Josh Howerton tells fellow pastors to 'stand firm,' provide moral 'clarity' ahead of election



Lakepointe Church senior pastor and host of the "Live Free" podcast, available on BlazeTV, Josh Howerton is calling on his fellow pastors to fight back against "intimidation" efforts from secular activists and to speak forthrightly about the "moral asymmetry" between the two major political parties in America ahead of the upcoming midterms.

Howerton — who discussed the misconceptions about the separation between church and state earlier this year on "Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey" — also implored fellow pastors in Texas and across the nation, via social media, to encourage their congregants to vote and not be afraid of the threat of lawsuits from organizations like the Freedom from Religion Foundation that use IRS complaints to intimidate pastors to remain silent.

'No church in US History has ever had their tax exempt status removed for a sermon, much less for a separate podcast.'

Howerton claimed in the post that millions of Christians in Texas may not vote in the 2026 midterm elections that could be decided by a few hundred thousand votes. Howerton said, "Pastors, consider encouraging your people to vote real quick in announcements next couple weeks." He then told those pastors that their congregations were comprised of "salt of the earth" people who want their pastors to do this.

Days after this initial exhortation, Howerton identified Ashley Wooldridge, the senior pastor of Christ's Church of the Valley in Arizona, as a pastor who has been delivering the goods.

Responding to a video where Wooldridge urges followers of Christ to go vote, Howerton wrote, "People who don't come from 'pastor world' won’t understand this, but Pastor Ashley will get crushed just for doing this (his church is over 50k people). And every member of his church should have his back and be proud he’s their pastor for doing it."

In the interview earlier this year with Allie Beth Stuckey, Howerton explained what the so-called separation of church and state does not mean.

"Morality is all that gets legislated. Every law that has ever existed legislates a morality," he continued. "So separation of church and state doesn't mean a separation of morality and state, and separation of church and state doesn't mean a separation of politics and religion. That's actually impossible and clearly not what the founders desired."

Howerton knows firsthand what backlash awaits those conservative Christians who dare to raise their voices during an election year.

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Howerton spoke forcefully about matters of faith, morality, and political agency, emphasizing that "if the church won't disciple people, the world will." In particular, one of his sermons evidently got under the skin of the secularists at the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a tax-exempt progressive advocacy group that works zealously to remove all signs and sounds of Christianity from public spaces.

While the secularist group acknowledged that Howerton wasn't explicitly endorsing a presidential candidate in the sermon, it nevertheless asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Lakepointe Church and terminate its tax-exempt status.

Drawing on his experience with the FFRF's 2024 complaint and what he regards as pastor-focused "harassment and intimidation," Howerton noted last week that "progressives selectively report churches to the FFRF every year and FFRF selectively threatens only one side with (toothless) lawsuits."

The Internal Revenue Code has long prohibited churches and other tax-exempt nonprofit organizations "from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."

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Congress has yet to repeal the Johnson Amendment and related legal battles are ongoing, but the IRS said last year that pastors could formally endorse political candidates from the pulpit without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status under the Johnson Amendment.

After suggesting that FFRF turns a blind eye to pro-Democratic messaging in progressive churches, Howerton emphasized that "no church in U.S. History has ever had their tax exempt status removed for a sermon, much less for a separate podcast, and that goes triple for cases in which no candidate has even been endorsed and QUADRUPLE for simply encouraging your people to vote and bringing clarity of moral asymmetry of policy proposals."

"In the words of a couple knowledgeable guys I consulted with, it's a harassment and intimidation tactic to silence pastors," said Howerton.

The FFRF did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

"There is NO threat from this whatsoever, you are 100% free to be clear with your people about the (radical) moral asymmetry between the current proposed policies and ideologies of the parties AND to encourage your people to vote as an application of the command to be 'the salt of the earth' (Matt 5:13) and to 'seek the welfare of the city' (Jer 29:7) and to 'love your neighbor' (Mk 12:31)," continued the pastor. "Stand firm."

Howerton is not alone in asking Christian faith leaders to step up.

In an interview on Fox News earlier this month, Southern Baptist Convention President Willy Rice similarly urged pastors to engage in the political process "because there are many political issues that are, at their heart, theological issues and moral issues that strike at the very center of what we believe to be true and what we believe people need to know in order to flourish personally and as a culture."

"I think throughout American history, pastors have had a strong voice at key moments in American political history," added Rice.

Rice also observed that theologically conservative pastors retreated from public political fights in recent years, leaving a "vacuum" that was exploited by "those on the theological and political left."

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5 times Christians lost debates with atheists — and what they did wrong



In May 2007, Kirk Cameron went on national television to do something 2,000 years of Christian theology had somehow failed to do: prove the existence of God "100%, absolutely, without the use of faith."

Cameron, long removed from "Growing Pains" and working as an evangelical apologist, was appearing with evangelist Ray Comfort on ABC's "Nightline." Facing them were Brian Sapient and a woman identified as Kelly from the Rational Response Squad, an atheist group best known for encouraging people to post videos denying the Holy Spirit.

An easier opponent might accept the task of defending moral relativism. Kagan didn't; he simply denied that atheism required him to do any such thing.

"Proving the existence of God is actually a lot easier than you think," Cameron announced, with the confidence of someone about to produce the Holy Grail from his carry-on luggage.

