“Do you know that you’re going to die on Friday?” Brigitte Kranendonk asked her grandmother.

The 83-year-old woman began to cry. “I’ve made a mistake,” Brigitte Stegemann told her granddaughter, according to Kranendonk. She wept for nearly an hour.

This is not compassion if the person about to die cannot make herself understood. It is the machinery of death moving past the one vulnerable human being whose wishes should govern it.

Two days later, on July 10, Stegemann was dead. A physician had administered a lethal injection under Canada’s medical assistance in dying program. The question her family wants answered is as elementary as it is horrifying: Did she understand what was being done to her, and did she freely consent?

The details come from Kranendonk’s account of her grandmother’s final days. They demand serious scrutiny, not a soothing recital of the word “choice.”

Stegemann was a devout Christian with stage 4 stomach cancer. She had lived for about 18 months at a long-term care home in Cannifton, Ontario. She was hard of hearing, German was her first language, and her family says her understanding and memory were impaired. Kranendonk had helped care for her for 12 years and held her power of attorney for six.

According to her family, Stegemann had previously rejected an assisted death because it violated her faith. Yet while Kranendonk was away on a 10-day trip, staff arranged a MAID assessment. The granddaughter says she was told about the process only after it was under way. She had received routine updates about a fall and her grandmother’s need for a wheelchair, but nothing suggesting that death was now imminent.

When Kranendonk returned, she said, her grandmother was still eating, talking, and joking. At a subsequent eligibility assessment, Kranendonk says, the physician spoke of “medicine” and feeling “at peace,” without plainly explaining that the procedure would end Stegemann’s life.

“She doesn’t understand what you’re saying,” Kranendonk protested.

During questioning about her family, Stegemann gave answers her granddaughter knew were wrong. She said she had no living siblings, though two survived. Kranendonk was then asked to leave. Shortly afterward, she says, the physician announced that Stegemann had been deemed eligible for MAID.

On Wednesday, July 8, Kranendonk asked to see the paperwork authorizing her grandmother’s death. She was told Stegemann had signed it the previous day. Kranendonk says she has never seen the documents and does not know who witnessed the signature or how the request was explained. That was when she asked her grandmother whether she knew she would die Friday.

“I’ve made a mistake.”

ROMAIN PERROCHEAU / AFP via Getty Images

Kranendonk told her she could refuse. The following day, they ate ice cream, shared memories, and danced to a traditional German polka. “We had the best day,” the granddaughter recalled. Such ordinary tenderness makes what followed almost unbearable to read.

On Friday morning, according to Kranendonk, a nurse struggled repeatedly to insert an intravenous line, leaving her grandmother bleeding. When the doctor arrived, she asked whether it was all right to give Stegemann “medicine.”

“My Oma is not moving. She doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t say anything,” Kranendonk recalled. The doctor, she says, responded: “OK, well, I’m going to proceed.”

Stegemann was pronounced dead within minutes, her hands clasped in prayer.

The care home and practitioners have not publicly answered these allegations in detail. They reportedly maintain that Stegemann legally consented. No wrongdoing has been established. But Belleville police confirmed in September that the death was under investigation, and the family has sought a review by Ontario’s chief coroner.

Canadian law requires a voluntary, informed request and independent assessments. Ordinarily, it also requires express consent immediately before death. A narrow exception permits a written waiver of final consent when specific conditions are met. Even that waiver cannot overcome a patient’s demonstrated refusal or resistance.

Hannah McKay - Pool/Getty Images

The unresolved questions are therefore specific and grave. What did Stegemann sign, and when? Could she understand its meaning? Was there a valid waiver? Did she withdraw consent or express resistance? The documents and findings must answer them. Her granddaughter’s account cannot by itself establish a crime. It is more than enough to demand an investigation.

Defenders of euthanasia invoke “autonomy.” But autonomy requires comprehension, freedom from pressure, and a choice that belongs to the patient. It cannot be supplied by a doctor’s euphemism, a form no family member has seen, or silence interpreted as permission.

This is not compassion if the person about to die cannot make herself understood. It is the machinery of death moving past the one vulnerable human being whose wishes should govern it.

The burden belongs to those who ended Brigitte Stegemann’s life: Show that she understood. Show that she chose. Until then, do not ask her family to call it mercy.

Socialists and Islamists once toppled a shah. Then came the reckoning.

The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January. On the party's left flank, the Democratic Socialists of America saw six new House candidates win, joining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). The DSA’s own post-election statement boasts that its members will fight for Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and an arms embargo on Israel.

Michigan elected Abdul El-Sayed, the nation’s first Muslim senator. New Jersey elected Adam Hamawy to the House. These are different developments, but they have prompted a familiar question on the right: Is a red-green alliance taking shape in American politics?

