‘Backrooms’ is horror for a self-justifying age



“Backrooms” came out of internet lore to take down “The Mandalorian.” Perhaps audiences are turning on Disney. The film is now a smash hit theatrical release, but its story began online, where it grew from a 2019 4chan image and creepypasta into one of the most recognizable examples of liminal horror: familiar spaces that somehow make no sense.

The idea began on 4chan’s paranormal board, where a discussion about “disquieting spaces that just feel off” led to a user defining the Backrooms as spaces where you “noclip” out of reality. The term comes from video games, where a player slips outside the designed bounds of the game into unintended space. The Backrooms are marked by yellow wallpaper, buzzing lights, and seemingly infinite rooms.

‘Backrooms’ asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

These spaces are liminal, meaning they should function as transitions. Hallways, corridors, and waiting rooms are meant to have an entry point and a destination. What makes the Backrooms terrifying is that they do not go anywhere. The hallway has no destination. That is not merely inconvenient. It is a picture of purpose removed.

The movement, then, runs from liminal horror to cosmic horror. Liminal horror unsettles us because a familiar space no longer performs its purpose. Cosmic horror goes further. It asks whether all of reality is like that. The terror is not merely that something bad may happen inside reality. The terror is that reality itself may not make sense.

On the surface, life seems familiar and coherent. But as we move through it, life often becomes stranger and harder to explain. It does not turn out as we hoped. Our efforts fail. Our goals recede. Our explanations collapse. That is the fear beneath the fluorescent lights: not monsters, but meaninglessness.

We assume reality can be understood. When failure comes, we think we need more information, more self-help, more discipline, or a better method. Then we try again. We expect success. But we fail again. The failures accumulate. And life gets shorter.

That makes this horror different from a standard slasher or zombie film. In those stories, the threat is physical and animal-like. You cannot reason with the monster. You simply have to survive it. Cosmic horror raises the stakes. It asks: What if rationality is not built into reality at all? What if reason is merely man’s frantic attempt to impose order on chaos?

Clark, the film’s protagonist, embodies that question. He enters the Backrooms already looking for an explanation that will let him escape responsibility. His failures have left him with a ruined marriage and a failed career. He wants to be told that none of this is his fault. He refuses to see his obvious flaws as the cause of what happened to him. That makes him a perfect fit for the irrationality of the Backrooms.

Guilt is the bridge between the film’s horror and its spiritual meaning. Clark does not simply want to survive the Backrooms. He wants the Backrooms to explain him. He wants the maze to tell him that his failures were not really his fault.

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Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Paramount+

In that sense, the Backrooms can be read as an image of the unconscious mind. As in a dream, things feel familiar but not quite right. The spaces are recognizable and impossible at the same time. Clark searches there for something that will excuse him, but he cannot find anything intelligible. He wants the maze to justify him. Instead, it exposes him. He is trapped in the Backrooms because he is already trapped inside himself.

Director Kane Parsons has said the Backrooms are not purgatory or hell. In a literal sense, he is right. They are not presented as divine judgment according to a moral order. But that is exactly why they work as an image of a different terror: existence without moral order at all.

Christianity gives a name to this terror. It is life severed from the God who made reality intelligible. Hell is terrifying not merely because of punishment, but because those in hell have cut off communion with God the Creator. God made the world with wisdom. The world makes sense because God created it and gave man a rational soul by which to understand his creation.

When human beings reject God, they cut themselves off from the source of rationality and meaning. They then try to create their own smaller rationalities and meanings. All of them collapse because human beings cannot be God.

The person who has lost communion with God occupies a dreadful liminal space. He senses that he was created for a purpose, but he can no longer grasp that purpose. Reality feels familiar, but something is wrong. It has become unintelligible.

To be handed over to final meaninglessness while still possessing a mind that longs to understand is the greatest terror imaginable. You cannot understand reality. You cannot understand yourself. All lesser terrors frighten us because they echo this one.

One word often used to describe the Backrooms and their occupants is “deformity.” That’s key. Deformity is the attempted creation of someone who cannot create rightly. It is Lucifer’s counterfeit of what God made, and it turns out wrong. When man follows Lucifer by believing he can be his own god, he ends up in the Backrooms of his own unintelligible mind.