Christians have been arguing with unbelievers since Paul encountered the Epicureans and Stoics in Athens. And ever since Paul's preaching made a guy doze off and fall three stories from a window, the results have been mixed.

That doesn't make atheism true. It doesn't even necessarily mean the atheist had the better argument. A Christian can be defending something true and still lose badly — by promising too much, preparing for the wrong opponent, losing his temper, putting words in the other man's mouth, or asking evidence to prove more than it can.

Here are five examples worth studying.

1. Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort: Don't overpromise

At least nobody could accuse Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort of hiding their lamps under a bushel — even if they could have used a little more oil.

After seeing an ABC report on the Rational Response Squad, Comfort contacted "Nightline" and proposed a public debate. "We cannot only prove that God exists," he wrote, "but we can prove that the atheist doesn't."

By the time Cameron delivered his opening statement, the undertaking had become even more ambitious. "We'd like to show you that the existence of God can be proven, 100%, absolutely, without the use of faith."

Cameron then promised to expose evolution as a "fairy tale for grownups."

Even if Cameron and Comfort had somehow demolished Darwinian evolution that night, God would not automatically follow. And even a successful argument for a creator still leaves some distance between "something caused the universe" and "Jesus Christ rose from the dead."

Comfort proceeded with arguments familiar to anyone who has encountered his evangelistic ministry: A painting implies a painter; a building implies a builder; creation implies a Creator.

Those arguments can be debated. What Comfort could not plausibly do in 90 minutes was deliver what Cameron had promised: absolute scientific proof of God without faith. Unless adding "100%, absolutely" to your assertions counts as science.

Christian reaction afterward was not uniformly charitable. Contemporary Christian reporting quoted believers who thought Cameron and Comfort had arrived badly underprepared. Pastor Marty Duren's verdict was especially concise: The duo had gotten "completely shellacked."

At least they didn't bring a banana.

2. Dinesh D'Souza: Don't debate an opponent who isn't there

By the time Dinesh D'Souza faced New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman at the University of North Carolina in 2009, he had developed a solid playbook for sparring with "New Atheists" like Christopher Hitchens.

And that was the problem. Ehrman wasn't Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. He wasn't even, strictly speaking, an atheist. He was an agnostic who had once been an evangelical Christian and gradually lost his faith. The problem of suffering played an especially important role in that journey.

Jason Staples, a Christian biblical scholar who attended the debate, described what followed as a "beatdown."

D'Souza, Staples wrote immediately afterward, seemed to be working from material meant for "an atheist such as Hitchens" and appeared "entirely unfamiliar with the perspective Ehrman would present." "After an adequate opening," Staples said, D'Souza struggled badly during the questions, while Ehrman remained comfortably within the case he had come to make.

The mismatch produced awkward moments. D'Souza attacked atheistic explanations of morality and treated Ehrman as though he were asserting that God did not exist.

"You keep referring to atheists, which I would consider myself to be an agnostic," Ehrman reminded him, as D'Souza's canned responses failed to engage with Ehrman's case about the sheer amount of apparently pointless suffering in the world.

3. William Lane Craig: Don’t smuggle in a premise you still have to prove

William Lane Craig is no Kirk Cameron. The philosopher and Christian apologist has spent decades debating prominent atheists and is widely regarded — including by many opponents — as exceptionally good at it.

Which makes his 2009 encounter with Yale philosopher Shelly Kagan all the more interesting.

The subject was whether God is necessary for morality. Craig's argument begins with a proposition many Christians find intuitively powerful: If God does not exist, what makes moral values and duties objectively true? Why is torturing a child actually wrong rather than merely something human beings strongly dislike?

An easier opponent might accept the task of defending moral relativism. Kagan didn't; he simply denied that atheism required him to do any such thing. Maybe objective morality existed and could be understood in terms of principles perfectly rational agents would agree upon, Kagan suggested. Whatever the ultimate account, he wasn't willing to concede that removing God from the equation removed objective morality with him.

Craig could no longer spend much time showing that relativism produced unacceptable consequences.

Kagan also pressed Craig on another argument: that without God, our actions ultimately come to nothing. Humanity disappears; the universe dies; none of it lasts. Kagan's rebuttal was wonderfully ordinary. His relationship with his wife doesn't become meaningless because both of them will someday be dead. A thing needn't last forever to matter.

Even Catholic apologist Trent Horn has singled Kagan out as an unusually formidable opponent, praising how thoroughly he had prepared and how effectively he was able to pin Craig down.

Craig later qualified his loss by explaining that Veritas Forum organizers had specifically asked for a friendly dialogue rather than a "knock-down debate," and he continued to reject Kagan's proposed foundations for morality.

Fair enough. But he still let Kagan expose a flaw common to many practiced debaters: becoming so good at defeating familiar positions that you stop noticing when the person across the table doesn't hold them.

4. Jonathan McLatchie: Don’t let anger lose the debate

Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie debated prominent atheist Matt Dillahunty in 2020 over the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite summon the Christ-like patience necessary to resist Dillahunty's Philistine-level baiting.

Dillahunty is an aggressive interlocutor who interrupts, challenges premises, and is not especially concerned with making his opponent comfortable. McLatchie became increasingly frustrated as Dillahunty rejected evidence McLatchie thought deserved serious consideration.

