, Kids, Life, Lifestyle, Memories, Paul janet, Time, Memento mori 

On October 14, Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy sat down for an interview on NBC’s “Today” show with Craig Melvin.

Melvin pressed Cathy on the company’s past stance regarding LGBTQ issues. In 2012, Dan Cathy, Andrew’s father and former CEO, publicly supported the biblical definition of marriage, which triggered protests, boycotts, and controversy.

The company also faced criticism over past donations from its foundation to Christian groups, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Salvation Army, that some criticized as opposing LGBTQ rights. In 2019, Chick-fil-A redirected its charitable giving toward education, homelessness, and hunger.

When Melvin asked what Cathy would say to people who protested or boycotted because they felt Chick-fil-A didn’t “stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” Cathy said, “Well, for anybody that hadn’t tried us, we’d love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we’re known for. I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they’ll see that they’re welcome to come eat with us.”

When Melvin followed up by insinuating that Cathy “[didn’t] want to talk about that chapter in Chick-fil-A’s history,” Cathy replied that the company was “focused on serving everybody that come in and eat with us.”

Melvin then asked for “the company’s official position on equal rights.”

“We’re focused on hospitality, serving great-tasting food and great service,” Cathy replied.

LGBTQ advocates, progressive outlets, and even some celebrities criticized Cathy for what they interpreted as dodging the questions to avoid explicitly supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace has the same complaint but for the opposite reason. On this episode of the “Steve Deace show,” he rips into Cathy for selling out to the secular culture, despite the company’s increasing profitability.

“Last year, Chick-fil-A made almost $24 billion in revenue … up 5% from their revenue in 2024,” he says.

He shares these numbers to prove that Cathy’s evasive answer was not financially motivated.

“Whatever PR firm that convinced him that this was the right way, can that be publicized so I can make sure that everybody I know in the Christian conservative space or any media space at all never hires them ever again?” says Deace.

The entire interview, he argues, “accomplished nothing [and] was unnecessary.”

“Nobody asked for this. There was no moment that required it. There was no tension whatsoever,” he says.

Deace believes that Cathy agreed to this seemingly random interview with NBC because “a PR firm told him to do [it].”

“What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul in the entire process?” he asks. “Well, apparently $24 billion was worth baring your soul and having it stomped on and humiliated and put through a Soviet struggle session on the “Today” show.”

“That might be the most pathetic video I’ve seen in the year of our Lord 2026 right there. And I’m offended at it. I’m angry at it.”

Cathy’s cowardice, he argues, indicates that he’s “going to the spirit of the age for repentance and absolution.”

“You’re making $24 billion a year and you’re actually a business who’s increased in value while many other people can’t afford much else, so you called up Devil HQ and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if we come in and take a lashing?’” Deace rails.

“If you’re going to do that, then open up on Sundays. Your Sunday thing’s not legit then. It’s a crock. It’s performance. It’s virtue-signaling.”

To hear more of Deace’s scathing commentary, watch the episode above.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Chickfila, Steve deace, Blazetv show 

Glenn Beck’s sister recently decided to make a big change, and it has opened Glenn’s eyes to something that he didn’t realize existed in America anymore.

“My sister just moved to Idaho. And for her whole life, almost her whole life, she lived in the same neighborhood in a town called Bellingham, Washington, which is like Marxist central,” he explains.

“It’s a beautiful town. The water, politically, it’s as far left as America can get. And she wasn’t far-left. She’s not a Marxist. She’s not even a Democrat. And in a neighborhood where politics was kind of the, I don’t know, the membership card, decades on the same street meant she had very few friends,” he continues.

“And so she packs up, and she moves to a small town about 10 miles from mine, and it’s a very religious town,” he adds.

As Glenn drove around the area, he noticed families looking up from what they were doing to wave — despite having no idea who he was.

“Mom’s in the front yard with the three kids and a garden hose, and you drive by and they’re like, ‘Hi!’” Glenn says.

“Old couple on their knees, you know, with the tomatoes, and every single person looking up and waving at a car they don’t know,” he continues.

And then when his sister had a truckload of sod delivered to her house, what he witnessed was “bizarre,” in a good way.

“And so this sod is delivered and comes in the morning. Landscapers aren’t due until about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. So, all day she had a driveway full of rolled-up grass sitting in the sun and a street full of neighbors she had known about for about a week,” he explains.