God created through the Logos. Lucifer deforms creation through the anti-Logos.

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akinbostanci via iStock/Getty Images

The movement of the film is clear: A man burdened by guilt enters a world without meaning, seeks self-justification, and is destroyed by the irrationality he hoped would excuse him. That gives us good reason to consider our own guilt before God. Clark is gripped by guilt, but his solution is self-justification. He deceives himself about his failures and wants others to join the deception.

If we do not deal with guilt by turning in repentance to God through Christ, we are left with the same self-deception and the same liminal space of meaninglessness.

The Christian answer is not self-justification but repentance and reconciliation. In Christ, guilt is not hidden in a maze, explained away by trauma, or dissolved into meaninglessness. It is forgiven. Communion with God is restored. Reality becomes intelligible again because we are reconciled to the One who made it.

In the end, “Backrooms” asks a question more terrifying than anything hiding under the fluorescent lights: What are you doing with your guilt?

Caregivers should not have to lie to prove compassion



“Why not just stay in your lane and focus on caregivers?”

A listener to my radio program for family caregivers reached out recently with that question. He appreciated the program, he said, but felt troubled when I “went political.” Then he added, “I reached out because I thought you would listen.”

People retreat from politics because the noise exhausts them. But avoiding politics and refusing to morally examine the world unfolding around us are not the same thing.

Fair enough. So I did. I listened while doing dishes and folding laundry because that is caregiver life. Then he asked what I thought.

I spend my days speaking with families navigating catastrophic injury, dementia, trauma, chronic illness, memory care centers, prosthetics, bureaucratic failure, and exhaustion. Caregivers do not have the luxury of pretending reality is negotiable. Family caregivers now provide more than $1 trillion worth of unpaid care annually in the United States. We sit at kitchen tables staring at medical bills, insurance statements, pharmacy receipts, and impossible spreadsheets while trying to keep another human being alive, safe, and cared for.

We pinch pennies. We know what groceries cost, but we also know the price of wound care supplies. We know what one wheelchair repair can do to a monthly budget. Meanwhile, we keep discovering billions in taxpayer dollars flowing through fraud and “quality learing centers” bilking people already struggling to pay the IRS.

Caregivers notice things like that because caregiving quickly introduces a person to reality. So yes, I have become exasperated watching people in power lecture the country about “compassion” while families quietly drown at their kitchen tables.

Recently, I was at a cancer center preparing for prostate treatment. Before I reached the medical history section, the form opened with questions asking what sex I identify as and what sex I was assigned at birth. I sat there staring at the page for a moment and thought: This whole trans movement seems built for virtue signaling until “she/her” has to get “her” prostate checked.

Prostate cancer does not care how I identify.

Then I asked the caller a question: “Which political worldview do you think put that language on that form?” When a civilization loses the ability to say plainly what a man or woman is, even inside medicine, something foundational has broken.

My wife lost both legs after years of struggling with catastrophic injuries from a car accident decades ago. Not once did either of our sons say, “I think I should amputate my leg to look like Mom.” Had they done so, I would have sought psychiatric help immediately. If a physician had offered to remove healthy body parts from a confused child, I would have reported that doctor immediately.

Again, I asked the caller, “Which political party aligned itself with removing healthy body parts from children?” In his silence, I pressed further: “And you’re wondering why I’m not staying in my lane?”

I told him I am not here to carry water for the Republican Party. But right now, only one major political movement seems increasingly hostile to objective, biological, and theological reality. That matters to caregivers because we deal in reality every day.

I asked him point-blank, “What do you actually like about the Democratic Party?” He repeated a phrase I have heard for years: “Democrats seem to be the party that cares.” The word “seem” leapt out.

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Benjavisa/iStock/Getty Images

So I asked what exactly was caring about any of this. What is caring about allowing millions of illegal immigrants to overwhelm already strained schools, hospitals, and social systems while corporations benefit from cheap labor and America absorbs the consequences? What is caring about enabling addiction and destructive behavior? What is caring about encouraging irreversible medical interventions for confused children? What is caring about demanding that citizens deny biological reality to prove compassion?

Political parties do not care. They exist to wield power. Government’s role is not to love us. Its role is to preserve equal justice, protect liberty, and provide conditions where citizens can work, worship, raise families, and pursue opportunity. That is very different from emotional branding.