Finally, McLatchie had enough. "If you're just going to keep dismissing the evidence, then we're done," he said. Then he disappeared from the call.

Dillahunty looked momentarily surprised. "Oh, did he just leave?"

McLatchie eventually returned and apologized, explaining that he had become frustrated by Dillahunty's interruptions. Catholic apologist Trent Horn later replayed the incident as an object lesson for Christians considering public debate: With very few exceptions, quitting because you're angry makes you look bad.

What's interesting is that McLatchie didn't necessarily need rescuing on the substance. Christian writer James Bishop, reviewing the exchange from McLatchie's side, thought Dillahunty had behaved badly and believed McLatchie had the stronger arguments.

Once McLatchie walked out, none of that mattered very much.

5. William Lane Craig: Don’t ask evidence to prove too much

Craig's 2014 debate with Sean Carroll was a much more formidable affair.

The subject was "The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology." Carroll wasn't a professional atheist who happened to have read some popular physics. He was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Caltech.

Craig knew this, of course. And unlike Cameron and Comfort, he was hardly wandering into unfamiliar intellectual territory. Craig had long appealed to evidence from modern physics in defense of the Kalam cosmological argument: Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause.

Among the evidence Craig invoked was the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which concerns the past incompleteness of certain expanding space-time models.

Carroll objected that Craig was making it carry too much weight. Where Craig treated BGV as important evidence that the universe had a beginning, Carroll emphasized that the theorem operates under particular assumptions and describes the limits of certain classical space-time models. It does not by itself establish that all physical reality came into existence at a first moment.

You don't have to take Carroll's word for it. Physicist Aron Wall later examined the debate in detail. Wall is a Christian, and Craig had invoked Wall's own work during the exchange. On BGV, however, Wall agreed with Carroll's crucial point.

The theorem's assumptions need not hold in every cosmological model, he wrote. There are models that contract and then expand. His conclusion was unusually clear: BGV "is not by itself particularly strong evidence for a beginning."

Craig didn't lose because Christians have no business discussing cosmology. The problem was simpler. A theorem can be correct and still establish less than the person citing it wants.

Christians believe truth is not merely useful but sacred. We therefore have less excuse than anyone for stretching an argument until it points in a direction we happen to like.

The atheist who catches us doing this hasn't disproved God — but he has done us a favor.

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Oprah built an empire preaching the divinity within. It was Christ she turned to in her darkest hour.



Oprah Winfrey has spent roughly four decades helping Americans discover who they really are. Apparently, the job isn't finished.

Next April, the 72-year-old former talk-show queen will descend on the Las Vegas Sphere for "AHA," a four-performance extravaganza featuring music, poetry, storytelling, and what its promoters call the ultimate “aha” moment.

What happens when you look inside and don't find any light? What happens when your 'authentic self' turns out to be selfish, foolish, or cruel?

Winfrey calls the production the culmination of her life's work.

Culmination is an interesting word.

After 25 seasons of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," a magazine, a book club, her own television network, countless spiritual teachers, wellness programs, podcasts, and several decades of encouraging Americans to discover their authentic selves, one wonders what remains to be discovered.

Have Winfrey's followers finally accumulated enough wisdom? Will the great journey toward self-actualization at last be complete? Or is there another missing piece of the human soul that requires an enormous LED screen to locate?

Sphere of influence

This is familiar territory for Winfrey. As early as 2001, she was charging $185 for all-day Live Your Best Life workshops. Two years later, she brought the program to Seattle, where 2,700 admirers assembled for seven hours of inspirational instruction.

A reporter covering a 2003 session in Seattle described a spiritual revival, complete with a congregation and a preacher wearing diamonds and high heels.

In 2014 came an eight-city arena tour called "The Life You Want Weekend," with spiritual advisers, exercises in self-discovery, and corporate sponsors. Another arena wellness tour followed in 2020.

So there is nothing particularly surprising about Winfrey selling enlightenment in Las Vegas. The Sphere is a perfectly plausible venue for her particular brand of uplift.

Nor is there anything inherently hypocritical about charging people to help them improve themselves. The more interesting question is what Winfrey has been teaching all these years and whether her extraordinary life actually supports it.

The preacher girl

Oprah Winfrey is a remarkable American success story.

Born in rural Mississippi in 1954, she endured poverty, instability, and sexual abuse before becoming one of the most successful broadcasters in television history. Her rise required tremendous determination, but determination alone doesn't explain it.

Winfrey possessed an extraordinary gift for communication. She could listen to a stranger with such apparent concentration that millions of people watching at home felt included in the conversation. She understood instinctively where the emotional center of a story lay. She could coax a confession, recognize a moment of vulnerability, or make a famous person seem briefly ordinary.

The origins of that talent are worth examining.

Oprah grew up in the Baptist church. Her grandmother taught her to read, using the Bible among other texts. By the age of 3, Oprah was standing before congregations reciting verses about the Resurrection.

The women in the front pews told her grandmother that the little girl was gifted. Winfrey heard this often enough that she began to believe it.

Her Christianity was no casual inheritance. In a 2015 interview with AARP, Winfrey recalled being baptized around 8 years old, after agonizing for days over whether she was prepared to renounce sin.

