Artemis II pilot Victor Glover is showing kids that progressive ideology and groupthink are not pathways to success.

Despite the media's persistent interest in the color of his skin, the 50-year-old NASA astronaut prefers to keep the focus on his crew's historic April 6 spaceflight, which marks the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.

'I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually.'

This was once again evident Friday, when the team of four sat down for a "CBS Mornings" town hall, taking questions from children from nearby science-focused school M.S. 255 Salk School of Science.

No DEI in 'team'

"How did it feel to be the first person of color to fly to or around the moon?" an 11-year-old girl named Ameya asked, 10 minutes into the discussion.

Glover replied with a smile, "I will tell you one of the things about swinging for the fence and trying to hit a home run when the game is on the line is if you think about that, that can add pressure and make you not go up there and and play your best game."

The astronaut said instead he "focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate," before stressing the importance of being a team member, and not focusing on individual attributes.

"I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually."

Glover continued, "I would answer this by maybe just making a visual lesson here that I spent a lot of time thinking about this patch and this patch," he said while pointing to his NASA patch and then the United States flag, "and not this patch," pointing to his own name.

"And now we get to be here and we get to talk about it, though."

'Human history'

Glover has been fielding such questions since the mission was announced. Just three days before the launch, a journalist asked Glover what being the "first black man" to travel to the moon meant to him.

Glover dismissed the notion, saying he hoped society would be "pushing the other direction" so that one day "we don't have to talk about these firsts."

"This is the human history," he emphasized. "It's about human history. It's the story of humanity, not black history, not women's history, but that it becomes human history."

Todd Owyoung/NBC/Getty Images

Glory to God

Glover has also been known to put his Christianity before ethnic identity.

Glover has used his time in the spotlight to talk about his faith. Just before circumnavigating the moon, Glover shared what he called the "most important mysteries of the world" in a live radio transmission.

"Christ said in response to 'what was the greatest command' that it was to love God with all that you are. And he, also being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself."

Upon returning to Earth, he made his priorities even clearer: "When this started ... I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again."

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Russell Brand’s 'How to Become a Christian': A superficial, self-serving memoir of conversion

When Russell Brand published his 2007 memoir, "My Booky Wook," I bought it with no particular expectations. The lanky provocateur from Essex was already famous for his drug-addled, debauched adventures as a stand-up comic and onetime MTV host — a job he lost after showing up the day after 9/11 dressed as Osama bin Laden. I suspected this latest venture might be no more than a shoddy attempt to cash in on this notoriety.

I was wrong. "My Booky Wook" was engaging, witty, and painfully self-aware. Brand could write.

The unbuttoned shirts and Jim Morrison-like leather pants mask a keen intelligence and shrewd rhetorical instincts.

Born identity

And Brand can still write, in the strict sense. The sentences in his new book, "How to Become a Christian in Seven Days," are sometimes funny, often eloquent, and occasionally beautiful. The man has range. He has cadence. He has, by any measure, talent.

He also has a problem with the truth, as his subsequent New Age-inflected leftist activism has demonstrated. Now that he's taken a turn for the traditional, Brand still shows the same affinity for self-serving fabulation — and the same instinct for monetizing his "countercultural" views.

I am a Catholic. I take conversion seriously, which is precisely why I take this one so unseriously. I never agreed with Brand's anti-capitalism shtick, the Che Guevara cosplay, the Bernie Sanders lovefests — but I always thought he meant it. That was the charm. Like Jon Stewart, he used humor to make political points. Unlike the erstwhile "Daily Show" host, Brand showed real humility while doing so, presenting himself less as an authority than as a fellow truth-seeker.

It's precisely humility, ironically enough, that is missing from Brand's public embrace of Christianity.

Brand management

Part of it, certainly, is the convenient timing. In September 2023, a Channel 4 "Dispatches" documentary and a Sunday Times investigation surfaced allegations of rape and sexual assault against Brand. A few months later, Bear Grylls — yes, that Bear Grylls — baptized him in the Thames. Recently, in an interview with Megyn Kelly, Brand admitted on the record to sleeping with a 16-year-old when he was 30, calling himself an "exploiter of women." I watched the interview. He delivered the lines as eloquently as ever, but the remorse seemed rehearsed rather than felt.

Now comes the book. One hundred thirty-four pages. Thirty-three dollars. A man who once wrote a manifesto called "Revolution" about the predations of capitalism is selling salvation by the page at roughly a quarter a sheet.

