As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, our latest report, “Competing Visions of America at 250: Politics, Religion, and Identity,” surfaces a troubling signal for the future of our democracy — and it centers on the nation’s youngest citizens. Generation...
Over the next handful of days, millions of thoughtful and responsible people will go to the polls to cast ballots for many things, among them electing the president of the United States. I wish there had been two viable and…
Republicans with favorable views of Donald Trump continue to support political violence and election denial, according to Public Religion Research Institute’s 2024 PRRI American Values Survey. Also, most Republicans (62%) believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from…
Republicans strongly favor the deportation of undocumented immigrants even if it means first rounding them up and placing them in camps guarded by the U.S. military, according to the 2024 American Values Survey. That attitude coincides with Donald Trump’s campaign…
Listening to a Trump rally speech is like driving in a major city with no traffic lights, stop signs, cautions or rules. “Hammer down, pedal to the metal,” demolition derby from start to finish. Trump, long a master of not…
Former Southwestern Seminary evangelism professor Matthew Queen changed his mind Oct. 16 and pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the United States Southern District of New York attorney’s office and the FBI in a June 2023…
It is only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s hateful fascist rhetoric incites some of his followers to engage in violence against immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ people, members of the news media, election officials and others who…
The juxtaposition of experiencing the “Kingdom to the Capitol” tour followed by the “Faith and Democracy” tour in North Carolina on Sunday was a contrast in theology and politics that demonstrates the fracturing of American Christianity unlike any pairing of…
Donald Trump’s recent announcement that, if sent back to the White House, either the government or insurance companies would pay for IVF “for all Americans that get it, all Americans that need it,” was greeted with a mixture of surprise…
Research and painful experience consistently demonstrate domestic violence is as prevalent in churchgoing families as it is in the general population, author and domestic abuse survivor Geneece Goertzen said. “I want pastors to acknowledge and admit this is an issue…
Thirty years ago, James Dobson, Bill Bright, D. James Kennedy, Don Wildmon and two dozen other conservative Christian leaders who were frustrated with the direction of the nation’s courts founded a new legal group called Alliance Defense Fund to “protect”…
My grandpa, Edwin Penner, mortgaged his house to build our hometown Baptist church in Chico, Calif. Once built, he drove his Dodge pickup over every Sunday at 6 a.m. to turn on the heat or air conditioning for the comfort…
I taught my first children’s Sunday school class at the age of 16. I was responsible for teaching all children under the age of 12 for the summer. I was given no curriculum or direction. However, I felt called to…