"And, my God, did I take it seriously!" she recalled.

Indeed, she described herself as "a zealot who irritated every one of my third-grade friends." Her classmates had a nickname for her: "the preacher girl."

Soon she was performing poetry and sermons in churches around Nashville. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey traced her broadcasting career directly to those childhood performances.

But Christianity gave Winfrey more than her first audience.

A child of God

By her own account, Christianity gave Winfrey the confidence to imagine a future radically different from the one her circumstances seemed to promise.

At 14, after years of sexual abuse, Winfrey became pregnant. She has spoken about the shame and despair she experienced, including thoughts of ending her life. In that same AARP interview, she recalled turning to God in her desperation. If she was going to die, she reasoned, God would have to take her life. Otherwise, she would live and somehow find a way through.

She survived. Her baby, born prematurely, did not.

What stands out in her account is that she didn't describe suddenly discovering some unsuspected reservoir of inner strength. She described appealing to God.

Growing up without a father had made the preacher's assurance that God was her Father especially powerful. She took it literally. Jesus, she reasoned, was her brother.

In a 2015 podcast appearance, Winfrey explained that believing she was a child of God, and that she could do all things through Christ, gave her confidence even when she felt alone and unloved. She credited that relationship with God for helping make her the person she became.

From Christ to 'Christ consciousness'

Winfrey has never disavowed the Christian faith of her childhood. When explaining how she survived those early years and became who she is, she continues to credit the old-fashioned Christianity she grew up with.

But the eclectic, New Age-inflected spirituality of higher consciousness, personal truth, and divinity within the self that she has since built into a billion-dollar empire represents a very different theology from the one expressed in Philippians 4:13.

Perhaps its clearest expression came in 2008, when Winfrey hosted a series of online seminars with spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle, whose book "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" she had selected for her book club.

During the seminars, Winfrey recalled hearing a preacher describe God as jealous when she was in her late 20s. The idea troubled her. How could an all-loving, omnipresent God also be jealous? She said the experience began a search for something beyond doctrine. She had finally come to understand Jesus as a teacher of "Christ consciousness," a way of awakening to a divine presence within.

It's easy to see the appeal of this more accommodating Jesus. But one wonders how well such a theology would have served that desperate, lost 14-year-old.

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Emma McIntyre | Getty Images

The gift of self

Transformation in Christ famously requires a kind of death. The ultimate victory comes at the price of surrender.

The gospel according to Oprah offers an altogether different revelation: You already possess everything you need to become your best self.

Winfrey was unusually well equipped to preach it. She knew the power of personal testimony and understood how a painful experience could become a story of transformation. Her television program had long featured confessions, reconciliations, and dramatic changes of heart. Increasingly, these became lessons in how to live.

And there is much to admire in her message. Self-examination, gratitude, and the effort to overcome destructive habits are worthwhile pursuits. Nor is there anything dishonest about charging for guidance.

But the promise of self-discovery has a peculiar problem: How do you know when you've discovered enough?

Somewhere within you is a truer, better, more fulfilled version of yourself. A book helps you glimpse it. A guru reveals another obstacle. A workshop uncovers another wound. You experience an awakening, only to discover that another breakthrough awaits.

There is always another aha moment.

The way and the truth

Christianity's central revelation, by contrast, concerns something that has already happened: Christ came, died, and rose. Believers may spend their lives struggling to understand and live according to it, but they aren't waiting for Christianity's next installment.

And Christianity makes demands that Winfrey's therapeutic spirituality tends to soften. It insists that truth exists independently of our preferences, and that some of our desires may be wrong.

What happens when you look inside and don't find any light? What happens when your "authentic self" turns out to be selfish, foolish, or cruel?

These questions are particularly awkward in Winfrey's case.

She knows where she found the strength to survive. What is less clear is whether the spirituality she now offers millions could have provided the same strength.

Perhaps Winfrey is a prophet who misunderstands herself.

She preaches the dignity of the individual, the possibility of redemption, the power of hope, and the conviction that suffering need not determine one's future. Her own life is persuasive evidence for these truths. Yet the faith she credits with making that life possible located its source outside herself.

For decades, Winfrey has told Americans that the answers are already inside them. Next April, they can finally discover those answers on one of the world's largest LED screens.

Tickets start at $145.

Queers for Palestine: The woke left's unholy alliance with Islamism



In our essay last month, we proposed that presumed incoming Alabama governor Tommy Tuberville (R) pursue an aggressive and innovative political strategy to stem the growth of Islam in his state. His challenge, however, is no longer confined to the spread of the so-called religion of peace.

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, what had largely been an implicit alliance between Islamist activists and two predominant elements of American progressivism — gender anarchists and racial idolators — has increasingly declared itself in public.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles.

Consider the coalition behind Columbia University's Gaza encampment in April 2024. Columbia University Apartheid Divest brought together 116 student organizations, including the Muslim Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Genderev, the Black Student Organization, and White Coats 4 Black Lives. Its members made common cause under the banner of fighting interconnected systems of oppression. That January, the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, representing organizations including CAIR and the Muslim American Society, partnered with the left-wing ANSWER Coalition to organize a massive demonstration in Washington.