I also shared the moment something changed for me as a broadcaster. I watched Barack Obama stand before Planned Parenthood as president of the United States and say, “God bless Planned Parenthood.” I remember thinking: Which God? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The God who said, “You shall not murder"?

I asked the caller, who professed Christianity, “How do you shake hands with that?” He said he agreed with much of what I said. “How would anyone know?” I asked. “I guess I have to say something,” he replied. “And that’s what I do on my show.”

Then, I asked him to name one major idea currently being advanced by Democrats that he believed would genuinely strengthen the country. “They’re not in power,” he protested. “Ideas are power,” I countered. “Give me one. Not opposition to Donald Trump. An actual idea.”

Finally, he admitted, “I can’t think of anything, and I haven’t been paying attention to the news.”

I told him, “You have my number. If you come up with one major idea being advanced by Democrats that makes you say, ‘This is genuinely good for America,’ let me know, and I’ll talk about it on my program.”

People retreat from politics because the noise exhausts them. I understand that. But avoiding politics and refusing to morally examine the world unfolding around us are not the same thing. I do not drift into politics for sport. I was preparing for prostate cancer treatment when politics invaded the top of the questionnaire.

Caregivers deal with reality every single day.

And in the exam room, reality should have the last word.

‘Godball’: Are outspoken athletes Christianity’s most powerful evangelists?



Christian affiliation in America has been in steep decline for decades, with church attendance falling and nearly 30% of adults religiously unaffiliated.

Pew Research Center has argued that there is “no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults,” but sports fans might reach a different conclusion when tuning in to post-game interviews and press conferences, where they frequently hear athletes boldly professing their faith and giving glory to Jesus Christ.

‘You’re not alone in seeing it, and you’re not alone in recognizing that it is a revival.’

While Pew’s latest polling shows that the long decline has only plateaued, New York Times bestselling author and sports journalist Steve Eubanks believes there are undeniable and meaningful signs of revival, particularly among athletes.

Teed up

In his forthcoming book, “Godball: How Athletes Are Saving Christianity,” which releases June 9, Eubanks takes a deeper look at the faith resurgence sweeping America and how these outspoken athletes have become Christianity’s most powerful evangelists.

“I don’t think I would have noticed it if it hadn’t been for the event that you and I talked about three years ago,” Eubanks told Blaze News, referring to a 2023 incident in which the leading golf publication he then worked for attempted to censor his interview with professional golfer Amy Olson. When Global Golf Post refused to run the piece unless Eubanks removed Olson's references to her Christian faith and pro-life views, he “resigned on the spot.”

At the time, Eubanks told Blaze News that widespread leftist bias had created a “sad state of affairs” for journalism.

But now Eubanks says the experience had a silver lining: showing him that outspoken Christian athletes like Olson were more common than he realized.

“I thought, ‘Wow, for an athlete to say something like this is extraordinary,’” Eubanks told Blaze News.

“Well, then I started paying attention, and I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not that extraordinary; maybe it’s something that’s happening every day, and I just hadn’t noticed.’”

Jesus first

Combing through press conferences and pre- and post-game interviews proved his hunch correct. More and more athletes seemed to be using the spotlight to profess their faith, sidestepping questions about athletic performance to give thanks to Jesus and share the gospel.

“It’s a huge movement now,” Eubanks declared. “Really, it’s a revival.”

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Steve Eubanks. Image source: Steve Eubanks

When asked why athletes tend to be more outspoken than other public figures, Eubanks pointed to the confidence that comes from succeeding in “one of the few meritocracies left.”

Leaderboard

Sports also instill a willingness to resist the herd, Eubanks said.

“From the time they were 7 or 8 years old, they were the leaders of the teams,” Eubanks said. “They had been told by the coaching staff, ‘Look, you’re the person who has to step up.’ And it’s a natural extension of that.”

Eubanks asserts one of the main reasons these athletes are speaking out now is tied to the COVID lockdowns. He highlighted that an athlete’s career is significantly shorter than most other professions and that, during the lockdowns, everything they had dedicated their lives to was put on hold for an uncertain, lengthy period.

“I just think COVID radicalized these kids,” he stated. “Those people realized that their entire lives could be taken away from them in an instant and that it was important for them to stand up for the things that were really important and to go ahead and make these proclamations of faith.”

