Category: Blog

Rodney Howard-Browne was among those who prayed over Trump in 2017

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, December 05, 2024Pastors Rodney (C) and Adonica Howard-Browne (L) with Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister (R) at their home in Hernando County, Florida. | Facebook/ Rodney & Adonica Howard-Browne

President-elect Donald Trump says he personally “pulled” a Florida sheriff whom he picked to run the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in part because of the way the sheriff treated Trump’s “pastors” and “other supporters.”

Chad Chronister, the sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida, first shared his decision to step down Tuesday night, calling the opportunity “the honor of a lifetime.” 

“Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister stated in an X post.

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Chronister did not provide further details about his reasons for backing out.

Trump later took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to clarify that it was he who decided to pull Chronister from the position, not the other way around. 

“He didn’t pull out, I pulled him out, because I did not like what he said to my pastors and other supporters,” Trump stated.

Citing unnamed sources, The New York Post reported Thursday that Trump’s “forceful hand” led Chronister to remove his name. According to the report, Trump was particularly displeased by Chronister’s handling of a situation involving church services during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Arresting pastors for trying to keep their churches open is a non-negotiable with the president, and that’s what the sheriff was accused of, and the president did not like that,” one source told the Post.

The nomination drew sharp backlash from some of Trump’s own supporters for actions Chronister took in March 2020, when his office arrested Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, the leader of River at Tampa Bay Church, for hosting in-person church services in defiance of Florida’s COVID-19 restrictions. 

Chronister ordered the arrest of Howard-Browne, who had openly criticized the lockdown measures and continued to hold large gatherings despite the statewide safer-at-home order. Howard-Browne was charged with unlawful assembly and violating public health emergency rules, but the charges were later dropped. 

During a media briefing, the sheriff later said he had no choice but to arrest Howard-Browne because “practicing those beliefs has to be done safely.”

“Shame on this pastor, their legal staff, and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job,” Chronister said at the time. “That’s not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency. We are hopeful that this will be a wakeup call.”

Howard-Browne and his wife were Evangelical leaders who prayed over Trump at the White House in July 2017. He shared a photo of the meeting with him standing over the president while he lay hands on his back. 

“Yesterday I was asked by Pastor Paula White-Cain to pray over our 45th President — what a humbling moment standing in the Oval Office — laying hands and praying for our President,” he wrote.

Televangelist Paula White-Cain personally invited Howard-Browne and his wife, according to Vanity Fair. White-Cain was at one point rumored to have led Trump to Christ.

An image shared on social media in September appeared to show a fundraising flyer from White-Cain in which she referred to herself as “President Trump’s personal pastor.”

CP reached out Thursday to White-Cain for comment. This story will be updated if a response is received.

Chronister is the second Trump nominee to step aside after Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first pick to serve as attorney general, also withdrew his name from consideration for a role in the incoming administration. 

Gaetz dropped out in November after scrutiny over a federal sex trafficking investigation that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer.

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By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, December 05, 2024The Instagram and Facebook logos are displayed at the 2018 CeBIT technology trade fair on June 12, 2018, in Hanover, Germany. | Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

A Virginia realtor is facing the possibility of having his license revoked over social media posts as concerns mount about the status of free speech for those working in real estate and other professions.

Wilson Fauber, a Staunton, Virginia-based realtor with a career spanning four decades, appeared before the Virginia Association of Realtors on Wednesday in a hearing to determine whether he violated the National Association of Realtors’ Standard of Practice 10-5. Adopted in 2020, the standard declares that realtors “must not use harassing speech, hate speech, epithets, or slurs based on race, color, religion, sex disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

“This all started, you could say, with a post that Wilson made on social media in 2015,” Fauber’s attorney, Michael Sylvester of the Founding Freedoms Law Center at the Virginia Family Foundation, told The Christian Post. 

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Noting how the post came as the U.S. Supreme Court was considering whether same-sex marriage was a constitutional right in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, Sylvester stressed that Fauber offered his analysis on the matter in his capacity as a Christian minister. Sylvester explained that Fauber “posted the biblical view on marriage,” sharing thoughts from the Rev. Franklin Graham on the matter. “He never faced any … blowback or pushback,” Sylvester said. 