An activist minority need not command a majority to shift a party’s agenda.

The red-green alliance is a name for tactical cooperation between the revolutionary left and political Islam. They disagree about faith, society, and individual liberty. Yet both have at times opposed American power and Israel, and both know how to organize. The danger lies in the shared campaign that masks incompatible long-term ambitions. A mere count of socialist and Muslim officeholders doesn’t tell the whole story. The evidence lies in the organizations working together.

History supplies a warning about alliances whose members believe they can use one another. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought together clerics, liberal nationalists, Marxist guerrillas, and Islamic leftists against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini possessed something his rivals lacked: a nationwide network of mosques and religious authorities capable of mobilizing followers.

From exile in France, Khomeini promised religious freedom. The secular left and nationalist opposition hoped to share in the new order or eventually direct it. The Tudeh Communist Party endorsed the Islamic Republic and praised its opposition to American influence. Its leaders treated cooperation as a route to influence. Khomeini treated it as a temporary convenience.

The result was catastrophic for his former partners. After the monarchy fell, the clerics consolidated authority. The new constitution established religious guardianship over the state. President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was dismissed in 1981. Armed opposition drew savage reprisals. By 1983, the regime had outlawed Tudeh and arrested its leaders. In 1988, Iranian authorities executed thousands of political prisoners, including members of leftist movements.

Within a decade, many of the forces that had helped bring down the Shah had been imprisoned, executed, or driven abroad. Their common enemy had concealed profound disagreements about who would rule afterward. The clerics won that struggle.

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America in 2026 is not Iran in 1979, and El-Sayed is no Khomeini. But the Iranian precedent exposes a danger that transcends country and century: A coalition assembled around common enemies may conceal irreconcilable ideas of what should replace them.

New York supplies a concrete example. Zohran Mamdani rose through the DSA, while the Muslim advocacy organization CAIR Action backed his mayoral campaign. Socialist activists and Muslim political organizations worked toward the same electoral result. The alliance did not require agreement on every issue. Its strength came from a candidate and a common cause.

The DSA’s demand for an arms embargo on Israel illustrates another point of convergence. El-Sayed, though neither a DSA member nor its endorsed candidate, campaigned against American military aid to Israel. The overlap is political, and we should ask how enduring it may become.

Still, moderate Democrats also won in Republican territory. The victories of Muslim candidates and socialist candidates do not automatically amount to a unified Islamist-socialist movement. The point is narrower and more consequential: Activists who share a few urgent demands can gain influence in a party that has more seats than agreement on how to use them. Khomeini knew how to resolve those ambiguities.

And those ambiguities will matter in the coming weeks, months, and years. Democrats will control congressional committees and possess subpoena power. The DSA’s small House bloc can pressure party leaders, introduce legislation, and shape the debate ahead of 2028, even while President Trump retains his veto. An activist minority need not command a majority to shift a party’s agenda.

Blaze Media Illustration

What happens when tactical allies gain power and discover their disagreements? Iran offers one answer, in a country whose institutions collapsed amid revolution. America’s Constitution and its divided political institutions offer a profoundly different order. That difference is a safeguard, but it is no excuse for ignoring the leverage that disciplined factions can acquire inside a governing coalition.

Conservatives should respond with a program rather than a historical analogy alone. That means fiscal restraint, a government limited by constitutional boundaries, protection for religious liberty, and a defense of parental authority in education. It also requires arguments about the cost of living and the prospects for working families, issues that helped move voters this November.

Socialism asks Americans to place greater economic authority in the state. Political Islam, where it seeks religious authority over civil government, raises a different constitutional challenge. Neither claim should be confused with the mere presence of socialists or Muslims in elective office. The task is to test the policies and organizations actually seeking power.

The left’s victories give its activists a louder voice and new opportunities to test their alliances. The history of Iran warns against underestimating what a disciplined partner can do once admitted to power. Conservatives have two years to offer voters something better before 2028. A history lesson alone will not do the job.

Why does God allow the wicked to win elections?

The midterm elections have left many Christians asking a troubling question: Why would God allow this to happen?

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico, who has invoked Scripture in defense of abortion rights and transgender policies, won a Senate seat. He once declared that “God is nonbinary”, a remark he later acknowledged was deliberately provocative.

The question is not simply why God permitted our candidates to lose. It is what He may intend to teach us through the loss.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate, thanking Allah in his victory speech.

Meanwhile, Christians who wanted biblical principles honored in public life suffered significant political defeats. Why does God permit such outcomes? Why do those who reject His truth sometimes prosper while those who profess His name suffer?

The question is ancient. Psalm 73 offers a better way to approach it than election-night recriminations.