He argued that athletes have become the “cultural drivers” of American society, more so than artists and musicians.

Bad bets

Eubanks hopes that church attendance, particularly among young men, continues to grow, but expressed concern about one emerging threat within the sports community that could impact the current Christian revival.

Image source: Steve Eubanks

“If there’s anything that could derail it, it is the sports gambling,” Eubanks told Blaze News. “It can compromise the integrity of the sports themselves.”

He detailed how throwing a game used to mean deliberately manipulating the entire outcome, but recently, some athletes have been indicted for allegedly engaging in spot-fixes, rigging small moments, such as a specific baseball pitch, for prop bets.

Eubanks also noted that the barrier to gambling has been substantially lowered, from having to seek out a local bookie to using your phone to place numerous bets in seconds.

“It’s almost the slot machine effect. There’s just enough bells and whistles to keep you engaged and to keep you throwing money down the rathole,” he said. “There’s a huge, huge addiction problem out there with this that we haven’t recognized yet, but that could really derail this revival movement in my eyes.”

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Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Walking the walk

To sustain and grow the revival, Eubanks believes athletes must become more vocal about their faith and take a stand against immoral practices in the sports industry, including opposing sports betting and the playing of songs with obscene lyrics at stadiums and arenas.

“In order to walk the walk, you’re eventually going to have to stand up and say, ‘This is not right; we shouldn’t be doing this,’” he said.

Eubanks hopes that readers of “Godball” understand this revival movement is significant and expanding. He also aims to inspire young athletes to express their faith publicly, which could spark a domino effect of fans being drawn to Jesus Christ.

“There’s an entire legion of people out here who are seeing exactly the same thing. You’re not alone in seeing it, and you’re not alone in recognizing that it is a revival,” he stated.

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Washington Nationals under fire after anti-Christian public relations disaster EXPOSED



The Washington Nationals are in hot water over a player who dares to stand up for his Christian faith.

James O'Keefe's guerrilla journalism outfit published undercover footage on Tuesday featuring an apparent admission by the Washington Nationals' director of community relations that the team has avoided using pitcher Trevor Williams in Nationals social media content on account of his criticism of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — a group that mocks the Catholic Church, its rituals and beliefs, and its nuns.

Background

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is a San Francisco-based radical group that touts itself as a "leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns."

'The public has a right to know whether that view is tolerated, encouraged, or operationalized by the organization.'

Since its inception on Easter Sunday 1979, the SPI — whose motto is "go forth and sin some more," an inversion of Christ's command — has ridiculed Catholic teaching and doctrine, mocking the church's orthodox views on marriage, sexuality, transgenderism, and abortion.

This anti-Christian group regularly holds "Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary" contests; held a "condom savior mass"; saw one of its members arrested for allegedly masturbating in public; routinely mocks the crucifixion; participated in drag shows targeting children; and according to Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, once "tricked an archbishop into giving them the Eucharist — the most important sacrament of the Catholic faith — so they could defile it."

Pitcher Trevor Williams, who is Catholic, was among the handful of players in the Major League Baseball league who spoke out in 2023 after the L.A. Dodgers decided to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with a "Community Hero Award" for "their countless hours of community service, ministry, and outreach to those on the edges, in addition to promoting human rights and respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment."

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Samuel Corum/Getty Images

"A Major League Baseball game is a place where people from all walks of life should feel welcomed, something I greatly respect and support. This is the purpose of different themed nights hosted by the organization, including Pride Night," wrote Williams on May 30, 2023.

"To invite and honor a group that makes a blatant and deeply offensive mockery of my religion, and the religion of over 4 million people in Los Angeles county alone, undermines the values of respect and inclusivity that should be upheld by any organization," added the pitcher.

"I believe it is essential for the Dodgers to reconsider their association with this group and strive to create an inclusive environment that does not demean or disrespect the religious beliefs of any fan or employee," Williams continued. "I also encourage my fellow Catholics to reconsider their support of an organization that allows this type of mockery of its fans to occur."

Blacklisted

Sean Hudson, the community relations director whose LinkedIn page was recently deleted, appears to tell an undercover reporter in the footage published by James O'Keefe that Trevor Williams "is very Catholic."