Strained bedfellows

The alliance is mystifying, to say the least. These two progressive wings treat sex as a social construct and race as the master category of politics. Their Islamist allies adhere to religious traditions that condemn the progressives' core sexual beliefs. What holds them together is a common enemy: the Western political and cultural order, whose foundations are deeply indebted to the Bible.

Classical liberalism and the freedoms associated with it did not emerge from a vacuum or from secular reason alone. The Declaration of Independence's assertion of unalienable rights endowed by a Creator tracks the Bible's claim that human beings bear the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–27). Equality before the law, the restraint of arbitrary power, and the distinction between divine and human authority draw on the Mosaic law's limits on kings (Deut. 17:14–20) and the New Testament's insistence that Caesar's domain is not total (Matt. 22:21; Rom. 13:1–7).

Conscience, proportional justice, the dignity of the individual, and the possibility of ordered liberty under law are human applications, however imperfect, of Old and New Testament teaching. The progressive and Islamist camps challenge this inheritance from very different directions. Progressives increasingly reject biblical moral authority; Islamists seek a political order governed by their interpretation of divine law. Neither has much use for the classical liberal settlement that emerged in the Christian West.

No 'queering' the Quran

Gender idolatry begins by denying the created order stated in Genesis. Male and female are not optional social performances; they are the binary given in the text (Gen. 1:27; 2:18–24). The framework that elevates subjective identity over biological sex treats the Bible's account as an oppressive artifact worthy of dismantling.

Here, traditional Islam and Christianity have considerably more in common with each other than either does with contemporary gender ideology. Both uphold a divinely established sexual order. Both condemn homosexual acts. Their theological foundations differ, but their moral prohibitions frequently overlap.

Traditional Islamic jurisprudence, however, has gone considerably further in the punishments it prescribes. The Quran condemns the conduct of the people of Lot (7:80–81; 26:165–166; 27:54–55; 29:28–29), while one hadith states: "If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done." Iranian law still prescribes the death penalty for certain acts of sodomy. Hamas' record of repression in Gaza offers little comfort to those whose sexual freedom is celebrated in Western progressive salons.

Yet the alliance endures. At New York City's 2024 Pride parade, pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route beneath a banner proclaiming, "No queer liberation without Palestinian liberation." For these activists, solidarity against a common political adversary evidently outweighs profound differences over sexual morality.

'Race' to conquest

Racial idolatry performs parallel work. The New Testament's declaration that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28) supplies an important theological root of the classical liberal rejection of inherited status as the basis of rights. Rights attach to the individual, not to the bloodline, race, or social strata a person is born into.

Intersectionality, as developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 essay "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex," examines overlapping systems of discrimination associated with race, sex, and other categories. In contemporary progressive politics, this framework is frequently enlisted to sort political conflicts into hierarchies of oppressor and oppressed. Muslims, once treated as outsiders to the Western political order, now occupy a prominent place in the progressive hierarchy of victimhood.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles. Historical Islamic expansionism and the dhimmi (second-class citizen) system are viewed through the lens of Western imperialism rather than subjected to the same criticism directed at Christianity's historical entanglements with political power. This produces a selective hierarchy of harms and victims: Islamic religious claims may receive deference even as the Bible's moral authority is rejected.

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Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto/Getty Images

A common enemy

The gender and racial wings, therefore, share an enemy with Islamism that is more precise than "conservatism." Their respective doctrines may be incompatible, but both challenge the Western liberal order, which places limits on the claims of political and religious authority over the individual. Consider Judith Butler's description of the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians as "armed resistance" rather than terrorism. Butler acknowledged that the attacks were terrible but insisted that they be understood as resistance to oppression. The language makes it possible to place Hamas within a progressive account of political struggle despite the movement's deeply illiberal religious commitments.

Anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman has documented the longer "red-green" pattern: leftist and Islamist actors finding common cause against Western institutions and Israel while maintaining incompatible doctrines on sex, apostasy, and religious authority. Historical precedents are hardly encouraging. Secular allies were pushed aside after the Iranian Revolution, demonstrating how quickly a revolutionary coalition can dissolve once the question of who will govern has been settled. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, and there is no reason to assume the next stanza will end differently.

American progressives appear confident that the alliance can be sustained indefinitely through the shared vocabulary of equity, anti-imperialism, and opposition to patriarchal power. Islamists, meanwhile, have learned to employ that vocabulary in Western academic and media institutions without abandoning their own religious commitments concerning women, homosexuals, or nonbelievers.

The net result is that the classical liberal inheritance, rooted in the Bible's promises about the dignity of the individual and the limits of coercive state or ethnic power, remains their common obstacle. Our proposal that Alabama initiate a constitutional debate, insisting that the state's history and tradition are not interchangeable with Islamic teaching, is one political means of defending that inheritance.

Progressives will always default to acting as though the obstacle is invisible as long as there are constituents who can claim status as victims. Thus, they hope that a shared basket of purported miseries will be sufficient to sustain what is otherwise a shallow alliance of convenience.

The progressives will discover, too late, that the doctrines they dismantled in the name of anarchy and equity were all that stood between them and the caliphate's scimitar. They will also learn that a fungible hierarchy of victimization offers no sanctuary once the victors decide to rewrite the list.