The problem of Psalm 73

The psalmist Asaph watched the arrogant prosper. They boasted against heaven while he suffered, and he wondered whether he had cleansed his heart in vain. Then he entered the sanctuary of God and considered their end.

Their prosperity was temporary, their security an illusion. But Asaph discovered something more important than their eventual judgment: He had envied the wrong treasure.

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Psalm 73:25).

The wicked may possess political power, wealth, and public admiration. But they do not possess the greatest good: fellowship with the living God. Unlike political victories, that blessing lasts forever.

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Learning to read providence

Christians too often reason simplistically: Victory means God’s blessing; defeat means His judgment. The Puritan writers Jeremiah Burroughs and Thomas Watson, along with the Scottish theologian Thomas Boston, understood that God may have many purposes in permitting His people to suffer.

We cannot claim to know His precise purpose in a particular election. But their writings suggest five lessons worth considering.

1. To reveal whether we love God more than success

In “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment,” Jeremiah Burroughs teaches that contentment rests in God rather than changing circumstances.

Do we love Christ because He gives us political victories or because He is worthy of our love? Defeat tests whether our confidence rests in God or in the benefits we hope to receive from Him.

2. To expose sins among God’s own people

Thomas Watson, in “All Things for Good,” explains that affliction can expose and mortify remaining sin. Christians may denounce wickedness in the culture while tolerating it in themselves. Asaph had to confront his own envy.

Do we defend biblical morality publicly while compromising privately? Have we exchanged reverence for entertainment? Perhaps the response to defeat is less political calculation and more fasting, prayer, and repentance.

3. To teach humility and dependence upon God

In “The Crook in the Lot,” Thomas Boston describes how God uses adversity to humble His people.

Political success can tempt Christians to imagine that the future of the church depends on the right candidate, party, or strategy. Defeat reminds us that Christ builds His church. No election can replace God’s sovereign power.

4. To strengthen faith through adversity

Watson also teaches that God uses affliction to strengthen the graces of His people. Faith untested remains immature.

Political defeat offers a chance to practice patience, courage, perseverance, and confidence in God’s promises. It is easy to proclaim His sovereignty when your candidate wins. The test comes when your candidate loses — and when political opposition becomes more than an inconvenience.

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5. To redirect our hope toward eternal things

Burroughs reminds us that the believer possesses a treasure greater than anything this world can offer. God may remove earthly comforts to remind us they were never our ultimate good.

Political victories are temporary. Governments rise and fall. Nations flourish and decline. Communion with God endures. Do you seek Him daily in His Word?

The victory that cannot be taken away

None of this means Christians should abandon politics. Government is ordained by God, and Christians should labor for justice and righteousness. But electoral outcomes do not reveal the whole purpose of divine providence.

Those celebrating victory have not thereby demonstrated God’s approval. Christians mourning defeat have not demonstrated His displeasure. Psalm 73 calls us to judge earthly events in the light of eternity.

The question is not simply why God permitted our candidates to lose. It is what He may intend to teach us through the loss.

Perhaps the greatest victory He is preparing for His people is a deeper knowledge of Himself.

Want to understand the Bible better? Wikipedia's co-founder has a free tool for that.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has a new project. This time, he's helping people navigate the Bible.

His Deep Dive Bible, officially launched November 2, puts Scripture, commentaries, reference materials, and group discussion in one place. It's free, and you don't even need an account to start reading.

'The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew?'

"If you read the Bible with an app, you probably switch between the text, references, and maybe a group study," Sanger wrote on X.

"What if all three worked together?"

Sanger calls the project "free, forever: a gift to the whole Church."

Plenty to explore

The site's welcome page lists 15 English Bible translations, including the King James Version, English Standard Version, New International Version, and New American Standard Bible. You can read translations side by side or consult commentaries on individual verses without leaving the reader.

There are 55 commentaries, 15 reference works, and 220 maps, according to the site. For more ambitious students, there are Hebrew and Greek study tools, interlinear texts, and cross-references. Audio readings are also available.

You can read without registering; a free account lets you save your progress, make notes, highlight passages, and join group studies organized around particular readings and discussion topics.

The site is still labeled beta, but Sanger says it will remain free, supported by donations.

Eric Thayer/Getty Images

From skeptic to believer

Sanger has good reason to take Bible study seriously. Raised Lutheran, he lost his faith as a teenager and spent more than 35 years as an agnostic. He went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy, co-found Wikipedia, and build a career devoted to organizing information online.

In December 2019, he decided to read the Bible cover to cover. He wasn't looking for a conversion. He wanted to understand a book he had long dismissed without, by his own admission, having studied it properly.