The prose tells you what kind of conversion this is. Brand opens with a passage about how the title is "figurative" because seven days might take longer, then immediately explains that in the Bible, "days" don't really mean days because the earth's rotation, et cetera, et cetera and concludes: "This book has already paid for itself in cosmological bullion — 'Now I know what a day is!'"

That is, to be fair, a funny line. It is also the entire book. He cracks a gag, dresses it in Scripture, and bills you for the privilege. Later, he writes that he is "attempting to reinterpret the Bible," catches himself, and adds: "Phew, for a minute I thought I was an out-of-control egomaniac trying to rewrite the Bible and charge you for the privilege." The self-awareness is the alibi. He names the con and proceeds with it.

MEGA/GC Images via Getty Images

Selling salvation

None of this is to say genuine conversion is impossible for the famous, the rich, or the disgraced. Augustine was a libertine before he was a saint. Dorothy Day had a common-law husband and an abortion behind her when she found Catholicism. Conversion is exactly the sort of thing that happens to people whose lives have spiraled. That is half of the point of the doctrine.

What separates those stories from this one is the absence of a sales pitch. Augustine wrote his "Confessions" 15 years after his baptism, in Latin, for an audience of fellow bishops, and he spent most of it agonizing over a pear he stole as a boy. Day lived a life of voluntary poverty and poured any money she made from "The Long Loneliness" back into her work for the poor. Neither of them timed their repentance to a court docket.

Any considering this purchase should realize that Brand, perhaps more than many celebrities, is a shrewd manipulator of the media. The unbuttoned shirts and Jim Morrison-like leather pants disguise a keen intelligence and shrewd rhetorical instincts; this is a man who has survived two decades in the crosshairs of the British tabloids (which, it must be said, operate with a brutality that makes their American counterparts look like Ladies' Home Journal). Brand is a warrior, someone capable of weathering the most brutal of storms.

Property of Jesus

He’s also capable of reading the room. In this case, the room is a world besotted with American evangelicalism, which tends to focus on dramatic tales of redemption more than on the day-by-day grind of repentance.

That this type of Christianity is so forthright about embracing the broken is its glory, but it can also be its blind spot. Brand has bet, with considerable shrewdness, that this audience will buy the book without interrogating the allegations behind it.

Every person is owed his day in court, presumed innocent until proven guilty. I am not here to litigate the allegations, but to question the suddenness of the transformation. People who knew Brand well have described him as sociopathic. That is plausible. If Brand's come-to-Jesus moment is no more than a way to leverage other people's decency for personal gain, the word would certainly apply.

In the meantime, the best we can do for Brand is pray, as we would for any fellow sinner. It's not for us to judge the authenticity of his conversion; that's between him and God. But we should be wary of supporting his attempts — whether cynical or simply misguided — to profit from it.

College professors want your child's soul. Here's how you can stop them.

As this school year comes to an end, I hear parents talking about what university their children got into and how excited the family is about this next phase of life. As a university professor, I relate to this wholeheartedly. Raising your children to finish high school and go on to university is one of the biggest duties Christian parents will accomplish.

But there is a question Christian parents almost never ask: Why do we send our children into institutions that will work against the very faith we spent 18 years trying to instill?

You will routinely find professors lambasting Christianity in their classes as an oppressive colonizer religion that must be deconstructed.

No one says it that way, of course. Instead, the conversation sounds something like this: “We’ve found a good campus. There’s even a strong Christian student group.”

Now, let me say plainly: Those groups can be wonderful. I thank God for them. But pause for a moment and consider what that assumption reveals. You are already expecting that Christian community will exist outside the mission of the university. You are hoping your child will find a refuge within an otherwise hostile environment.

In other words, you are not sending your child into a place that reinforces truth, but into a storm, and praying they find a bunker. And you are probably paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.

That should trouble us more than it does, because it wasn’t always this way. Institutions like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale were not founded as neutral arenas of inquiry. They were explicitly Christian. Their purpose was to cultivate piety, train ministers, and teach the knowledge of God to all students.

Universities have always had a vision of truth. The only difference now is that the vision has changed.