CS Lewis knew how clever people teach themselves to be fools



The new trailer for Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” promises a dazzling sight: a world coming into being. Fans of C.S. Lewis will be watching Aslan and the White Witch. I’ll be watching Uncle Andrew. He may be the book’s most disturbing character because he teaches himself to deny what he knows.

Andrew’s talent for explaining away unwelcome truth raises an uncomfortable question about Gerwig’s adaptation. Will she allow Lewis to tell his Christian story, or will she explain its Christian meaning away?

God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at self-defense that he loses the ability to listen.

As a philosophy professor and Christian pastor, I recognize the temptation. Education can help us discover truth. It can also equip us with elaborate excuses for resisting it. An impressive vocabulary does not guarantee an honest mind.

Lewis introduces Uncle Andrew as a man convinced that intellectual distinction exempts him from ordinary duties. Keeping promises is for lesser people. Andrew knows the secrets of the occult, so he imagines he can send children into dangers he refuses to face himself. He calls his cowardice greatness.

The vice is familiar: Exceptional ability supposedly confers exceptional moral privileges. A radical professor who believes his political vision justifies tearing down inherited institutions uses Andrew’s logic. So does the politician who excuses the dangers of communism or socialism because a glorious future allegedly demands sacrifices now. The superior mind claims authority to break rules it imposes on everyone else.

Then Uncle Andrew meets Aslan.

At first, Andrew hears the Lion’s song as music. It stirs thoughts and feelings he does not want to entertain. He then tells himself that no lion could possibly sing. He must have heard roaring. The longer Aslan sings, the harder Andrew works to believe his own explanation. Eventually he hears only animal noises, even when Aslan speaks.

Lewis gives us the verdict: “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

Notice the order. Andrew recognizes something, resists it, and finally loses the ability to recognize it. His ignorance is learned. What looks like an intellectual limitation begins as a moral refusal.

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Gisela Schober/Getty Images

That’s why I worry about the film. A director can admire Lewis’s portals, creatures, and cosmic song while rejecting the Creator who gives them meaning. She can retain the scenery and rewrite the moral order. The result may look like Narnia without being Lewis’ Narnia.

A story has more than recognizable characters and scenes. It tells us what is good, what has gone wrong, and what would make things right. For Lewis, creation has a good and authoritative Creator. Sin requires repentance. Redemption answers a need human beings cannot overcome by declaring themselves enlightened.

Could a filmmaker present that vision faithfully without sharing Lewis’ faith? Certainly. But she must first let the author challenge her own assumptions. If Gerwig turns his Christian account of creation into a comfortable endorsement of modern cultural priorities, she will have made Uncle Andrew’s mistake: hearing the song and insisting it is merely roaring.

The trailer cannot settle that question, and I will judge the finished film when it arrives. My concern is what Hollywood so often does to stories whose moral claims it finds inconvenient. An adaptation should not become an exercise in correcting the author.

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Emilio Madrid/Getty Images

Christians, however, should not congratulate themselves too quickly. Uncle Andrew is more than a stand-in for a leftist professor, a politician, or a Hollywood director. Lewis’ warning reaches the church as well.

In Romans 1, Paul writes of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God reveals himself through creation, but human beings refuse to honor him or give thanks. Their reasoning becomes futile, and their hearts grow dark. They claim wisdom as they become fools.

Paul does not describe every unbeliever as someone who merely lacks information. Our desires shape what we are willing to admit. We can demand more evidence while insulating ourselves from the implications of evidence already before us.

Christians can do this, too. We acknowledge God’s revelation in creation, then find reasons to disregard it. We know a biblical command, then use our intelligence to argue that our circumstances make us the exception. We defend Christian books without accepting their correction. Praising Lewis’ theology is easier than submitting to the God he confessed.

That is why Uncle Andrew belongs in a Christian reflection rather than merely a debate over a Netflix film. We should ask whether our explanations clarify the truth or protect us from it. Can we admit that our clever argument was an excuse? Will we confess when God’s Word confronts something we want to keep?

Christ offers forgiveness to sinners who have spent years defending their sins. His grace frees us to abandon our excuses instead of perfecting them.

I hope Gerwig gives Lewis a faithful hearing. The finished film will show us whether she has. Meanwhile, our own hearing deserves examination. God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at defending himself that he loses the ability to listen.

The pulpit answers to God, not the IRS



Before America had a Constitution, it had pulpits.

Pulpits that taught citizens how to think about authority, duty, and the proper limits of government. The ministers later associated with the “Black Robed Regiment” understood that biblical truth must step through the church door. They addressed public questions because they believed theology had consequences for all of life and that pastors had a responsibility not to comfort congregations but to form their biblical worldview.

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way.

For most of American history, pastors did not need permission from the state to speak about the moral and political questions confronting their people. They preached about slavery, war, temperance, elections, public officials, religious liberty, and national repentance because they understood the pulpit to be accountable first to God.

Restoring an old right

The modern expectation that pastors should carefully separate biblical teaching from anything deemed “political” would have been foreign to much of the American church that helped shape this country.

That context is important because the fight over the Johnson Amendment is often framed as though churches are seeking some new political privilege. We are not asking the government to give pastors a new right, but to stop restricting an old one.