Armed with study Bibles, maps, dictionaries, and commentaries, Sanger began working through Scripture. What he found surprised him.

"The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew?" he recalled in his 2025 conversion testimony.

By late February 2020, he had privately acknowledged his belief in God. He didn't make a full public declaration of his Christian faith until five years later.

"I never had a mind-blowing conversion experience," he wrote. His faith came slowly through reading, questioning, and reconsidering arguments he had once found unpersuasive.

Questions welcome

He never stopped studying. In April 2020, Sanger started an online Bible-study group on YouVersion, later moving it to Telegram. This September, he gave the group its own website, bringing along the archive of earlier discussions.

The software behind Deep Dive Bible, called Chatiferous, was built using Anthropic's Claude AI, with Sanger directing the project. It's released under a free-software license, and the site is being opened to other Bible-study groups.

In a 2023 guide to reading the Bible, Sanger urged readers to make use of commentaries, maps, encyclopedias, and study groups. He was especially insistent that readers shouldn't be afraid to ask questions.

"It is not only OK to ask questions," he wrote, "it is essential that you both ask your questions and get them answered."

GOD AND GUNS: The biblical case for armed self-defense

God does not leave His people unarmed and then call the resulting vulnerability “faith.” From the first organization of Israel after the Exodus to the final instructions Jesus gives His disciples before the cross, Scripture treats the capacity for defensive force as ordinary, necessary, and compatible with obedience.

In Numbers 1, God commands Moses to count every male 20 years old and upward who is able to go to war. “Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from 20 years old and above — all who are able to go to war in Israel” (Numbers 1:2-3). The total reaches 603,550 fighting-age men (Numbers 1:45-46).

Biblical self-defense requires foresight, discipline, and bravery; it is protective rather than aggressive, proportionate, and open to preemption when the threat is clear and imminent.

This is neither a civil registry nor a professional standing army. It is the mustering of the fighting men of Israel: men of the tribes, organized by household and clan, who would return to their lands and labors when the threat passed. The parallel to the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” is striking — and not entirely coincidental.

In a 1788 sermon, Samuel Langdon, a former president of Harvard and delegate to New Hampshire's constitutional ratifying convention, explicitly held up ancient Israel's political and military organization as a model for the American states. He even described the Israelites' armed forces as a “militia.” God Himself established an armed people as the ordinary defense of Israel.

'Fight for your brethren'

The “sword” that appears hundreds of times in the Old Testament — more than 400 in many English translations — is the practical instrument of that survival. It kept the covenant community from being destroyed by those who would erase it. The violence is almost always defensive in purpose: securing the life and blessings that by His grace God has given, against those who would take them by force.

The same pattern appears when the people rebuild. In Nehemiah 4, workers on Jerusalem’s wall face open threats. Nehemiah arms them and says, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses” (Nehemiah 4:14). Half stand ready with spears and shields. The laborers work with one hand and hold a weapon with the other. “Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built” (Nehemiah 4:18). The community is built by men who stand ready to defend what they are building.

God’s law itself draws the line between proportionality and excess. “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed” (Exodus 22:2-3). The presumption is that an intruder in the night presents an imminent lethal threat.

Daylight changes the calculus because identification of the adversary and use of lesser force become possible. The distinction is necessity and proportionality: Force is justified by the nature and immediacy of the threat, not by vengeance or property alone. This standard still governs most American self-defense law.

Two swords

The New Testament does not cancel the pattern. In Luke 22:36-38, Jesus tells the disciples that the one who has no sword should sell his garment and buy one. When they produce two, He says it is enough. Raymond Ibrahim has shown how medieval Christians, including the Templars and Hospitallers, understood the verse as authorizing two swords — one against spiritual enemies, one against physical threats.

The modern pastorate, weak and effeminate, empties the passage of meaning and reduces it to mealy metaphor. As we have argued elsewhere, God calls men to be meek, not weak. Meekness is strength under control; the modern pastoral ideal is mere passivity that leaves the flock undefended.

Jesus never once forbids the use of steel. In fact, at His arrest, Peter draws one of those swords and cuts off the servant’s ear (Matthew 26:51; John 18:10). Jesus does not stop the blow. Instead, He heals the ear (Luke 22:51) and tells Peter to put the sword away, because, “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” (John 18:11; see also Matthew 26:52). The healing of the ear clears Jesus’ path to the cross; it is His last miracle before the crucifixion. The command is specific to that hour, not a universal prohibition against arms. The swords Jesus had just told them to acquire remain legitimate.

The most emphatic call for proper defensive alignment and proportionate force comes from the king of the universe Himself. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). The love is sacrificial, not suicidal. It is the willingness to spend oneself so that others may live. If the defender dies without stopping the threat, those he claimed to protect are left undefended. That is not greater love.