“Five o’clock, the landscapers show up. But so did the neighbors. Nobody called them. Men still in their, you know, work boots and moms and a church youth group and a pack of teenagers who apparently had nothing better to do on a week night than unroll a stranger’s lawn,” he continues.

“This does not happen anywhere in America anymore. But it was great,” he adds.

The lawn was done within an hour, and the youth group was sitting on his sister’s lawn eating pizza.

“It was a town full of people that take their faith seriously, as seriously as anybody else in America,” Glenn says. “And the only membership they checked was, ‘Do you belong to the human family?’ She did. That’s enough.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​America, Christianity, Glenn beck, Marxist, Religious, Small town, Blazetv show 

Earlier this year, something startling happened: Leading technologists at the AI frontier turned fretfully for guidance to a devout Orthodox Christian. A Silicon Valley book club tackled Fyodor Dostoevsky’s notoriously daunting novel “Demons” (also translated as “The Possessed”). Then an anonymous writer published an extraordinarily long essay on the book’s premonitions of what happens when human beings fall into falsely illuminated fanaticism. The author saw in Dostoevsky a warning for the people building artificial intelligence.

Verily, I thought, an enormous can of worms had been opened.

Technique and intelligence, severed from the disciplined heart, become hollow and ultimately self-destructive.

Orthodox Christianity is, in essential ways, the opposite of the power-hungry posthumanism animating so much of tech’s increasingly overt spirituality. The posthumanist dreams of a disembodied intellect mastering existence. Orthodoxy calls us to put our embodied intellect to work cleansing the heart, that the Holy Spirit of the loving Master of existence might dwell there.

The anonymous writer stumbled over the Gospel account of the Gadarene swine. Christ casts out Legion, permitting the demons to enter a herd of pigs that rushes to its destruction. Rather than welcome the man’s deliverance, the townspeople beg Christ to leave as if nothing had ever happened. Yet the essay concludes that “demons are not external enemies but our own capacities turned against us” and that they “must possess us fully” before we can be healed.

Not a great start. The temptation to mislearn even the plainest lesson is strong among people unacquainted with the embodied practices through which Christians slowly and humbly welcome Christ. But self-mastery had become a keyword among tech leaders watching crackpot woo one-shot more employees and founders. Anyone earnestly seeking self-mastery will eventually collide with Christian asceticism. I took stock of the development in “The Dostoevskian Moment.”

Lo and behold, last weekend Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, published a sprawling 24-paragraph meditation on another Dostoevsky novel, “The Brothers Karamazov.” He confessed that he had not loved the book, but ended by asking how analyses of a nation’s soul ought to relate to its major novels and works of art. His post inadvertently exposed the limits of intellectual examination conducted at a distance from the quiet experience of the heart.

Then another tech founder, Delphi’s José Maria Macedo, answered Collison with something beautiful. Father Zosima, he observed, teaches that love dreamed of can indulge fantasies of grandeur, while active love is “harsh and dreadful,” requiring labor and patience. Macedo finds that love in Alyosha, whose goodness persists through ordinary humiliations, cruelty, and grief.

RELATED: ‘Don’t be evil’ may be dead, but ‘don’t be Frankenstein’ is alive

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Collison’s reading, Macedo suggested, resembled Ivan Karamazov’s impulse to put life on trial before the intellect. Alyosha offers another way: a life that cannot be reached through rationality alone. Macedo cannot explain how God allows evil, including the suffering of children. Yet Dostoevsky makes him want to become more like the man who answers suffering with love. That, Macedo wrote, is why “The Brothers Karamazov” is his favorite novel.

Macedo has grasped something his fellow technologists desperately need. Technique and intelligence, severed from the disciplined heart, become hollow and ultimately self-destructive. Like the snake eating its own tail, they cannibalize life rather than return humbly to its inexhaustible wellspring.

At a moment when tech is increasingly transfixed by the desperate quest to “align” AIs with an all-too-human utopian agenda, Dostoevsky’s call to first align our own personal will with God’s grows steadily louder.

​Artificial intelligence, Demons, Evil, Heart, Intelligence, Orthodox christian, Posthumanism, Silicon valley, Children, Ai, Dostoevsky, Christ, Temptation, Big tech, Patrick collison, Gospel, Jose maria macedo, Opinion & analysis 

A friend from an Amish and Mennonite background who lives among those communities in Ohio told me she is frustrated by the reluctance of some people she knows to vote. When she asks why, she hears a familiar answer: “If it’s God’s will …”

Meaning: God will determine the outcome. Apparently, that settles their part.