Fauber’s social media post highlighting the biblical position on marriage came up when he was running for public office eight years later. Asked if he “still stands by his Christian beliefs on this topic,” Sylvester told CP that his client answered in the affirmative: “He loves everyone. He serves everyone. He doesn’t hate anyone, he doesn’t discriminate against anyone, but he stands with the Word of God.” 

Earlier this year, Fauber’s social media posts became the subject of a complaint lodged with the Virginia Association of Realtors over the purported violation of the National Association of Realtors’ Standard of Practice 10-5. Sylvester expressed disappointment that the Virginia Association of Realtors did not dismiss the complaint as “frivolous” but rather “issued a statement a few months afterward in April saying that if the allegations are true, then Wilson may have violated this new hate speech rule.”

“Our position is that Wilson said nothing that constitutes hate speech. Instead, he comes from a heart of love and he serves everyone,” Sylvester countered. 

The hearing, which was expected to last at least four hours, consisted of “the presentation of witnesses and cross-examination about [Fauber’s] religious expressions.” Sylvester expects a decision about his client’s future within the next week. If the Virginia Association of Realtors sides against Fauber, he has the option to appeal within the association.

Sylvester views Fauber’s situation as something that could have an impact extending far beyond the real estate profession. “What Wilson’s problem is is everyone’s problem because this same standard of practice, 10-5, that we’re talking about has been held up by some as a model that perhaps other professions should adopt as well,” he warned. 

Sylvester expressed concern about the possibility of pastors who are also lawyers having “their sermons or their social media posts put under great scrutiny when they’re trying to act in the ministerial capacity” if “their professional legal associations tried to constrain their speech.” Insisting that “you could imagine the same thing about physicians” who also serve as pastors, Sylvester identified Fauber’s case as “the tip of the iceberg.” 

“We want to head it off now before other associations adopt similar drastic rules,” he added. Fauber agreed that Standard of Practice 10-5 was problematic and called for its repeal: “It’s really an invasion of privacy. It’s a drastic overreach because the National Association of Realtors has voted to give themselves the power if they wish to police realtor social media of any type.” 

According to Fauber, “If I were to read a scripture such as Leviticus 18:22 and just close the Bible and not make any comment at all, if someone — and I’m a realtor and a minister — and if someone is offended by that, even if they’re not in the service but someone tells them that I read that passage of scripture, then any person, you don’t have to be a realtor, any person can file a complaint against that minister-realtor and be in the same shoes that I’m in right now. And that should not be; that’s an invasion of my privacy. 

Fauber identified the penalties for those found to have violated Standard of Practice 10-5 as fines ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 and removal from the National Association of Realtors and their state Association of Realtors. He stated that such a course of action could result in realtors losing access to the Multiple Listing Service, which he characterized as an essential tool that realtors have to use to stay in business: “If you do not have access to the Multiple Listing Service, you’re out of business.”

Sylvester described the Multiple Listing Service as “the database that real estate agents go to find out all kinds of information about houses that are up for sale and to list houses for sale” and “the key tool for the trade as a real estate agent.” He maintained that “to have that access revoked would be career-ending for so many real estate agents.”

This is particularly true for Fauber because although there are about a dozen private Multiple Listing Services not affiliated with the National Association of Realtors, none of them exist in his area. 

Fauber is not the first realtor to have his license challenged over his views on contentious social issues. Sylvester detailed how a Georgia-based realtor named Julie Mauck, who “spoke at a school board meeting against certain graphic and homosexual content being used in her public school system,” faced an “ethics complaint.” While Mauck “lost at her first hearing with the Georgia Association of Realtors,” she ultimately secured a “favorable outcome” after appealing the decision.

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, December 04, 2024Ben Shapiro speaks at the University of Florida in Gainesville on Oct. 18, 2023. | YouTube/Young America’s Foundation

A resurfaced clip of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro in which he calls parts of the Bible “problematic” has recently drawn criticism from Christians online.