"He's super Catholic — all these tattoos that mean a lot," Hudson appears to say. "But last year, I don't understand the full scope, the Dodgers had a group out to the stadium who were drag queens who sometimes dressed up as nuns. ... He went on like a social media like — 'this is wrong, this is my religion, you all are mocking it.'"

"So we don't use him," continued Hudson. "Because of that, we don't use him on social."

Later in the video, Hudson appears to state, "If you're a sports fan and we piss you off, where else are you going to go?"

The Washington Nationals X account does not appear to have referenced Williams since September 2025 and has only sporadically made mention of him since he criticized the SPI in 2023.

Neither the MLB nor the Washington Nationals responded to Blaze News' request for comment.

O'Keefe's journalism outfit suggested that Hudson's "admission raises legal questions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which explicitly prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on religion, including limiting their opportunities or visibility due to sincerely held beliefs."

When later confronted by conservative commentator Alex Stein about his claim, Hudson said, "That doesn't sound like something I would say."

The team, however, told EWTN News that it was "aware of comments made by an employee, which were recorded without the employee’s knowledge and disseminated without his permission."

"The statements are not only factually incorrect, but do not reflect the views, opinions, or actions of the Washington Nationals," the team said in its statement. "The Nationals are dedicated to creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for our players, fans, and staff, and we vehemently deny any allegations to the contrary."

Backlash

Kelsey Reinhardt, the CEO of CatholicVote, wrote to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon on Wednesday, urging the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to "investigate possible unlawful religious discrimination by the Washington Nationals Baseball Club against pitcher Trevor Williams."

Reinhardt suggested that if Hudson's remarks are accurate, an MLB "franchise may have taken an adverse employment-related action, reputational action, promotional action, or workplace action against a player because of his religion and his sincere public expression of Catholic belief."

"This matter is not merely a private dispute between an athlete and his employer," said Reinhardt. "The Washington Nationals are a Major League Baseball franchise in the nation's capital. Their conduct sends a public message. If a senior executive of such an organization believes that a player should be excluded from official team communications because he is 'very Catholic' and because he defended Catholics from religious mockery, then the public has a right to know whether that view is tolerated, encouraged, or operationalized by the organization."

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) has also asked the DOJ to take "decisive action."

Williams, who hasn't posted on X since 2023 and hasn't posted on Instagram since January, said in an Instagram post on Friday, "The first reading from today comes from 1 Peter 4:7-13. The writer of this epistle is addressing newly baptized Christians, reminding them that they are holy and they should act like it. This entire chapter really addresses the social costs of the faith — not necessarily persecution, but the sometimes awkward 'ehh I don’t do that anymore.'"

"As my friend Fr. Joshua said 'Sometimes we lean into it and bravely bear witness to Christ’s truth; sometimes we dodge it and regret it later, feeling we’ve let Jesus down,'" continued Williams. "Therefore Christians are called in those moments to love, to suffer, and to sacrifice, for when we act like Christ in those moments, we imitate Jesus. We even share in the merciful work of Jesus when we choose to act like him in the face of even the smallest insult."

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There’s No Such Thing As Pro-Life Feminism

It is well past time to scuttle establishment feminism and work with women’s human nature instead of against it.

My father brought Memorial Day to the doorstep



As a boy in the early 1970s, I remember my father serving as a U.S. Navy Reserve chaplain in Atlanta. One of his duties was casualty notification, informing families that their loved one had been killed in military service, usually the Marines.

In winter, he wore his Navy service dress blues while accompanying other officers into some of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods and housing projects. There were no cell phones, GPS systems, or easy ways to locate families quickly. The notifications were time-sensitive, and strangers in uniform were often met cautiously in neighborhoods already carrying more than their share of hardship. Some families hid at first because they thought the men approaching their doors were police officers.

This Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

But my father carried a different burden: the worst message a family could hear.

In addition to preaching from a pulpit, he ministered on doorsteps.

He served for many years, eventually retiring with the rank of captain. But long before that, I watched him carry one of the hardest duties a chaplain could bear.

Memorial Day means more to me because of that.

Not all memorials are granite.

Some are folded into flags handed to trembling families. Others hang quietly in framed photographs or rest beneath white crosses overlooking distant oceans. And some are so small that readers almost miss them in Scripture.