Blaze Media Illustration

God-given right

Yet the modern Christian view abhors Christ the warrior against Satan. It prefers a cheap, easy Christianity that not only ignores real threats — feminism, open borders, Islamification — but affirms the sins that emerge from those threats: sexual immorality, racial idolatry, and self-destruction. Biblical self-defense therefore requires foresight, discipline, and bravery; it is protective rather than aggressive, proportionate, and open to preemption when the threat is clear and imminent. The prosperity gospel cannot defend families, and proactive defense is exactly what God demands of His men.

The Second Amendment records the American recognition of this ancient, God-given right. Free people retain the means to defend life, family, and liberty. When government acts as the servant described in Romans 13:4 — “he is God’s minister to you for good” — the people may rely on it. That “good,” however, is God’s objective good, not the subjective whimsy of those in power. It is not within the purview of human rulers to affirm immigration without assimilation, sexual anarchy, or racial idolatry, for all those oppose the laws of God. When government abandons its duty to do objective good or becomes the threat itself, the residual duty and the means of recourse remain with the people.

The census in Numbers, the swords at the builders’ sides in Nehemiah, the nighttime rule in Exodus, and Jesus’ instruction to acquire swords all point to the same conclusion. The right to keep and bear arms is not a concession of the state.

As Massachusetts patriot Mercy Otis Warren wrote in 1788 in her pamphlet, "Observations on the New Constitution," “Self-defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; this primeval principle, the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone ... to resist the first approaches of tyranny.” Arms are the ordinary means of survival for the people of God who refuse to be destroyed.

Christian Conservatives Can’t Import A New Electorate Like Democrats, But We Can Have Lots Of Babies

While Democrats wave the next generation of leftist 'Americans' across the Rio Grande, Christians contracept their way out of cultural renewal as they throw up their hands in defeat.

He went to prison angry and violent. He found Christ — and a reason to go back.

Karl Schlenker knows firsthand that prisoners can change through the love of Jesus Christ, even hardened criminals facing life behind bars.

Schlenker went from a church-going husband and father of three to an inmate in an Ohio prison. He turned aggressive as both a survival method and a reflection of his personal pain, years of clinical depression, and PTSD from past trauma lurking within.

'I have instant credibility with these guys ... almost every one of them will come up and say, "You don’t come across like an inmate at all,"' he says.

His salvation came via volunteers from Kairos Prison Ministry, a nonprofit that just celebrated its 50^th anniversary. The ministry serves nearly 500 prisons and communities in 37 states and 13 countries.

Schlenker is more than just one of many prisoners touched by the ministry. He’s a committed volunteer bringing his redemption story to others.

Smelling fear

“We need to look at people in prison and see that they’re human beings,” Schlenker tells Blaze Lifestyle. He recalls his first encounter with the ministry, watching 28 volunteers enter his Ohio prison armed with cookies and an open mind.

He could smell the fear on some volunteers, likely first-timers attempting to reach those who had given up all hope.

“They had no idea what was really going to happen and how they’d be received,” he says of the new volunteers. Schlenker connected with a college professor from Ohio State, also making his first foray into the ministry’s work.

“He was a highly intelligent person with a huge heart,” he says. “He put me at ease very quickly ... I still wasn’t sure what the weekend was going to hold. I had this reputation for being a nasty kind of person.”

It didn’t happen immediately, but Schlenker eventually opened up during a long weekend of conversation, listening exercises, and prayer. Now he does the same for those incarcerated in New Hampshire, the state he currently calls home.

The hope of second chances

Kairos has taught him about forgiveness and the hope of second chances. He also brings unique experience to the task at hand.

“I have instant credibility with these guys ... almost every one of them will come up and say, ‘You don’t come across like an inmate at all,’” he says.

He previously used some of what he learned while still in that Ohio prison. He had angered several fellow inmates by using a gang member’s phone. He was approached in the bathroom by three thugs eager to punish him for what he had done. Except Schlenker didn’t defend himself.

“I will not fight you,” he told them. He was brutally beaten all the same, leaving him permanently scarred and urinating blood for days.

“I didn’t raise a fist in anger,” he recalls. Two of the three later apologized for what they had done to him. One of the attackers, a lifer, later renounced his gang ties and helped sway other inmates toward a more productive path.

“That transformation within him was unbelievably powerful,” he says. ”He was a big, strong, powerful human being, and he became a loving, tender person.”

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The power of faith

Kairos Prison Ministry CEO Evelyn Lemly says the group shows the power of faith even in the worst of circumstances.

“Sometimes we think of God being so distant. He actually is so present,” Lemly says. Her work with the group reveals patterns that show the power of the volunteers’ approach.