The roughly three-minute clip, posted by several social users this week, appears to be from the Daily Wire founder’s October 2023 speech to University of Florida students as part of a Young America’s Foundation (YAF) lecture series.

During the exchange, a student who identified himself as a “devout Christian” asked Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, about his frequent usage of the phrase “Judeo-Christian.”

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“You’ve consistently promoted the idea that America was built on Judeo-Christian values,” the unidentified student tells Shapiro. “However, as a devout Christian, I have a difficulty accepting that term given Judaism’s rejection of Jesus.”

After stating that “Christians believe Jesus Christ is God,” the student said the Talmud — a book considered to be central to the Jewish faith — teaches that “Jesus is burning in hellfire and excrement,” a claim which is disputed among various Jewish scholars.

The student cited another portion of the Talmud attributed to a second-century rabbi, which states that “even the best of all Gentiles should be killed.”

“Given these irreconcilable differences,” the student asked Shapiro, “why do you insist on using this oxymoronic term?”

In response, Shapiro called the student’s statement a “really bad reading of the Talmud” and said the suggestion that any text, which is “somehow disdainful or hateful of Christians or of people who are not Jewish is in fact a tremendous misread of Judaism over the centuries and particularly today.”

Shapiro said he views parts of the Bible — both New and Old Testaments — as “personally problematic.”

“I can cite sections in the New Testament that I find personally problematic. I can certainly cite segments in the Quran that I find personally problematic,” he said. “The truth is I could probably find places in the Old Testament that I find personally problematic. That does not speak to what Judaism is and its historic impact on the world.”

After asserting that Judaism is the “foundation of Christianity,” Shapiro said the idea that “Judaism and Christianity are somehow completely de-linked and teach two completely separate lessons ignores the fact that the Old Testament is part and parcel of the New Testament.”

He then conceded that “Christians and Jews think different things.”

“Of course,” he added. “Otherwise, I’d be a Christian or you’d be a Jew. If we thought completely the same thing, then presumably we would have the exact same religion.”

Shapiro then turned his focus back to the original question of the Talmud and referred to other citations of texts using the secular Common Era dating written during what he said was a time of Jewish persecution under Christians. 

“As far as mis-citations from the Talmud, or even citations of texts that are written in the year 500 CE, at a time Jews were being persecuted by Christians in the Roman Empire, that seems to me a, uh, a real stretch to get to the idea that Jews today are overall hateful of Christians,” he said.

After claiming that he has long encouraged Christians to engage with their faith, Shapiro said he doesn’t try to convert anyone to his own faith because “that’s actually forbidden in Jewish law.”

“I’m not supposed to convert people to Judaism,” said Shapiro, who went on to criticize those “who spend all day online cherry-picking bad lines from the Talmud, a text that they have no familiarity with, and then trying to spin that to a giant myth about how Jews are seeking the extermination of Christians or some other bizarre conspiracy theory. 

“It’s a lie, it’s stupid, and the Judeo-Christian values of the nation are quite real because, once again, Judaism and Christianity have an awful lot in common.”

Among Christian voices criticizing Shapiro for his resurfaced comments is Calvin Robinson, a conservative commentator and former Anglican priest. Robinson responded to the clip on X, writing, “I find nothing in the New Testament problematic.”

“He is implying the Talmud is problematic but that is okay because the NT is, too,” Robinson added. 

Others focused on Shapiro’s apparent disdain for AD — Latin for anno domani, or “the year of our Lord” — in favor of the more secular CE, or Common Era, designation.

In the clip, Shapiro, who rose to national prominence with his articulate defense of traditional views on human sexuality against the rise of gender ideology, did not expand on his own views on the Talmud and Jewish law, which includes the notion that there are multiple genders.

According to some Jewish scholars, the Talmud teaches eight gender designations for human sexuality, including a nonbinary, or androgynous, designation.

Shapiro has long argued that men and women cannot alter the gender they were assigned at birth and that gender is a binary.

While many Jewish scholars make a distinction between Torah (or Old Testament) Judaism and Talmudic Judaism, Shapiro, in the past, has defended the Talmud as “pro-life.” In March 2023, he argued in favor of the distinction between the Talmud’s teaching on what he calls “intersex” people and modern-day gender ideology.