If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.

The reluctance she described reaches well beyond Amish and Mennonite communities. Too many Christians sit out elections while maintaining a vigorous schedule of complaining about the results.

But the “God will handle it” explanation puzzles me because we do not apply that reasoning to the rest of life. Gracie would have a few questions.

I pray for Gracie before every operation. I still drive her to the hospital. After 40 years of caregiving, I have had plenty of occasions to trust God with things I could not control. I have also filled prescriptions, asked uncomfortable questions, and challenged decisions. In all of Gracie’s 98 operations, not one surgeon has said, “You prayed for God’s will? Good. I won’t need to scrub in.”

We understand responsibility quite well when something matters to us. Why does it become so mysterious when the subject is voting?

If you have a biblical conviction against casting a particular vote, that deserves a hearing. But “God will determine the outcome” explains why we can trust Him. It does not explain why we can excuse ourselves.

Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Those neighbors live under the officials we choose. Sheriffs, school boards, county commissioners, and legislators make decisions that reach into their homes and wallets. A widow reporting fraud needs officials who take her seriously. A family caring for a disabled child needs more than a sympathetic nod.

We can argue about which candidates will serve them best. But God’s sovereignty does not explain why loving our neighbor requires nothing from us.

Jeremiah 29:7 gives us an even less comfortable instruction. God told His people to seek the welfare of the city where He had sent them into exile and to pray for it.

The city was Babylon.

They had been carried away from home. If anyone had grounds to say, “This government is somebody else’s problem,” they did. God still assigned them work where they lived: Pray for the city. Seek its welfare.

We live here. Our children are growing up here. And unlike the exiles in Babylon, we have a voice in choosing our leaders. What exactly is our excuse?

Galatians 6:10 tells us, “as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone.” Voting gives us an opportunity to influence who exercises power over our neighbors. That makes a ballot something to use thoughtfully, not something to dismiss with a religious phrase.

Scripture does not contain instructions for an American polling place. It does contain instructions for people who have neighbors and opportunities.

RELATED: Billy Crystal no longer trusts God. Christians should listen.

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No candidate is going to usher in the kingdom of God. I would settle for one who understands the job, tells the truth, and remembers whose money he is spending. Expecting perfection is another convenient way to avoid making a choice.

Think about our brothers and sisters in countries where free elections are restricted or denied. Then imagine explaining to them that we leave our ballots unused because we trust God.

Passive citizens are ripe to become captive citizens.

Officials do not lose their authority because we lose interest. They continue making decisions, spending money, and exercising power. Our absence simply leaves the choosing to somebody else.

We are free to stay home. We should at least be honest about why. If we are indifferent, let’s call it indifference. If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.

I pray for Gracie. I still drive her to the hospital.

Pray for your country. Then do your part.

​Authority, Ballot, Christians, Elections, Love thy neighbor, Politics, Power, Voting, Country, Amish, Mennonite, Midterms, God, Scripture, Babylon, Opinion & analysis 

Megachurches are often the target of criticism. Common concerns focus on whether their size, production, and leadership models make deep discipleship, personal community, and accountability harder to sustain.

On this episode of “Live Free,” Josh Howerton, BlazeTV host and pastor of Lakepointe Church — a megachurch in Dallas, Texas, — speaks with fellow megachurch pastor Joby Martin of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida, to confront some of the biggest myths surrounding megachurches.

Myth #1: If the senior pastor doesn’t know you personally, he’s not really your pastor.

Some megachurch critics argue that true shepherding requires a pastor to know his congregants personally and be able to shake their hands, for example, but Howerton and Martin argue otherwise.

Martin points out that in the Greek, pastor and shepherd are the same word.

“Jesus says He is the good shepherd, and David says in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, so have you ever shaken Jesus’ hand?” he asks.

But there’s an important caveat. “Although I don’t personally shepherd all the people, all the people need to be shepherded,” says Martin, highlighting the crucial roles of supporting pastors, care teams, and other staff members.

“We accomplish the roles of the shepherd. We’re not caught up in the title of who gets the badge.”

Howerton notes how the apostle Peter in the first four books of Acts led a church of 5,000 strong. “We literally got a Bible verse that says the opposite of this,” he says.