Celal Gunes/Anadolu/Getty Images

Today’s university is not neutral. It is structured around a set of ideas that systematically undermine Christianity while presenting themselves as morally superior. Take the influence of Michel Foucault. Students are taught, often implicitly, that truth is not something discovered but constructed. Knowledge is tied to power. What earlier generations called “truth,” we are told, is really just the perspective of those who happened to win.

Then there is Paulo Freire, whose approach to education has become foundational in teacher training and pedagogy. Education, in this view, is not about learning what is true but about liberating the oppressed. The world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, and students are trained to dismantle the oppressors.

Guess which category Christianity lands in?

Add to this the ever-present language of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” along with intersectionality. These frameworks redefine truth itself as something tied to identity. Moral authority is assigned based on lived experience, and disagreement is often recast as harm.

The Bible, under this lens, is no longer read as the word of God. It is treated as a cultural artifact, one that has historically supported systems of oppression.

None of this is presented as an attack on Christianity. That would be too obvious. Or at least, you would have thought so even 10 years ago. But now you will routinely find professors lambasting Christianity in their classes as an oppressive colonizer religion that must be deconstructed.

And all of this is framed to the students as compassion and empathy. It is justice. It is only fair. And “that’s not fair!” is a very powerful argument for university students.

Young people have a strong instinct for fairness. When they hear, “That’s not fair,” they lean in. But what they are rarely told is that the definition of fairness itself has been quietly replaced.

Disagreement is recast as harm, hierarchy becomes injustice, and truth becomes a tool of whoever is in power. The Bible is a social construct invented by the patriarchy to retain power.

First comes disorientation: “Everything I learned growing up is being questioned.”

Then pressure: “If you don’t agree, you’re part of the problem.”

Then isolation: fewer Christian friends, fewer edifying conversations. More immoral filth where “love is love” is used to justify the basest forms of lust.

Then internal shift: Doubt feels like intellectual maturity.

And finally, exit or compromise. Some abandon the faith outright. Others keep the label but redefine it until it fits comfortably within the system that once challenged it.

Parents are often blindsided by this. They assume education is neutral. Sure, they had atheist professors and the standard left-wing nut, but those professors were just that: nuts.

Now, the crazy is normalized and the sane, holy, and faithful are institutionalized. Don’t assume that if your child finds a good group, everything will be fine.

This is not a neutral environment occasionally disrupted by bad ideas. It is an environment structured in a particular direction, with occasional pockets of resistance. Those Christian groups we celebrate are the bastions, not the foundation.

So what should parents do?

WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images

First, don’t just ask whether your children will succeed academically or professionally. Ask whether they will remain faithful to Christ. Help them equip themselves with the armor of God described in Ephesians chapter 6.

Second, prepare them intellectually. They need to understand not only what they believe, but why, and how it contrasts with the frameworks they will encounter. Teach them the Bible and the historic Christian faith.

Third, help your children make faith in Christ their own. This is not merely an intellectual enterprise. Teach your children to love Christ and put their trust in salvation by Christ alone. When they know Him as their savior and trust His promises, they will stand firmly in that day of spiritual battle.

Third, expose hostile frameworks early. Teach them about Foucault, Freire, and the assumptions behind DEI before they hear those ideas in a classroom. If they have already heard the anti-Christian, anti-Bible arguments because you covered them together as preparation, they will be ready to dismantle them.

Fourth, stay engaged. Ask what their professors are teaching. You can look up their professors on the university webpages. Their bios probably won’t say “DEI anti-Christian radical,” but you will get a good sense of what they think by looking at their published works and conference presentations.

Above all, stop assuming neutrality where none exists. This is a spiritual battle of good vs. evil.

The real question is not whether universities shape your children’s beliefs. They will. The question is whether you will prepare your child to recognize that shaping and to stand firm in the truth.

Because if Christ is Lord of all truth, then no institution gets to undermine Him under the guise of “social justice advocacy.”

All parents should prepare their children for this spiritual reality. These university professors want your child’s soul.

Our local Catholic school sent everyone home for 2 days. You'll never guess why.

The big news here in Portland, Oregon, is that a high school baseball player used a “racial hate speech” slur during a pregame, player-only huddle.

The slur itself has been kept from the public lest we all die of shock. I’m sure none of us has ever heard such a word.

Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.

One interesting thing about the incident: It happened at a prominent Catholic school in town, Central Catholic.