“The Talmud recognizes the presence of intersex people, and goes through various arguments about how to categorize them in terms of laws to which they are subject. NOWHERE does halacha humor the notion that a biological man can be a woman or that he should be treated as one,” he wrote in response to a New York Times op-ed headlined “Ancient Judaism Recognized a Range of Genders. It’s Time We Did, Too.”

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By CP Staff, Wednesday, December 04, 2024Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. | HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

Several allegations made during the early stages of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic that were dismissed as conspiracy theories might have been factually accurate, contends a new report from congressional Republicans. 

Released by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Committee On Oversight and Accountability’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward” report covers the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting both successes and failures.

The report presents several findings focusing on the origins of the virus, the management of public health measures and the long-term consequences of the pandemic response. It also drew condemnation from Democrats who claim the report only “fueled extreme narratives” and “vilified our nation’s scientists and public health officials.”

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The following pages detail five highlights from the report.

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By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, December 04, 2024Getty Images

A Christian youth organization has secured the right to hold meetings on every public school campus in Hawaii as the decades-long fight to ensure equal access to school facilities for faith-based groups continues.

The Christian conservative legal center Liberty Counsel announced that it secured a permanent statewide injunction last month allowing the Good News Club, a campus ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship, to operate in every school district in the Aloha State and have equal access to all public school facilities as any other group. 

“This is a welcomed win not only for CEF Hawaii but for all Christian groups in the public square,” said Acting CEF Vice President of Administration Fred Pry in a statement shared with The Christian Post. “The Constitution is crystal clear that the government cannot discriminate on the basis of religion or free speech.”

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Pry believes that all kids “deserve the opportunity to hear the truth about the life-saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“CEF will continue to fight for equal rights and access in public schools,” he said. “We have had at least 200 cases and never lost one.”

Good News Clubs are after-school programs that aim “to bring the Gospel of Christ to children on their level in their environment” on public school campuses.

In January, Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit after four school districts in Hawaii prevented Good News Clubs from meeting on public school campuses. The complaint maintained that by granting comparable secular organizations access to school facilities while denying that privilege to the Good News Club, the school districts were violating the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

Five months later, Liberty Counsel obtained a preliminary injunction ruling that the Hawaii Department of Education and the six elementary schools named in the lawsuit must allow Good News Clubs to meet at school facilities just like any other club. On Nov. 19, a permanent injunction that is much broader in scope ensured that Good News Clubs had the right to meet at any public school campus in the state. 

In 2001, the debate about whether Good News Clubs had the right to meet on public school campuses went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Good News Club v. Milford Central School, the justices ruled 6-3 that Milford Central School in Milford, New York, violated the First Amendment rights of the Good News Club when it prevented the organization from holding after-school meetings at its public school campuses.

The court determined that “Milford’s restriction violates the Club’s free speech rights and no Establishment Clause concern justifies that violation,” referring to the view espoused by the school district that allowing Good News Clubs to operate on campus would constitute a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that prohibits governments from establishing a religion.

More than two decades later, litigation over the ability of Good News Clubs to operate on public school campuses continues and extends beyond the now-settled lawsuit in Hawaii.

Liberty Counsel indicated that it is “preparing another lawsuit against a school district in California,” adding, “In that district, every view is welcome — except for the Christian club.” 

“Liberty Counsel has never lost a Good News Club case,” the law firm asserted. 

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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By CP Staff, Wednesday, December 04, 2024A Nov. 29, 2024, photo shows U.S. President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, stepping out of a bookstore while shopping in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Nov. 29, 2024. Biden on Sunday issued an official pardon for his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing for two criminal cases related to tax evasion and the purchase of a firearm. | MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, claiming that he was unfairly prosecuted for political reasons. He issued the pardon on Sunday despite repeated claims by him and his White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that he would never do so.

In a statement released Sunday, the president argued that his son was “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” due to his connection to the Democratic commander-in-chief.