One appears in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, Matthew records the lineage of Jesus carefully: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon.

But when he arrives at Solomon, Matthew writes something unusual: “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah” (Matthew 1:6).

Bathsheba’s name is not mentioned. Her husband’s is.

Uriah the Hittite.

King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged for Uriah to die in battle. Scripture does not sanitize David’s sin: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

David repented. God forgave him. But the consequences remained.

Still, God preserved the name David tried to bury.

Every Memorial Day, I think about that.

Uriah has now been remembered for nearly 3,000 years, not because kings honored him properly. His own king had him killed. But God refused to let him disappear.

And Uriah was not even an Israelite by birth. He was a Hittite. Yet he served honorably even when his king acted dishonorably toward him.

Memorial Day reminds us that service is vital.

As America approaches 250 years as a nation, countless men and women have worn its uniform unto death. Some died heroically in combat. Others died through confusion, incompetence, training accidents, or the failures of leaders far from the battlefield.

War has always mixed courage with tragedy, honor with human failure. But generation after generation, Americans still stepped forward, willing to bear costs most citizens pray they never personally face.

Many of those never came home alive.

My own sons are now about the age my father was when he knocked on those doors in a Navy uniform, carrying news no family ever wants to hear.

Looking at my sons, I cannot imagine them carrying that burden repeatedly.

Yet those moments marked my father for the rest of his ministry. His faith was forged in living rooms where stunned families learned someone they loved was not coming home.

He carried both the duty of the nation and the ministry of the church into rooms shattered by grief.

His grave marker bears both his rank and his calling, a reminder that he stood beside grieving families in their darkest hours.

So this Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

But in that pause, if you served beside a military chaplain, remember them as well.

Many spent their ministries carrying unbearable news to frightened families, fighting back tears while praying for those who could not, burying the dead, and offering words no one who hears them ever forgets:

“On behalf of a grateful nation ...”

History forgets names. Monuments weather. Politicians fail. But God does not forget.

In the genealogy of Christ, God preserved the name of a faithful soldier. No service and no sacrifice poured out in duty escapes the sight of God.

Not all memorials are granite. Some are written where time cannot erase them.

Remembering America's first Army chaplain KIA: John Rosbrugh



Rev. John Rosbrugh, the first U.S. Army chaplain killed in battle, was bayoneted 239 years ago in the midst of the withdrawal from the Battle of Assunpink Creek in the Revolutionary War.

In a 19th-century biography detailing the "life, labors, and death" of this "Clerical Martyr of the Revolution," Rev. John Clyde emphasizes at the outset, "Amid all the light thrown upon his career socially, ecclesiastically, and politically — by tradition and historical record — nothing but the good he did lived after him, whilst the evil was interred with his bones — so far as known no blot rests on his fair name."

'Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.'

Rosbrugh belonged to a Scottish family that migrated in the early 18th century to Northern Ireland. With his older brother William, Rosbrugh eventually moved to the American Colonies, settling in New Jersey, where at the age of 19, he married a woman named Sarah, who would tragically perish along with their baby during childbirth.

Although unable himself decades later to afford "that thorough education which was required of those who would enter the sacred office in his day," the aspiring Presbyterian minister studied theology at the College of New Jersey — now Princeton University — with the help of financial aid and graduated in 1761.

Rosbrugh was ordained as a minister in 1764 at Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey.

The minister, whose recognition and responsibilities exploded in subsequent years, married again, this time to Jane Ralston of the Allen Township Presbyterian Church. Rosbrugh and Jane ultimately had five children — the eldest, James, would later serve as a militia captain in the War of 1812.

Long before his son would take up arms in defense of his country, Rosbrugh — "filled with the spirit of freedom" — decided to lead his congregants out of church and toward the battlefield.

According to Clyde, Rosbrugh assembled his congregation, urged them to satisfy the Continental Army's request for reinforcements, quoted them Judges 5:23, and proposed that he join them as chaplain. The congregation was apparently keen to go — but only if he would be their commander. After some deliberation and receiving consent from his wife, Rosbrugh agreed.

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Gen. George Washington at the first Battle of Trenton. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

After penning his last will and testament, the minister "put a musket to his shoulder and marched out to the highway, and all fell into line and followed" Rosbrugh to join General George Washington in Philadelphia.