Unforced error

The reaction of the Central Catholic administration was the other interesting thing. Check this out:

The baseball team immediately canceled and forfeited the game they were playing.
Then, they forfeited the next day’s game as well.
The entire baseball team was then marched onto a stage at a special school assembly and made to publicly apologize to their classmates.
Then, they sent everyone home for the next two days, for COVID-style “remote learning.” (That’s right, not the baseball player who said the slur, but the WHOLE SCHOOL was sent home.)
They did this so that faculty and staff could prepare “to respond to their students' needs” when they were allowed back into the building.

Which meant that another couple of days would be spent processing the trauma and psychological suffering they’d been put through.

This all occurred even though the only students who actually heard the “racial hate speech” slur were the players on the baseball team.

Heaven help us

Central Catholic is a typical Catholic high school. Its students are good at sports. It has solid extracurriculars. It is considered a notch above the local public high schools in educational standards.

Historically, all Catholic schools were known for a certain traditionalism regarding student behavior and teaching philosophy.

If you wanted your child to have an education tainted by the latest social trends and political ideologies, you sent them to public school.

If you wanted a more classical education, with a more disciplined and rigorous approach, you sent them to a Catholic school.

But that’s no longer the case, apparently. Even a public high school wouldn’t shut down its entire campus for two days over one baseball player saying one bad word.

In the beginning was ... the Word

I’m going to take a wild guess and predict that the “racial hate speech” slur was probably based on a common derogatory derivative of the antiquated term "negro" — as further appropriated and transformed by hip-hop culture. Because of hip-hop's massive popularity, this "soft A" variant has become a more-or-less neutral form of address among young people of all races.

Our entertainment industry has bombarded young people with this word for decades, making it sound funny and cool. And then our academic communities act like it’s the gravest sin to repeat it.

Obviously, it is not a word that should be used at school. It's vulgar and still retains some of its capacity to degrade and insult. But a two-day shutdown of the entire student body? With a school-wide assembly? And the local media alerted? And almost an entire week lost processing the trauma?

How about the administration has a stern talk with the baseball player? In private?

Truant believers

But that would be too easy. Never mind that the kid’s high school career will be ruined by this obvious overreaction. What was important was allowing the administration to advertise its moral superiority.

The student body was also inspired to take advantage of this educational opportunity. A week after the initial controversy, students walked out of class in protest. “Not enough has been done!” they claimed, as they assembled outside to loiter in the street and watch TikTok videos on their phones.

Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.

This is what is being taught at Catholic school these days. Complain. Protest. Disrupt. And above all, don’t go to class and learn anything.

CBS/Getty Images

Mater DEI

One thing this controversy demonstrates is that a Catholic school is no longer a protection from woke ideology. It is, in fact, almost a guarantee of it.

So what are parents to do if they want their kids at a genuinely Christian school? Like a school where there aren’t Pride flags and sex manuals in every classroom. Where kids are not diagnosed with ADHD or toxic masculinity. Where America is not constantly slandered and vilified by radical leftist textbooks.

There are still some authentically Christian schools in Portland. I’m assuming they are authentic because they are small, they are self-contained, and they keep to themselves.

You would barely know these schools exist if you didn’t go looking for them. They dare not draw attention to themselves, lest our “social justice” local government — or our politicized media — invent some reason to attack them.

Bad education

So what was Central Catholic really up to during the racial slur controversy?

It was virtue signaling. Pretending it is more righteous than you are or I am, by wasting everybody’s time with performative outrage.

And this happened in Oregon, which famously ranks near the bottom of every national educational metric. In Portland, most parents’ choice of schools is: bad, worse, or terrible.

That is, until you realize there are a few actual Christian schools around. Just don’t tell anyone where they are!

7 archaeological finds that confirm the accuracy of the Bible

Spend enough time around atheists, and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: the Bible as a bundle of fairy tales about a “sky god,” stitched together long after the fact and taken seriously only out of habit.

That tone has filtered down into the culture more broadly, where it is not always argued so much as assumed. The biblical world is treated as distant and half-imagined — useful for moral lessons, perhaps, but not something you would expect to intersect with recoverable history.

In 2004, work in Jerusalem uncovered a stepped pool that matched the description of the Pool of Siloam — where Jesus sends a blind man to wash.

Archaeology doesn’t answer the larger questions of faith. It doesn’t attempt to. But it does something more modest and, in its own way, more disruptive: It keeps turning up evidence that biblical events actually happened.