Myth #2: Instead of getting bigger, large churches should be planting more churches.

Another common complaint about megachurches is that they grow bigger instead of planting more churches.

“Please don’t fall into the tyranny of the ‘or.’ God always works in the genius of the ‘and,’” says Martin, “because guess who all the church plants come to? The big churches.”

And the reality is, many megachurches are planting other churches.

“By the end of 2028, we will have planted 1,000 churches around the world. There are more people that attend the churches that we have planted today than how many people attend Eleven22,” Martin adds.

The same is true at Lakepointe Church, says Howerton. “We have literally personally funded, coached, and planted … over a hundred churches in the hardest-to-reach urban centers in North America by the end of this year.”

“News flash: When we plant a church, thousands of people don’t magically stop trying to come to my church,” he adds, emphasizing how church planting does not necessarily correlate to a megachurch’s numbers.

Myth #3: Because of their scale, megachurches are shallow in their discipleship.

Megachurch skeptics are quick to accuse large churches of compromising deep discipleship for numerical growth.

“I would love to introduce you to our thousand or so disciple group leaders and let you tell them that to their face,” Martin counters, noting that he’s currently preaching “verse by verse” through the book of Matthew.

“What else do you want me to do?” he asks, “and honestly, I don’t care what you want me to do. I’m not doing what you want me to do because I’m not trying to live my life for the approval of man but for the approval of Christ.”

“Galatians 1:10,” Howerton adds.

Myth #4: Megachurches are just big personality cults hyperfocused on the lead pastor.

Because megachurches are often pastored by widely known charismatic preachers, critics will accuse them of being personality cults.

Martin acknowledges that sometimes this is a real issue, but it’s not because of the size of the church but rather the failures of the pastor leading it.

“Are there some bad actors and some guys that have been terrible stewards of platforms that God has given them? Man, sadly the list is long,” he says.

“What you don’t know is the list is also long of churches that you’ve never heard of because they just don’t make the news,” he continues, “and like you’ve said a million times before, planes that land safely, they don’t make the news.”

After “[wrestling] through the parable of the talents,” Martin says he’s not sure if he’s a “two-talent guy or a five-talent guy,” but he’s certain he will not be a “a one-talent guy.”

“I got one and only life,” he says. “What do you want me to do? Preach less or tone it down or cap it?” he asks.

When people complain about the church getting too big, the question he asks is: “Who do you want me to un-invite?”

Martin notes that every time Jesus’ disciples tried to “cap it” by turning children away or attempting to control the size of the crowd, they “[got] in trouble.” But when they embraced the “feeding of the 5,000,” for example, they “[got] a high five from Jesus.”

Myth #5: Behind the scenes, megachurch pastors are greedy, abusive hypocrites.

One of the biggest accusations hurled at megachurches is that they’re pastored by men who are charismatic and engaging outwardly but greedy and abusive off the record.

“Can you go find some bad ones? Man, there’s no doubt. There’s no doubt about it. And man, it puts a blight on the name of the bride,” says Martin.

“And I fear for that man when he stands before the Lord,” adds Howerton.

However, both men, who know all the famous megachurch pastors, can also testify that the opposite is also true: often these pastors are different behind the scenes but in the best way possible.

Howerton says there are so many stories they’re “not allowed” to tell about sacrifices and generosity these megachurch pastors have demonstrated that would stun their biggest critics.

To hear the full episode, check out the video above.

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​Josh howerton, Blazetv show 

Before America had a Constitution, it had pulpits.

Pulpits that taught citizens how to think about authority, duty, and the proper limits of government. The ministers later associated with the “Black Robed Regiment” understood that biblical truth must step through the church door. They addressed public questions because they believed theology had consequences for all of life and that pastors had a responsibility not to comfort congregations but to form their biblical worldview.

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way.

For most of American history, pastors did not need permission from the state to speak about the moral and political questions confronting their people. They preached about slavery, war, temperance, elections, public officials, religious liberty, and national repentance because they understood the pulpit to be accountable first to God.

Restoring an old right

The modern expectation that pastors should carefully separate biblical teaching from anything deemed “political” would have been foreign to much of the American church that helped shape this country.

That context is important because the fight over the Johnson Amendment is often framed as though churches are seeking some new political privilege. We are not asking the government to give pastors a new right, but to stop restricting an old one.