"The little boy James, rode the gray horse by his father's side till they passed over the brow of the hill, just east of their home, as we suppose," wrote Clyde. "Then the father took him from the horse, kissed him, and bade him go home to his mother, and be a good boy till he should return — he never saw his father's face again."

In Philadelphia, Rosbrugh assumed, as he intended from the start, the role of company chaplain and was replaced as commander by Capt. John Hays. The previous year, the Continental Congress authorized one chaplain for each regiment of the Continental Army with pay equaling that of a captain.

Rosbrugh's tenure as a chaplain in Washington's army was short-lived. Just days after the Battle of Trenton, where Washington — having just crossed the Delaware River — led a momentous victory against Hessian auxiliaries, the chaplain breathed his last.

Clyde noted that there are varying accounts of how the chaplain perished but held that the most trustworthy version has that the chaplain — whose company partook in the Battle of Assunpink Creek — unwittingly lingered behind at the eponymous site of the Second Battle of Trenton while the patriot army withdrew.

On Jan. 2, 1777, Rosbrugh tied up his horse outside a pub, then went inside for refreshments only to hear someone cry, "The Hessians are coming."

The 63-year-old chaplain rushed outside to find that his horse had been stolen, then attempted to make his escape on foot, only to run into a small group of Hessians under the command of a British officer.

Clyde explained what reportedly happened next:

Seeing that further attempt at escape was useless, he surrendered himself a prisoner of war. Having done so, he offered to his captors his gold watch and money if they would spare his life for his family's sake. Notwithstanding these were taken, they immediately prepared to put him to death. Seeing this, he knelt down at the foot of a tree and, it is said, prayed for his enemies. Now seventeen bayonet thrusts were made at his body, and one bayonet was left broken off in his quivering frame. Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.

The stone monument erected in Rosburgh's memory at Hanover Academy in Trenton states, "Clerical Martyr of the Revolution[.] Moderator of the Presbytery of New Brunswick 1776[.] Chaplain 3d Battalion Northampton County PA Militia December 25, 1776[.] Bayoneted to death by Hessians in Trenton January 2, 1777."

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CS Lewis: Angry atheist surprised by God



Before he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Christian writers, C.S. Lewis was a committed atheist who regarded religion with suspicion, irritation, and eventually contempt.

Christianity seemed to him a relic of humanity’s intellectual childhood — a comforting story for people unable to face reality without divine reassurance.

‘Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” ... To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.’

Return to sender

Lewis’ loss of faith began early. Though raised in a nominally Christian household in Belfast, his childhood belief collapsed after the death of his mother from cancer when he was just 9 years old.

“With my mother’s death,” he later wrote in his memoir, “Surprised by Joy,” “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life.”

Prayer seemed useless. God, if He existed at all, appeared absent and indifferent. Lewis later compared the experience to writing letters to someone who never replied.

As he grew older, his atheism hardened. Immersed in classical literature, philosophy, and modern rationalism, Lewis came to regard Christianity as one mythology among many — no more objectively true than the pagan stories he admired in ancient texts.

At Oxford, he became known among friends as a “foul-mouthed and riotously amusing atheist.” The horrors of the First World War only deepened his disbelief. After surviving trench warfare and seeing death at close range, Lewis later remarked with grim pride: “I never sank so low as to pray.”

Yet even at the height of his atheism, cracks had begun to appear.

Deeper longing

Lewis found himself haunted by experiences that materialism could not easily explain: sudden moments of longing triggered by music, poetry, memory, or beauty. Reading certain books or encountering particular images awakened in him what he later described as an intense, almost painful desire for something beyond ordinary experience.

“An unsatisfied desire,” he wrote, “which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy.”

If human beings consistently longed for something no earthly experience could fully satisfy, what did that suggest? Hunger points to food. Thirst points to water. Why should this deeper longing exist at all if reality were ultimately meaningless?

Lewis slowly began to suspect that the longing was not accidental. Just as hunger points to food and thirst to water, this deeper want revealed something essential about human beings. As he would write in “Mere Christianity,” “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

He also found that his outrage at injustice itself suggested a moral framework that preceded humanity.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?”