Heritage Images/Getty Images

1. The Tel Dan Stele

It was once common to hear that King David belonged more to tradition than to history — a useful founding figure whose existence could not be confirmed.

That position became harder to hold after fragments of a ninth-century B.C. inscription were found at Tel Dan. Written by a neighboring kingdom, it refers to the “House of David,” using the standard language of dynasties.

It doesn’t tell us everything about David. It does show that, within a couple of generations, surrounding nations recognized a ruling line traced back to him. That’s not how ancient peoples spoke about fictional ancestors.

2. The Pontius Pilate Inscription

The Gospels place Jesus within a very specific Roman context, under a prefect named Pontius Pilate. Historians had references to Pilate in written sources, but for years nothing material.

A stone inscription found in Caesarea in 1961 supplied that missing piece, naming Pilate and identifying his office.

It is the sort of detail that rarely makes headlines. But it reinforces something the Gospels assume throughout: They are describing events within a functioning Roman administration, not an abstract or symbolic setting.

3. The Dead Sea Scrolls

Before the mid-20th century, the gap between the oldest surviving Hebrew manuscripts and the time of their composition left room for speculation. Some assumed the text had shifted substantially over the centuries.

The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls changed the terms of that discussion. Dating back more than a thousand years earlier than previously known manuscripts, they preserve large portions of the Old Testament.

What stands out is not perfect uniformity, but consistency. Variants exist, as they do in any manuscript tradition. Yet the overall stability of the text across such a long span is difficult to ignore.

For anyone concerned about how Scripture was transmitted, this matters more than any abstract argument.

4. The Pool of Siloam

The Gospel of John has often been treated as more theological in tone, with less confidence placed in its geographical detail.

Then, in 2004, work in Jerusalem uncovered a stepped pool that matched the description of the Pool of Siloam — where Jesus sends a blind man to wash.

What began as a partial discovery has gradually expanded. Last year, ongoing excavations revealed more of the pool’s full extent — confirming that it was not a small ritual basin, but a prominent landmark used by pilgrims making their way up to the Temple.

The discovery wasn’t driven by an attempt to confirm the Gospel. It emerged from routine excavation and has been clarified piece by piece since. Its alignment with John’s account has led even cautious scholars to acknowledge the text’s familiarity with pre-A.D. 70 Jerusalem.

5. Hezekiah’s Tunnel

Biblical accounts of kings often face skepticism, especially when they describe large-scale projects under pressure.

In 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, King Hezekiah prepares Jerusalem for an Assyrian invasion by securing the city’s water supply — redirecting the Gihon Spring so that it can’t be used by enemy forces outside the walls. It’s described briefly in Scripture, almost in passing, but the implication is significant: a major engineering effort carried out under the pressure of an approaching army.

In Jerusalem, the tunnel itself has long been known and even traversed — an ancient water channel cutting through bedrock. What wasn’t clear for centuries was whether this was the tunnel described in Scripture or simply one of several.

Significant doubt was removed in 1880, when two boys exploring the passage discovered an inscription a few meters from the southern exit. Carved into the wall, it describes workers digging from opposite ends and hearing each other’s voices as they broke through. Jerusalem was part of Ottoman-ruled Palestine at the time, and the inscription was taken to Turkey, where it remains today.

The tone is practical, even understated. It reads like the kind of record people leave when they have completed something difficult — not the kind they invent later.

6. The Cyrus Cylinder

The Book of Ezra depicts Persia's Cyrus the Great permitting the exiled Jews of Judah — the southern kingdom centered on Jerusalem — to return and rebuild their temple.

Some skeptics have regarded this account as suspiciously convenient — exaggerated to fit a theological narrative presenting Cyrus as a kind of divinely appointed liberator for Judah.

A clay cylinder discovered in Babylon in 1879 complicates this view. It describes Cyrus restoring displaced peoples and supporting their religious practices across the empire — not as a one-off gesture, but as a governing approach.

It doesn’t mention Judah directly, but it does place the return from exile within a broader, historically plausible imperial pattern.

7. The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls

Debates over when parts of the Old Testament were composed often turn on how early we can place recognizable text.

Two small silver scrolls found in a burial site near Jerusalem in 1979 contain a version of the priestly blessing from Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you …”

They date to the seventh century B.C., before the Babylonian exile.

Delicate and tightly rolled, they show that passages still read in churches today were already in use centuries earlier than some theories allowed.