The origins of the Johnson Amendment are revealing. In 1954, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson was facing a primary challenge from Dudley Dougherty, a wealthy young Texas politician whose fierce anti-communism appealed to supporters of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Dougherty was hardly a formidable opponent — Johnson defeated him by more than 40 points in the Democratic primary — but he had sympathizers in powerful conservative organizations, including the Committee for Constitutional Government and Facts Forum, a media operation established by Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt.

Johnson was particularly concerned about the Committee for Constitutional Government, which had circulated material promoting Dougherty. He asked his staff to investigate whether its activities violated election laws or threatened its federal tax exemption. The answer on the latter question was apparently no.

Johnson was undeterred. Having investigated whether existing law could be used against his political opponents, he now proposed changing the law itself. That July he introduced an amendment to the federal tax code barring tax-exempt charitable organizations from participating in political campaigns. It passed without debate. Churches, which had played no part in Johnson’s dispute, were covered by the new restriction.

Freeing the pulpit

There was no sweeping national debate about churches corrupting elections. There were no extensive hearings over whether the American pulpit had become dangerously partisan. Johnson claimed to be confronting communist nonprofit organizations, but churches had become a source of political opposition. The law was written broadly enough, encompassing churches; they were heavily affected by its enforcement and soon began receiving letters from the IRS. The restriction ultimately extended far beyond Johnson’s immediate political dispute, reaching into the pulpits of American churches for generations.

Today, the Johnson Amendment prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, including churches, from supporting or opposing candidates in political campaigns.

This restriction is at the center of the legal challenge by National Religious Broadcasters. Churches remain free to address public policy issues, including controversial ones, but pastors face restrictions when their speech crosses into supporting or opposing a political candidate. NRB seeks to protect the freedom of churches and their pastors to speak from the pulpit without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

The broader concern is what decades of uncertainty, legal caution, and fear of enforcement have produced inside churches themselves: a deep-seated culture of self-censorship.

‘Political’ … or biblical?

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way. Politicians took questions involving abortion, marriage, sexuality, race, religious liberty, and justice and turned them into partisan battlegrounds.

These were biblical questions long before they were campaign issues.

Politics does not acquire ownership of a moral question merely because politicians begin arguing about it. Scripture had something to say about marriage, government, money, justice, and human dignity long before there were Republicans, Democrats, campaign platforms, or federal agencies. The church does not surrender those subjects when they appear on a ballot.

Perhaps pastors will stop being accused of bringing politics into the pulpit when politicians stop dragging biblical questions into politics.

That does not mean churches should become campaign headquarters. They should not. The pulpit should never become an appendage of either the Republican or Democratic parties. Biblical authority is diminished whenever Scripture is bent to serve political power.

But there is an opposite error: treating “nonpartisanship” as a reason for silence whenever Scripture touches a politically controversial subject.

A pastor should be free to preach biblical truth without compromise and apply it to the real-world questions confronting his congregation. If Scripture challenges the left on abortion, sexuality, family, or religious liberty, he should say so. If it challenges the right, he should say that too. The standard is not partisan usefulness. It is biblical fidelity.

That is why NRB entered the legal challenge to the Johnson Amendment.

The district court dismissed our case on jurisdictional grounds rather than reaching the merits of the constitutional claims. The case is now on appeal. NRB will continue fighting because the government should not stand between a pastor and his responsibility before God.

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Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Courage required

But the legal fight only reaches so far.

The First Amendment can protect a pastor’s freedom. It cannot produce courage. A court can remove a restraint, but it cannot make a church recover confidence in the authority of Scripture. NRB can fight for the freedom of the pulpit. Pastors must decide whether they will use it.

That question grows more urgent because Christians are being formed every day by institutions that have no hesitation about preaching their own worldview. Social media, universities, corporations, entertainment, political movements, and influencers constantly catechize Americans about morality.

When churches avoid the same subjects because they have become politically controversial, they do not create neutrality. They simply leave the work of formation to everyone else.

America does not need a more partisan pulpit. It does need a freer and more courageous one.

We are fighting to restore an old right: that of pastors to open the Bible, preach the whole counsel of God, and speak to the life of the nation without first asking the government for permission.

​Black robed regiment, Constitution, First amendment, Hl hunt, Political campaigns, Religious liberty, Scripture, Theology, Johnson amendment, Lyndon johnson, Nrb, National religious broadcasters, Christian living, Lifestyle, Law, Faith