While Biden’s move drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, it’s only the latest in a long, bipartisan line of controversial presidential pardons. Here’s a list of four other controversial presidential pardons. 

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By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, December 03, 2024Country music star Wynonna Judd (L) and her 28-year-old daughter, Grace Pauline Kelley (R). | Mugshot; Michael Dyer/CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143937883

A Virginia church is now seeking donations to replace their ministry van after it was stolen and totaled by Grace Pauline Kelley, the troubled 28-year-old daughter of country music superstar Wynonna Judd, who told police that she sold her soul to the devil.

Kent Hart, lead pastor of Ground Zero Church in Charlottesville, stated in a GoFundMe campaign seeking to raise $30,000 that Kelley stole his church’s $3,800 green ministry van and a trailer from in front of his house on Oct. 27.

He told The Daily Progress that he was in his kitchen in the afternoon when he suddenly saw the van leaving his driveway.

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“I’m talking to my daughter, and I look out the window and I see the van leaving my house,” Hart recalled.

Once he quickly confirmed that no one from his family had borrowed the van, he said he gave chase and saw a woman behind the wheel after she stopped at the edge of a road.

“I’m like, ‘You stole my van, get out of my van,’ beating on the door,” Hart told the publication. “And at this point, I see her very clearly. I saw her buzz cut and face tattoo.”

Kelley has prior convictions in Tennessee for methamphetamine production, evading arrest and driving while intoxicated. She also has pending cases in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, where she’s been charged with aggravated assault, trespassing, violation of a no-contact order, manufacturing methamphetamine, multiple allegations of failure to appear and allegations of probation violations, The Daily Progress reports. She now faces seven new charges in Albemarle, including three felony counts of grand larceny for allegedly stealing the church’s van and a trailer.

When he encountered Kelley, Hart said, “She didn’t seem like she was in her right mind at all.”

Albemarle police officer Corey Legg, who assisted in apprehending the suspect, wrote in his report that Kelley, who is currently in custody, claimed during the booking process that she sold her soul to the devil. Kelley asked to be committed to a mental institution, he added. 

“She began stating she had sold her soul to the devil,” Legg wrote.

“I advised the jail staff that she may have taken something,” he continued. “I was later informed that the jail staff observed something inside of Ms. Kelley during her body scan.”

An evaluation by staff at the University of Virginia Medical Center determined that what jail staff saw “was just gas.” Legg noted that Kelley’s bloodwork tested positive for heroin.

“We want the community to know that on a personal level, we have forgiven Grace Kelley. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44, ‘But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,’” Hart stated in his GoFundMe campaign.

“The Sunday following the theft, we turned off our livestream and held a special prayer service in which we began to pray for Grace and her Family. We have continued to pray for her reconciliation, rehabilitation, and redemption every Sunday. We pray that Grace will face the God given consequences for her actions, and that these consequences will be a means of grace that aid in her recovery and redemption,” he added.

“If the opportunity arises to be a part of her redemptive process, we would love to be a part of it in whatever way we can. We hold no animosity towards Grace and we hope and pray the best for her and her family.”

Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost

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By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, December 03, 2024Kash Patel, a former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, speaks during a campaign event for Republican election candidates at the Whiskey Roads Restaurant & Bar on July 31, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona. | Kash Patel, a former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, speaks during a campaign event for Republican election candidates at the Whiskey Roads Restaurant & Bar on July 31, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona.

President-elect Donald Trump announced in a statement on Truth Social his nomination of Kash Patel to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump’s nomination of Patel comes amid widespread discontent with the FBI and its Director Christopher Wray.

Trump appointed Wray to the position after firing the previous director, James Comey, in 2017. Wray’s 10-year term does not expire until 2027, suggesting that Trump will either ask Wray for his resignation or terminate him. 

Trump praised Patel as “a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.” As Trump explained, Patel served in the first Trump administration as chief of staff for the Department of Defense, deputy director of National Intelligence and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. 

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The president-elect expressed confidence that the FBI under Patel will “end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across our Border” in addition to bringing back “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity” to the law enforcement agency. As with most of Trump’s cabinet appointments, Patel’s appointment as FBI director is contingent upon approval from the Republican-controlled Senate.