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Kicking and screaming

Lewis did not move suddenly from atheism to Christianity. He resisted all the way, considering himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

“Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God,’” he wrote. “To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”

Eventually, the chase ended. But having acknowledged God’s existence, Christianity itself remained a stumbling block.

Lewis loved mythology deeply and still regarded the Gospels as one myth among many. The breakthrough came largely through conversations with friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien, who challenged his assumption that myth and truth were opposites.

Christianity, Tolkien argued, was the “true myth”: the story toward which humanity’s myths and legends had always pointed, but one that had entered actual history.

The truth of myth

The idea struck Lewis with enormous force.

Themes that echoed through pagan mythology — sacrifice, death, resurrection, redemption — were not evidence that Christianity was fabricated, Lewis came to believe. They were signs that humanity had been reaching toward the same truth all along.

Soon afterward, while riding in the sidecar of his brother’s motorcycle on the way to a zoo, Lewis realized the final barrier had fallen. “When we set out,” he wrote in “Surprised by Joy,” “I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

That belief shaped the rest of his life, which he would devote to helping make Christianity intellectually serious and imaginatively alive for millions of readers.

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Foreign aid should offer resources, not liberal ideology



When news breaks that foreign aid programs are being paused or restructured, many Christians understandably fear the world’s most vulnerable will be left behind.

It is a fair concern. But it also raises a harder question: What if some of what we have called “help” was not helping in the way we thought?

The recent restructuring of foreign aid creates an opportunity. It allows the United States to reconsider not only how much it gives, but how it gives.

Imposed values

For decades, American foreign assistance has done real good in many places. But too often it has also come with expectations that placed struggling nations in an impossible position. Funding was tied to adopting policies on family life, sexuality, and bioethics that did not reflect the values of the communities receiving that aid. Governments that resisted those conditions risked losing support their people depended on.

From a Christian perspective, that should give us pause. Care for the poor is a moral calling. But care that requires communities to compromise their deepest convictions is not compassion. It is pressure, even if it is delivered in the language of progress.

Scripture calls us to love our neighbor, not to remake our neighbor in our own image.

Pursuing the good

That is why the Geneva Consensus Declaration matters. Today, 41 nations representing more than 2.5 billion people have joined this coalition, affirming that international law does not establish a universal right to abortion and that each country has the authority to determine its own laws on life and family.

These nations were not forced into agreement. Many joined because they were weary of outside institutions attempting to impose agenda-driven frameworks through funding conditions and international pressure. What they were seeking was not isolation, but partnership. They wanted to be treated not as projects to be managed, but as nations capable of shaping their own future.

This reflects a principle Christians should recognize. Human dignity includes moral agency. It includes the freedom of communities to pursue the good, before God, without coercion from more powerful actors.

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The Protego framework

There is also a practical reality the United States cannot ignore. Countries like China are expanding their influence across Africa and Latin America by offering infrastructure and investment with fewer visible conditions. America's advantage lies in offering something China cannot: genuine partnership that respects the nations it serves.

In practice, that means moving from a model of control to a model of partnership.

At the Institute for Women’s Health, we have sought to do this through what we call the Protego framework. Instead of arriving with predesigned solutions, we work alongside national leaders, faith communities, and local institutions to build programs that reflect the values and needs of each country.

In one African nation, this has meant developing a national framework for health and life-skills education with input from across society, including interfaith leaders. It is designed to reach tens of thousands of educators and health workers. The program belongs to that nation. The values behind it are its own. And when the partnership ends, the capacity to sustain it will remain.

This kind of work is slower. It requires listening, humility, and trust. But it reflects something essential to a Christian understanding of service.

Human flourishing

We are not called simply to deliver outcomes. We are called to serve people as people, not as instruments of our own priorities.

Faithful foreign engagement takes seriously the dignity of every nation and every community. It refuses to make care for the vulnerable conditional on ideological agreement. It invests in what supports human flourishing, strong families, healthy communities, and the well-being of women and children, while ensuring that these efforts are shaped locally rather than imposed from outside.

The recent restructuring of foreign aid creates an opportunity. It allows the United States to reconsider not only how much it gives, but how it gives.

For Christians, the goal should not be to defend every existing program. It should be to ensure that our engagement reflects the character of the One we serve. We are called to help the vulnerable. But faithful service cannot be separated from humility, respect, and truth about the human person.