“I hear the stories over and over and over again,” Lemly adds. “’I never felt like I was worthy. I never felt that I was lovable ... then a group of people showed up and demonstrated what the love of Jesus is all about.”

Kairos takes a spiritual big tent approach to its work.

“We don’t represent a denomination. We represent all denominations ... it’s about believing in Christ,” she says.

The Kairos Prison Ministry has a global footprint, but it’s not in every prison.

“I wish we could say every prison opened the doors for us ... there are lots of different reasons why not ... ‘We don’t have the time. We don’t have space. We don’t do programs like this,’” she says.

Schlenker says he takes a simple approach to his Kairos prison duties. He introduces himself, shows his name tag, and shares what they have in common.

“I know exactly how you’re feeling right now ... when I was in the state of Ohio as a guest, I had a number just like all of you do,” Schlenker says.

What happens next can make all the difference, a message he shares with every “guest” he meets.

“I became a different person through that experience. If you’re open and receptive and willing, the same thing will happen for every one of you,” he says.

Did Obama steal 'first Muslim senator' title from Michigan's El-Sayed?

Abdul El-Sayed shares more in common with former President Barack Obama than just a Saracen name and Democrat politics: both have been credited with at least one identity-politics first.

It appears, however, that El-Sayed's first — his election as the first Muslim to the U.S. Senate — qualifies only because one of Obama's provocative assertions has been dismissed as a slip of the tongue.

'A historic turning point for American Muslim political engagement.'

First Muslim

Overlooking or perhaps rewarding his radicalism and "anti-white racial hatred," Michiganders voted on Tuesday to seat El-Sayed in the U.S. Senate.

The Democrat decisively defeated former Rep. Mike Rogers (R), a win that was not only consequential in terms of Democrats' conquest of the U.S. Senate but — according to radicals, foreigners, and the liberal media — historic because of his religious identity.

In his victory speech, the Democrat introduced himself as Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and gave praise to Allah in Arabic. He then boasted that he had proven wrong an alleged doubter who told him "a Muslim was unelectable."

Linda Sarsour — the Islamic activist who told fellow radicals last year to "abolish Israel" — was among the many radicals who touted El-Sayed's election as historic. She told Democracy Now, "To elect the first Muslim American to the United States Senate is no easy feat in a country that has the most powerful people spewing anti-Muslim hate."

Nihad Awad, the national executive of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, congratulated El-Sayed on "making history as the first American Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate and for defeating both anti-Muslim hate and the anti-Palestinian lobby in the process."

"Dr. El-Sayed’s victory represents a historic turning point for American Muslim political engagement and a historic defeat for the politics of hate," added Awad.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Obama, not just the 'first gay president'?

In his heyday, Obama was credited with multiple firsts besides being the first American president with a noncitizen father and the first president born in Hawaii.

For his support of homosexual "marriage," Newsweek celebrated the former president with a cover story in 2012 calling him the "first gay president."

Years earlier, he was widely celebrated as America's first black president — even though Bill Clinton was previously conferred that title for displaying, according to author Toni Morrison, "almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

A supposed slip-up in an interview with ABC's "This Week" just prior to the 2008 presidential election prompted some Americans to suspect that then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was also the first Muslim serving in the U.S. Senate.

In the Sept. 7, 2008, interview, Obama said to George Stephanopoulos, "You're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith, and you're absolutely right that that has not —"

"Your Christian faith," Stephanopoulos interjected.

"My Christian faith," said Obama.

While Obama's "Muslim faith" remark was written off as a flub, he provided skeptics with additional fodder, specifically his reported recollection of the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer and recital "with a first-rate accent"; his repeated defense of Islam; his Islamic heritage; and his assertion in a June 28, 2007, speech that America was no longer just a Christian nation but also a "Muslim nation."

Despite speculation and numerous fact-checks about Obama's faith, Obama has long maintained that he is a Christian, "rooted in the Christian tradition."

Obama's professed faith means that El-Sayed might, after all, be the first openly Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.

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The strange, dark story of how John 3:16 infiltrated American sports

You don't have to be a Christian to know John 3:16.

You may not know exactly what the verse says. But if you've watched enough American sports, you've probably seen the citation: on a sign behind the goal posts, beneath Tim Tebow's eyes, or this summer, written on the Pride caps of three San Francisco Giants pitchers.

Convinced that the rapture was imminent, he wanted to warn the world before it was too late.

For decades, six characters and a colon have served as American sports' unofficial Bible verse.

Why this one? The answer begins long before television and eventually involves Martin Luther, D.L. Moody, a rainbow-wigged publicity seeker, Google, a hostage crisis, and a controversy this summer over Bible verses written on baseball caps.