The origins of the Johnson Amendment are revealing. In 1954, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson was facing a primary challenge from Dudley Dougherty, a wealthy young Texas politician whose fierce anti-communism appealed to supporters of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Dougherty was hardly a formidable opponent — Johnson defeated him by more than 40 points in the Democratic primary — but he had sympathizers in powerful conservative organizations, including the Committee for Constitutional Government and Facts Forum, a media operation established by Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt.

Johnson was particularly concerned about the Committee for Constitutional Government, which had circulated material promoting Dougherty. He asked his staff to investigate whether its activities violated election laws or threatened its federal tax exemption. The answer on the latter question was apparently no.

Johnson was undeterred. Having investigated whether existing law could be used against his political opponents, he now proposed changing the law itself. That July he introduced an amendment to the federal tax code barring tax-exempt charitable organizations from participating in political campaigns. It passed without debate. Churches, which had played no part in Johnson's dispute, were covered by the new restriction.

Freeing the pulpit

There was no sweeping national debate about churches corrupting elections. There were no extensive hearings over whether the American pulpit had become dangerously partisan. Johnson claimed to be confronting communist nonprofit organizations, but churches had become a source of political opposition. The law was written broadly enough, encompassing churches; they were heavily affected by its enforcement and soon began receiving letters from the IRS. The restriction ultimately extended far beyond Johnson's immediate political dispute, reaching into the pulpits of American churches for generations.

Today, the Johnson Amendment prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, including churches, from supporting or opposing candidates in political campaigns.

This restriction is at the center of the legal challenge by National Religious Broadcasters. Churches remain free to address public policy issues, including controversial ones, but pastors face restrictions when their speech crosses into supporting or opposing a political candidate. NRB seeks to protect the freedom of churches and their pastors to speak from the pulpit without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

The broader concern is what decades of uncertainty, legal caution, and fear of enforcement have produced inside churches themselves: a deep-seated culture of self-censorship.

'Political' ... or biblical?

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way. Politicians took questions involving abortion, marriage, sexuality, race, religious liberty, and justice and turned them into partisan battlegrounds.

These were biblical questions long before they were campaign issues.

Politics does not acquire ownership of a moral question merely because politicians begin arguing about it. Scripture had something to say about marriage, government, money, justice, and human dignity long before there were Republicans, Democrats, campaign platforms, or federal agencies. The church does not surrender those subjects when they appear on a ballot.

Perhaps pastors will stop being accused of bringing politics into the pulpit when politicians stop dragging biblical questions into politics.

That does not mean churches should become campaign headquarters. They should not. The pulpit should never become an appendage of either the Republican or Democratic parties. Biblical authority is diminished whenever Scripture is bent to serve political power.

But there is an opposite error: treating “nonpartisanship” as a reason for silence whenever Scripture touches a politically controversial subject.

A pastor should be free to preach biblical truth without compromise and apply it to the real-world questions confronting his congregation. If Scripture challenges the left on abortion, sexuality, family, or religious liberty, he should say so. If it challenges the right, he should say that too. The standard is not partisan usefulness. It is biblical fidelity.

That is why NRB entered the legal challenge to the Johnson Amendment.

The district court dismissed our case on jurisdictional grounds rather than reaching the merits of the constitutional claims. The case is now on appeal. NRB will continue fighting because the government should not stand between a pastor and his responsibility before God.

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Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Courage required

But the legal fight only reaches so far.

The First Amendment can protect a pastor’s freedom. It cannot produce courage. A court can remove a restraint, but it cannot make a church recover confidence in the authority of Scripture. NRB can fight for the freedom of the pulpit. Pastors must decide whether they will use it.

That question grows more urgent because Christians are being formed every day by institutions that have no hesitation about preaching their own worldview. Social media, universities, corporations, entertainment, political movements, and influencers constantly catechize Americans about morality.

When churches avoid the same subjects because they have become politically controversial, they do not create neutrality. They simply leave the work of formation to everyone else.

America does not need a more partisan pulpit. It does need a freer and more courageous one.

We are fighting to restore an old right: that of pastors to open the Bible, preach the whole counsel of God, and speak to the life of the nation without first asking the government for permission.

OUTRAGE ensues after Christian Chick-fil-A CEO invites LGBTQ+ activists to try CFA's delicious chicken sandwiches



The corporate media are lining up once more to harangue the fans of Chick-fil-A, implying that they are homophobic for eating chicken sandwiches.

The occasion for this latest effort is the first broadcast interview with the company's CEO, in which he talks about how his Christian faith guides the mission of the chicken sandwich company.

'They’re welcome to come eat with us. We’d love to give them a great-tasting sandwich and give them great hospitality.'

"It is our anchor, in the sense of what our corporate purpose states: that we’re in business to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that’s entrusted to us and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A,” Andrew Cathy said.

The interview with Craig Melvin of "Today" was very cordial, but it has inspired headlines claiming newly outraged critics of the company.

Melvin asked Cathy to respond to LGBTQ-identifying people who have boycotted the Christian company's chicken sandwiches over gender, sexuality, and marriage issues.

"Well, for anybody that hasn’t tried us, we’d love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we’re known for," Cathy responded. "I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they’ll see that they’re welcome to come eat with us. We’d love to give them a great-tasting sandwich and give them great hospitality."