Here are five things to know about Trump’s pick to lead the FBI.

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, December 03, 2024iStock/Marinela Malcheva

While total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1% this year through the end of October, Bible sales surged 22% compared to the same period last year, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. But is this a cause for celebration among Christians?

BookScan data show that in 2023, 14.2 million Bibles were sold in the U.S., while in the first 10 months of this year sales reached 13.7 million.

Publishers suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal report that rising anxiety, a search for hope, or highly focused marketing and designs are possible reasons fueling the spike in demand for the good book.

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“People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren,” Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, told the WSJ. “It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles … and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK.”

J. Mark Bertrand, founder of Lectio.org, a website about Bible design, suggested niche marketing of Scripture has been helpful too.

“I’d like to say there is a craving for knowledge of scripture, but a lot of smart people are thinking about Bible marketing and catering to every whim for Bible study,” he said.

For Tyndale House Publishers’ Amy Simpson, however, she has seen a surge in Bible engagement, particularly among members of Gen Z and college students.

“You have a generation that wants to find things that feel more solid,” she said.  

While the sales of Bibles in America this year might look impressive, it’s hardly surprising, as according to The New Yorker, “the Bible is the bestselling book of the year, every year.” And despite America’s increasing secularization, Barna found in 2013 that nearly nine out of 10, 88%, of Americans own a Bible. Ten years earlier, the percentage of Americans who said they own a Bible was 92%.

American Bible owners were found to have, on average, 3.5 Bibles in their home, while about 24% reported owning six or more Bibles.

In 2022, while commenting on the American Worldview Inventory, George Barna, director of research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, noted in a release that parents of preteens, children younger than 13, “are in a state of spiritual distress” as American adherence to biblical Christianity fades even in churches, and warned that a “tragic crash” is coming.

He explained that this problem was largely ignored by the Church because indicators like church attendance, Bible sales and donations had “remained sufficiently robust to feel reassured.”

“The disinterest and even disrespect many children show to their elders is partially a reaction to the lack of authenticity and integrity they experience in the presence of parents, teachers, pastors, and other cultural leaders. Children sometimes feel compelled to ignore adults whose talk and walk are inconsistent,” Barna said.

“When children are exposed to teaching — through words or actions, whether formal or informal — that are contradictory, they naturally conclude that the Christian faith is inherently contradictory and therefore may not be what they are seeking as a life philosophy,” Barna added. “Young people may be interested in and intrigued by Bible stories, but unless the underlying life principles are both identified and exemplified, children are likely to miss out on those life-changing truths.”

Data published by ACU show that of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6%, or 15 million of them, actually hold a biblical worldview.

The study shows, in general, that while a majority of America’s self-identified Christians, including many who identify as Evangelical, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and is the Creator of the universe, more than half reject a number of biblical teachings and principles, including the existence of the Holy Spirit.

According to Barna, “If ever there was a time when our nation was desperate for a grassroots spiritual revival led by the remnant in the pews who still revere God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and truth, now is that time.”

Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost

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By Billy Hallowell, Contributor Tuesday, December 03, 2024Shelley Luther | Facebook/Shelley Luther

Shelley Luther is a walking miracle — and now she’s also an elected official.

Luther, a former Dallas salon owner who made national headlines for defying COVID-19 lockdown orders, just won a seat in the Texas Legislature, capturing House District 62.

But it was her path before achieving electoral victory that captured the most attention. Luther was briefly jailed for keeping her salon open during the pandemic. Then, she faced a near-death experience. Luther recently spoke with Christian Post reporter Ian Giatti about her ultimate overcomer story.

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Listen to Giatti break it all down and read the full story here:

“The Inside Story” takes you behind the headlines of the biggest faith, culture and political headlines of the week. In 15 minutes or less, Christian Post staff writers and editors will help you navigate and understand what’s driving each story, the issues at play — and why it all matters.

Listen to more Christian podcasts today on the Edifi app — and be sure to subscribe to The Inside Story on your favorite platforms:

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