None of this proves the claims that matter most to Christians. It doesn’t attempt to weigh miracles or settle theology.

It does, however, narrow the distance between the biblical text and the world it describes. Enough, at least, to make the old habit of dismissing it as a collection of late-arriving myths seem a little less secure than it once did.

5 reasons this 'Noah’s ark' discovery is harder to dismiss than skeptics admit

For decades, a boat-shaped formation in Eastern Turkey has been held up by some as the possible remains of Noah’s ark — and just as consistently dismissed by mainstream geologists as a natural formation.

The site, known as the Durupinar Formation near Mount Ararat, has been the subject of repeated claims, investigations, and debunkings since it was first identified in the mid-20th century.

Skeptics can explain shape. What’s harder is explaining everything else that keeps lining up with it.

Critics have long argued that it is the result of mudflows and erosion — an unusual shape, but nothing more.

But the latest round of subsurface scans is forcing a more careful look.

Here are five reasons the story isn’t going away.

1. The shape is still the starting problem

The Durupinar site isn’t vaguely suggestive — it is distinctly boat-shaped.

That alone doesn’t prove anything, but it does set a high bar for coincidence, especially given its proximity to the region named in the book of Genesis as the ark’s resting place.

Skeptics can explain shape. What’s harder is explaining everything else that keeps lining up with it.

2. The dimensions track the biblical blueprint

Genesis describes the ark in specific proportions: 300 cubits long, 50 wide, 30 high.

The Durupinar Formation closely matches those ratios.

Not exactly, but close enough to keep the question alive. If this were just random geology, you wouldn’t necessarily expect proportional alignment with one of the most famous construction descriptions in human history.

Photo 12/Getty Images

3. Subsurface scans show structure, not just mass

Recent ground-penetrating radar scans reportedly reveal:

Corridor-like voids
A central hollow chamber
Angular features resembling compartments

That’s significant because the ark described to Noah wasn’t a hollow shell — it was divided into levels and rooms.

Natural formations can produce cavities; they don’t typically produce organized internal layouts.

4. Multiple lines of evidence are starting to converge

Taken individually, each claim is debatable. Together, they’re harder to ignore:

Radar anomalies suggesting internal divisions
Soil chemistry differences (including elevated potassium)
Distinct vegetation patterns within the formation
Thermal imaging hinting at a buried structure

Get enough converging signals like this and you have a real archeological argument.

5. The question is about to become testable

For years, the debate has been stuck at the surface, but that may be changing.

Researchers say the next step is core drilling and inserting cameras into the detected voids. If those spaces turn out to be structured — walls, compartments, passages — the conversation changes immediately.

If not, the theory collapses just as quickly. Either way, this may finally move from speculation to verification.

Extraordinary claims?

The strongest skeptical argument is still the simplest: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

That hasn’t been met — yet. But it is no longer obvious that this is just a random hill shaped like a boat. And that’s why the Durupinar Formation will continue to draw attention from believers and nonbelievers alike.

Camp Hope offers Christ-centered healing to America’s veterans

It’s been roughly five decades since the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” emerged and gained traction, driven largely by the experiences of Vietnam War veterans. Forty-six years have passed since it became an official psychiatric diagnosis.

In that span of time, PTSD research has substantially advanced our understanding of its underlying neurobiology, led to the development of a wide range of evidence-based treatments, and significantly improved access to specialized care for traumatized individuals.

‘I want to show the VA that spends $571 million a year on suicide prevention that what we’re doing here at Camp Hope actually works.’

In other words, American vets today have access to more knowledge and resources than ever before.

And yet, some would argue that mainstream PTSD care is not treating the full person.

Chris Knight is the president of the PTSD Foundation of America — a nonprofit that takes a Christ-centered approach to helping veterans heal from combat-related trauma.

Rather than relying solely on mainstream treatments, the organization integrates professional counseling and therapy with intensive peer mentorship and a Christ-centered approach that places Jesus at the heart of the healing journey.

In a conversation that was as enlightening as it was encouraging, Chris gave me the ins and outs of the organization and shared testimonies of veterans who entered the program broken, addicted, and haunted by the horrors of their past and emerged healed, confident, and rooted in God’s grace.

A different path to healing

While the foundation provides a broad range of services — including outreach, peer support groups, advocacy, a 24/7 combat trauma helpline, and resources for veterans and families nationwide — its flagship program, Camp Hope, is where the deep transformation happens.