The gospel in miniature

John 3:16 appears during Jesus' nighttime conversation with Nicodemus in the Gospel of John:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Christians noticed early that the verse managed to pack an extraordinary amount of Christianity into a single sentence. Around the turn of the fifth century, John Chrysostom marveled that although John wrote concisely, "each word had much significance." From the verse, he drew God's love for sinful humanity, the giving of the Son, faith, salvation from destruction, and the promise of eternal life.

Martin Luther later became famous for calling John 3:16 "the gospel in miniature." By the 19th century, the verse had become especially important to evangelical preaching. The English evangelist Henry Moorhouse preached on God's love from John 3:16 repeatedly during a visit to D.L. Moody's church in Chicago. Moody later described the experience as transforming his understanding of God's love.

It was hard to compress the Christian message much further than John 3:16.

Then came the perfect way to distribute this message: live television.

Enter the Rainbow Man

Rollen Stewart initially had nothing to say about Jesus. He wanted to be famous.

According to Sam Green’s 1997 documentary, "The Rainbow Man/John 3:16," Stewart discovered the power of television during the 1977 NBA Finals in Portland. Wearing a rainbow-colored Afro wig, he danced for a cameraman filming the crowd and managed to get himself onto the broadcast.

During the 1977 NBA Finals, Stewart discovered that television offered a shortcut to celebrity. There was no need to get cast in anything if he simply went where the cameras were already going and made himself difficult to ignore.

So he put on a rainbow-colored Afro wig and started showing up at major sporting events. He danced for the cameras and learned to anticipate where they would point next.

"Once I saw the red light, I was hooked," he later recalled.

Soon the Rainbow Man was everywhere, and Stewart became surprisingly sophisticated about getting himself into the picture. At football games, he positioned himself between the goal posts, where the field-goal camera would find him. At baseball games, he appeared behind home plate. At the Masters, he maneuvered himself over Jack Nicklaus' shoulder as Nicklaus prepared to tee off.

Best of all, he carried a small battery-powered television. Stewart could stand inside a stadium, watch the broadcast he was attempting to infiltrate, and adjust his position according to what the director was putting on the screen.

He wasn't even much of a sports fan. "I despised sports," he admitted years later. The games were useful because television covered them live.

After the 1980 Super Bowl, Stewart returned to his hotel room depressed. He had spent years trying to become famous and discovered that being famous wasn't doing much for him. He turned on the television, encountered Bible prophecy teacher Charles Taylor, and subsequently became a born-again Christian.

The rainbow wig stayed. But Stewart now had something besides himself to advertise.

John 3:16.

6 characters and a colon

The choice was unusually well suited to what Stewart was doing. Christians had spent centuries treating John 3:16 as the gospel in miniature: In the King James Bible, the verse takes 25 words to move from God's love for the world to the promise of everlasting life. Stewart figured out how to shrink it even further. Forget the verse itself. All he needed were six characters and a colon, large enough to read on television. The viewer could look up the rest.

In 1984, Christianity Today reported that Stewart had displayed his banner at eight football stadiums in five days. He appeared at professional golf tournaments, championship basketball games, the World Series, football bowls, and even the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

The fact that many viewers had no idea what John 3:16 meant didn't bother him. It was part of the idea.

"If they don't know what John 3:16 means, most people will eventually try to find out," Stewart told the magazine. "And some will pick up their Bibles and begin reading it."

Television networks charged advertisers enormous sums to reach the audiences watching America's biggest sporting events. Stewart had figured out how to place his message inside the same broadcasts without buying airtime at all.

Live sports made the scheme possible. A network could edit an entertainment program before broadcasting it. It couldn't edit a field goal before showing it. If Stewart got himself behind the goal posts before the kick, by the time the director realized what was happening, John 3:16 was already in America's living rooms.

Eventually, the networks and sports organizations became less cooperative. Camera operators tried to frame Stewart out, while stadiums restricted his banners. By 1986, Christianity Today reported that all but one of the NFL's 28 teams had prohibited them.

At Washington's RFK Stadium, the fight became a federal lawsuit after security prevented Stewart and an associate from displaying John 3:16 banners. Elsewhere, Stewart devised Scripture banners that could be worn like ponchos and exposed by spreading his arms.

"They'd have to undress us to take away our gospel signs," he said.

By then, however, the mysterious citation was becoming part of the scenery of American sports.

Did anybody actually look it up?

There was an obvious question about Stewart's entire enterprise: Did anybody sitting at home actually do what he hoped?

Mike Kerrigan did.

The Charlotte attorney was about 11 when he kept noticing the Rainbow Man during football games. Eventually, he asked his father what John 3:16 meant.