Melvin pressed him about conservative statements made by the previous CEO, Cathy's father, in support of conservative Christian causes.

"We’re focused on serving everybody that comes in and eat with us," Cathy responded.

Critics in the comment section of an Instagram clip of the interview included Katie Couric, Valerie Bertinelli, and Chelsea Handler.

"Chick-fil-A CEO faces backlash after LGBTQ interview question," read the headline at WAGA-TV.

"Chick-fil-A CEO slammed over evasive answer about LGBTQ rights during Today interview," was the headline at Entertainment Weekly. That report included comments from two participants in a drag queen television show.

"Chick-fil-A boss grilled over LGBTQ rights as CEO dodges question about chain's controversial past — sparking a furious debate among customers," was the headline at the U.S. Daily Mail.

"Today show host leaves Chick-fil-A CEO spinning over company’s LGBTQ+ stance," claimed the headline at the Independent.

"Don't eat at Chick-fil-A. And don't sleep with anyone who does," was the headline of an opinion piece at Out magazine.

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A Blaze News request for comment from Chick-fil-A was not returned in time for publication.

Melvin and his "Today" show co-hosts did not appear to join the boycott, as they hungrily munched on the sandwiches at the end of the segment.

Despite criticism from Valerie Bertinelli and two drag queens, the company manages to earn about $24 billion sales across the board last year, according to Melvin's report.

The Chick-fil-A CEO also proudly reported that the company provided more than 200 million meals for the hungry through charity efforts in the past six years.

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Billy Crystal no longer trusts God. Christians should listen.



Billy Crystal recently said he has stopped talking to God. “No, ’cause I don’t trust Him,” he told CBS correspondent Tracy Smith. His home burned in the Pacific Palisades fire, and his longtime friend Rob Reiner and Reiner’s wife, Michele, were murdered.

Suppose you were sitting across the table when he said it. What would you say?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling.

I asked that question on my radio program because someone we know may eventually trust us enough to say the same thing. A neighbor who buried a child. Someone who prayed beside a hospital bed and went home alone. Would we hear their anguish or immediately start preparing our answer?

I’ve spent 40 years caring for my wife, Gracie. Her suffering began before I met her. Over her lifetime, she has endured 98 operations and the loss of both legs. Along the way, people have told us what we should believe, how we should feel, and what God was evidently trying to accomplish. Some never acknowledged the weight of what we carried.

Rush Limbaugh used the phrase “drive-by media” to describe reporters who rushed into a story, stirred things up, and moved along, leaving others to deal with the damage. Are we in danger of engaging in drive-by ministry?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling. It costs considerably more to pull up a chair.

Job’s friends managed that at first. They sat silently beside him for seven days because they saw how greatly he suffered. Most of us struggle to give someone seven uninterrupted minutes.

Scripture makes room for anguish. David asks in Psalm 13, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” Those words are in our Bibles. We ought to be able to hear them from someone sitting in our living rooms. David ultimately recalls God’s steadfast love, but the psalm lets us hear his sorrow along the way.

I learned something about the cost of coming near in a dusty prosthetic clinic in Ghana. Through Standing With Hope, the ministry Gracie envisioned after losing her legs, we’ve provided prosthetic limbs in Ghana for more than 20 years.

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Photo by Peter Rosenberger

On an early trip, a young Nigerian man arrived wearing a prosthesis. Our team was occupied, so I sat down with him. We didn’t share a language, and I couldn’t find an interpreter. With gestures, I asked him to remove his prosthesis and the liner covering his residual limb.

The smell hit me like it had reached out and slapped me. My eyes watered, and a friend sitting several feet away backed up. I feared an infection, but I found no visible wound. He hadn’t properly washed his limb and liner, and my attempts to explain what he needed to do weren’t getting us anywhere.

I understood that he was Muslim. This was not terribly long after September 11. For all I knew, he could have been an enemy of my faith or my country. I didn’t know. What I knew was that he was missing a leg, needed help with his prosthesis, and had come to our clinic.

So I found clean water, soap, and a towel and demonstrated how to wash his limb and liner. At first, my eyes watered from the smell. As I washed his limb, I began to weep over what Christ had done for me.

My own stench was far worse. And mine wasn’t coming off with soap and water. It required His blood.

I could barely keep myself together. I had come to help put legs on people, and there I sat, overwhelmed by the mercy Christ had shown me.

Sitting with someone in anguish can leave us feeling helpless. Physical or emotional trauma makes us uncomfortable. We want to explain something, fix something, or give them something to do. Their grief may outlast everything we know to say.

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Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Jesus stood at Lazarus’ grave and wept. He knew He was about to raise him, yet He wept. That ought to shape how we approach someone whose sorrow has spilled into words that trouble us.

I want grieving people to know Christ. I want them to know the Savior who bore our sin and rose from the dead. And when I speak of Him, I want to remember how patiently He has dealt with me.

I cannot make sense of why Billy Crystal’s home burned or why his friends were killed. But hearing his words makes me want to pull up a chair and ask, “Tell me about your friends.” Then listen long enough to hear the answer.

That takes time. It may cost us more than we expected. Forty years beside Gracie have taught me that some suffering will still be there when the conversation ends. But Christ has given us ample reason to keep showing up.

He didn’t drive by. He entered.