Camp Hope is a six-to-nine-month interim transitional housing and intensive peer-mentoring program located on a 5-acre campus in Houston, Texas. Its mission is simple but profound: Save lives by saving souls.

The program includes four progressive phases: The black phase (the first 30 days, more or less) is a strict “blackout” period with no electronics, outside distractions, or family visits, allowing veterans to focus on stabilization and daily routines. The red phase (minimum three months) emphasizes breaking old habits, emotional regulation, and trauma work. The yellow phase focuses on practical reintegration skills — vocational training, job readiness, financial literacy, and family relationships — while the optional green phase offers a supported transition back into civilian life.

The deepest reality

In these six to nine months, veterans receive the kind of comprehensive care for body, mind, and spirit that typical VA and secular PTSD programs simply can’t offer, according to Chris, because they miss the deepest reality: Only an identity rooted in Christ can truly sustain a person.

As a combat veteran with over 20 years of service, Chris intimately understands the painful challenge of shifting an identity once defined by the military to one centered on Jesus.

“The military is our life. It’s our culture. It’s ultimately our identity, and when we get out, we don’t know how to function. That’s why our identity must be placed in Christ,” he said.

This reorientation of selfhood is crucial in the healing process. While Camp Hope includes on-site psychotherapy provided by licensed mental health clinicians who specialize in trauma and addiction, these traditional counseling tools play a supporting role to the program’s core: intensive peer-to-peer mentoring.

It’s in these intimate relationships that veterans are able to fully overcome something Chris calls “moral injury” — the layered trauma that results from actions (or inaction) that violate one’s own deeply held moral beliefs and values.

He gave the following heartbreaking example:

During the Iraq War, insurgents employed a tactic where they would push women and children in front of American convoys to stop or slow the advancement, allowing for an ambush. Many American troops died because of this, so eventually a gut-wrenching decision was made: Keep driving no matter what. This put the soldiers in the driver’s seat in a moral dilemma where all paths led to violating their deepest held beliefs.

Chris explained that professional therapy and counseling are effective at addressing the psychological aspect of a moral injury, such as the one mentioned above, but to overcome the spiritual wounds, it takes the power of Christ and a healed brother who can both empathize with the pain and attest to the healing available.

“We walk them through where God was when their trauma occurred, why God allows horrible things to happen, and then through forgiveness, grace, and mercy,” Chris said. “In order for them to forgive themselves, we have to point them back to the highest power that died for us and forgives us of our darkest sins.”

Medication, counseling, and therapy only go so far, he told me, because “they don’t address the heart, which is why PTSD Foundation of America and Camp Hope are Christ-based.”

The results speak for themselves. Hundreds of combat veterans have completed the program, many of whom return to be staff members.

Here are some of their stories.

Alex Yutzey

Immediately following high school graduation, Alex joined the military, where for the next six years he served as an airborne infantryman. In that span of time, he would deploy to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In these combat zones, Alex watched many of his brothers die. But to fulfill his sworn duties, he did what all military personnel are forced to do amid tragedy: Shove the pain down and keep moving forward.

While repression kept him alive in war, the same tactic deeply failed him in the real world. When Alex returned home, death came with him. In the years following his homecoming, he watched many more brothers die from suicide.

Emotional suppression continued to be Alex’s sole coping mechanism until one final death broke him: his grandmother’s.

Finally, the pain Alex had bottled up for years demanded to be felt, but he didn’t know how to confront such overwhelming heartache. PTSD and drug addiction defined the next several years of his life.

But Alex’s story was far from over. His wife found out about Camp Hope and relocated their family to Houston to create space for Alex to enroll in the program.

The treatment, mentorship, and hope he found completely transformed his entire life. His marriage, his future, and ultimately his life were saved.

After graduating the program, Alex stayed on at Camp Hope to be a driver. Over the next several years, he worked his way up and today serves as the director of the program, where he continues to live out his life’s mission to end veteran suicide, confront suffering in the veteran community, and guide his brothers and sisters toward healing, recovery, and a better way of life.

Nicholas Eckley

Nicholas entered the military already carrying emotional baggage from his difficult home life. For years, he walked a wayward path fueled by anger. After several bad decisions, he decided to make a drastic change and enroll himself in the United States Marine Corps.