His father didn't know either.

"Let's look," he said. They opened a Bible.

Kerrigan still remembered the moment decades later, when he wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal in 2024. Stewart had predicted that an obscure biblical citation on television might make someone curious enough to find a Bible. In at least one living room, that is exactly what happened.

Unfortunately, Stewart's own story didn't end nearly as happily.

Rainbow's end

His life began to unravel toward the end of the 1980s. His marriage collapsed. His money disappeared. His religious beliefs became increasingly preoccupied with elaborate predictions of an imminent apocalypse.

Television remained his constant companion. Living in cheap Los Angeles hotels, Stewart later described watching as much as 18 hours a day: Christian broadcasters, daytime talk shows, news magazines, reality television, and more preachers at night. He called it being "fed by the media."

Eventually, appearing on television was no longer enough. Stewart began trying to create events that would force television to cover him.

In 1991, authorities accused him of setting off foul-smelling devices at several Southern California locations, including the Crystal Cathedral, Trinity Broadcasting Network studios, and a Christian bookstore.

Then, on Sept. 22, 1992, he took over a room at a Hyatt hotel near Los Angeles International Airport with a gun. Two day laborers escaped. A hotel maid locked herself in the bathroom. Stewart covered the windows with religious messages and demanded a lengthy live press conference. Convinced that the rapture was imminent, he wanted to warn the world before it was too late.

Green's documentary includes an audio recording of Stewart speaking with a police negotiator during the standoff.

"I've watched the cops, you know, cop shows and tried to get a handle on what's going on," Stewart explains.

"Maybe you look at a little bit too much TV," the negotiator replies.

"I watch a lot of it."

After roughly nine hours, police stormed the room and arrested him. Stewart was sentenced in 1993 to three life terms with the possibility of parole.

From the family Bible to Google

Once the Rainbow Man was gone from sports television, the signs persisted.

On Jan. 8, 2009, Florida played Oklahoma for the national championship. Gators quarterback Tim Tebow had spent the season wearing Philippians 4:13 — "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" — on the eye black beneath his eyes.

For the championship game, however, he decided to switch to John 3:16. Coach Urban Meyer was horrified. A superstitious man, Meyer wasn't about to tamper with a winning formula. "That verse got us here!" he protested, according to Tebow's later recollection.

Tebow explained that John 3:16 expressed the essence of his Christian faith. Meyer relented.

Florida won the national championship, and Tebow had an advantage Rollen Stewart could only have dreamed of: The cameras were trying to find him.

During the game, viewers began searching the citation online. By the following morning, "John 3:16" had become Google's hottest search term.

Twenty-five years earlier, Stewart had imagined people seeing the citation and going to find a Bible. Well, now they had Google.

The story subsequently acquired an almost suspiciously neat postscript. On Jan. 8, 2012 — exactly three years after the national championship — Tebow led the Denver Broncos against the Pittsburgh Steelers in an NFL playoff game. Denver won on an 80-yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime.

Tebow had thrown for exactly 316 yards. Because he completed 10 passes, he averaged 31.6 yards per completion.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The verse that wouldn't leave sports

By 2011, the connection between John 3:16 and televised sports was so familiar that a proposed Super Bowl commercial was built around it.

The ad showed football fans watching a game on television. The broadcast zoomed in on a quarterback with John 3:16 written beneath his eyes.

"I'll look it up," one of the fans says, reaching for his smartphone.

Fox declined to air the commercial under its policy against advertisements from religious organizations intended to advance particular beliefs or practices.

The citation continued turning up elsewhere. In 2012, a Texas school district became embroiled in a legal fight over cheerleaders putting Bible verses on the banners through which their high school football team ran onto the field.

And this summer, San Francisco Giants pitcher Landen Roupp employed a version of Stewart's old tactic — with a different Bible verse.

During the team's June 12 Pride Night, Roupp wore a special rainbow-logo cap but wrote "Gen. 9:12-16" across it, partially covering the logo.

Two other Giants pitchers, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, also added biblical citations to their caps.

Roupp had chosen the passage in which God establishes the rainbow as the sign of His covenant with Noah, promising never again to destroy the earth with a flood.

The Giants' rainbow logo had acquired an unexpected biblical footnote.

MLB warned the three pitchers not to repeat the inscriptions, explaining that its uniform regulations prohibit unauthorized messages of any kind. The league emphasized that its warning "had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message."

Roupp was unapologetic. "That's just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that," he told reporters.

There was no indication that Roupp had taken inspiration from Stewart. But the resemblance was striking. Nearly half a century after the Rainbow Man first appeared on television, a baseball player had put another biblical citation in front of the cameras, leaving viewers to discover the verse for themselves.