The structure, identity, and brotherhood proved immediately beneficial. Nicholas grew from a broken young man into a courageous leader who eventually became a platoon sergeant. He led a team of men who would do anything for each other, and these bonds were life-giving.

But his deployment to Afghanistan changed things. Combat was brutal and tragic, but the worst part was that Nicholas couldn’t escape it when he came home. The memories permeated every area of his life — from his thoughts and reactions to his quality of sleep and relationships with others.

But these invisible wounds were only half of Nicholas’ suffering. He also returned from war with a physical injury from an IED blast. Like many wounded veterans, he was prescribed opioids, which led to a crippling addiction. It wasn’t long before the discipline and strength he had developed in the military gave way to isolation, frustration, and hopelessness.

His wife and children were the people who suffered the most from this change. Nicholas, unable to cope with the fact that he was hurting the people he loved most, attempted to take his own life.

This dark night of the soul, however, ultimately became the catalyst for change. He found his way to Camp Hope, bonded with other veterans who had walked similar paths, and reconnected with his faith in God.

In his testimony, Nicholas wrote, “Rebuilding my relationship with God wasn’t a single moment, it was a process. A daily decision. A willingness to surrender control and trust in something greater than myself. Through that process, I began to find peace where there had once been chaos, pain, and anger.”

Over time, Nicholas rebuilt his relationships with his wife and kids. Today, he is a proud husband, father, teacher, and coach who works with troubled students who need support, guidance, and someone who believes in them.

His testimony culminates in this powerful declaration: “I didn’t just survive what I went through. I was rebuilt because of it.”

Sam Kauahquo

Sam was 18 years old when he became a United States Marine. His two deployments to Iraq were a testament to his skill and courage. In just three years, he was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon, a Purple Heart, and received a combat meritorious mast.

He returned home proud of his accomplishments but deeply traumatized by the combat he’d experienced. His PTSD was so severe, it wrecked his life and his will to live.

He wrote, “I lost nearly everything and found myself battling suicidal thoughts that led to three attempts on my life, each one resulting in hospitalization. My darkest moment came during my final attempt, when I tried to end my life through self-asphyxiation.”

After this final suicide attempt, a fellow marine he had served with reached out and told him about Camp Hope.

Out of options, Sam enrolled in the program. Over the next several months, he found healing, purpose, and a renewed sense of direction.

By graduation, he was so radically changed that he decided to work for the PTSD Foundation of America for the next four years, helping fellow wounded veterans find the path to recovery.

Today, Sam is a husband, a father, and a college graduate who is currently building a nonprofit that integrates the game of golf with life lessons, faith, and structure to help people struggling with mental health issues.

“Camp Hope didn’t just save my life; it gave me a future. And today, I live that future with purpose, gratitude, and a commitment to helping others find their way out of the darkness with life lessons, God, and purpose,” he wrote.

A vision for the future

In our conversation, Chris painted a vivid picture of his dreams for Camp Hope. As successful as the program is, it has several limitations that he is eager to resolve.

“Camp Hope has been so successful that we’ve had to be very careful about spreading too much awareness because we only have so many spots. Our most immediate need is funding for expansion. When we have to turn a vet away, it’s just heartbreaking,” he told me.

His other vision for the future involves building transitional housing that would serve as an in-between place for veterans who have graduated the program but still need more time to transition back into everyday life.

Lastly, Chris dreams of opening Camp Hope to women. Currently, the program only serves men, but Chris is keenly aware of female combat veterans’ need for support and care.

Opening the program to women is a challenge, he admitted, because women have unique physical and psychological needs.

“Women come with children,” he said, “and because it’s difficult to find a place that accommodates children, female combat veterans will often neglect to get the care they need. Our goal is to build a facility that meets the needs of these women and their children.”

This project, he explained, will involve tailoring counseling and therapies specifically to women and their children, implementing an education system, providing child care, and building living facilities.

But Chris’ boldest vision expands far beyond the 5-acre boundaries of Camp Hope.

“Ultimately, I want to change how the nation treats trauma,” he said, “and that begins with something we call a COIN operation in the military. It means winning the hearts and minds of those we serve. I want to show the VA that spends $571 million a year on suicide prevention that what we’re doing here at Camp Hope actually works.”

In a system that continues to lose veterans every day despite allocating hundreds of millions each year, Camp Hope stands as living proof that real, lasting healing is possible when the heart is addressed along with the mind through the transforming power of Christ.