"Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a 'COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.'"

President Trump’s recent post to Trump Media-owned Truth Social focused attention on a crisis not known for being a priority of American foreign policy. But as much as the news out of Mexico and Ukraine may overshadow what’s happening in Nigeria, the situation there is no less severe. And it is indeed an “existential threat” that should especially concern Christians.

Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.

Despite their well-observed decline in North America and Europe, the number of Christians worldwide is increasing, largely thanks to Asia and Africa. And in Africa, nowhere does the faith have a stronger presence than in Nigeria.

Christian stronghold

Africa’s most populous nation (238 million) is also its most Christian, with some 100 million believers — enough to rank Nigeria as the sixth-largest Christian population in the world. Concentrated in the country’s south, this population includes 21 million Catholics, 22 million Anglicans, 14 million Baptists, 6 million evangelicals, and 4.5 million Pentecostals, in the form of the Apostolic Church Nigeria.

Despite these numbers, Nigeria remains predominantly Muslim (53.5%), especially in the north, where Islamic terrorism is on the rise. According to a 2022 State Department report, groups like Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa — along with religiously unaffiliated criminal gangs — have killed thousands of Muslims and Christians, with both sides accusing the government of failing to intervene.

There continued to be frequent violent incidents, particularly in the northern part of the country, affecting both Muslims and Christians, resulting in numerous deaths. Kidnappings and armed robbery by criminal gangs increased in the South as well as the North West, the South South, and the South East. The international Christian organization Open Doors stated that terrorist groups, militant herdsmen, and criminal gangs were responsible for large numbers of fatalities, and Christians were particularly vulnerable.

In response to such persecution, the State Department listed Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the first Trump administration, in 2020; the Biden administration removed that designation in late 2021. This was despite protests from the independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which noted widespread "violence by militant Islamists and other non-state armed actors, as well as discrimination, arbitrary detentions, and capital blasphemy sentences by state authorities."

Since then, USCIRF has continued to call for Nigeria’s Country of Particular Concern designation to be restored, warning as recently as July that “religious communities are facing ongoing, systematic, and egregious violations of their ability to practice their faith freely.”

High-profile attacks

This year alone, Nigeria has seen multiple high-profile attacks against Christians, including massacres in April and June that killed 40 and more than 100, respectively. In August, 50 Muslims were killed in an attack on a mosque. Just this past weekend, nine Christians — including a pastor — were killed by Fulani assailants in a terrorist attack.

On Saturday Trump followed up his initial statement with another post threatening to halt humanitarian aid and assistance to Nigeria until the killings stop. He also hinted at the possibility of military intervention, stating that he was prepared to enter the country “guns-a-blazing” in order to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

While aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump made no effort to walk back his comments, telling reporters that deploying troops to Nigeria was still very much on the table. “I envisage a lot of things. They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria ... and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Nigeria responds

Nigerian spokesman Daniel Bwala subsequently responded to Reuters with a statement following Trump’s comments, stating that U.S. assistance would be welcomed so long as the U.S. respected Nigeria’s “territorial integrity.” "I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism." He similarly affirmed to the BBC that any anti-Jihadi efforts ought to be made jointly.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also challenged Trump’s statements and defended Nigeria’s record on religious freedom in a post on X.

“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”

Photo (left): Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage; Photo (right): SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Image

Genocide or not?

While acknowledging the realities of Nigeria’s ongoing security crisis, the mainstream media has disputed characterizations of the violence as a genocide against Christians.

Time magazine dismissed such claims as an idea “circulating in right-wing circles” and amplified by politicians like Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.). It also cited statistics from independent watchdog Armed Conflict Location and Event Data suggesting that of the 20,409 estimated civilian deaths in the past five years, just 417 deaths were Muslim and 317 deaths were Christian.

CNN called the genocide narrative an “oversimplication” that blames religion for the violence while ignoring factors such as ethnicity and resource scarcity.

The Guardian cast Trump’s remarks as an attempt to pander to “his right-wing, evangelical base,” reflecting “renewed domestic political pressure to appear tough on the marginalization or persecution of Christians abroad.”

Methodological weakness

While ACLED rejects the claim of a Christian genocide in Nigeria, arguing that most violence stems from ethnic rivalries and competition over land and resources rather than religion, it has previously acknowledged the difficulty of ruling out religious persecution. In a note on its general methodology, the group has acknowledged that "disentangling the ethnic, communal, political, and religious dimensions of specific events ... [proves] to be problematic — at times even impossible — and extremely time-consuming. As a result, religious repression and disorder ... may be underrepresented in the dataset."

Proponents of the genocide narrative say this could lead to systematic undercounting of Christian victims. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month, Rep. Moore countered with significantly larger figures: “More than 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in 2025 alone — an average of 35 per day — with hundreds more kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by extremist groups.”

'This needs to stop'

Evangelical author, public speaker, and Christian apologist Dr. Alex McFarland agrees with Moore, noting that resistance to covering Christian persecution is the norm. Reached just prior to Trump's statements over the weekend, he told Align that he believes that claims of a Christian genocide are accurate.

In an age when so many champion human rights and social justice, Nigeria is something that should be talked about. What’s going on there is tragic on an unimaginable scale. This needs to stop, and I pray the United States of America will do what it can to stop the killing of Christians and advocate for their human rights.

American Christians who want to to help should be relentless in speaking up to elected officials, advises McFarland, making it clear that they “ask and expect them to take a stand on this issue, just as we expect our elected officials to take a positive stand for Israel and against anti-Semitism.”

Supporting organizations like Samaritan's Purse, Open Doors, and Voice of the Martyrs is also an option.

McFarland emphasizes that anti-Christian persecution extends well beyond Nigeria, pointing to similar ongoing persecutions in China, India, and Saudi Arabia. “We need to understand that Christians outside of the United States have a hard go of it.”

Finally, he cautions his fellow Christians not to overlook one of the most powerful ways they can effect change. “What Christians can do is pray,” he tells Align. “That might sound glib and easy to say, but prayer works and is quite significant.”

JD Vance is right to hope his wife becomes a Christian

You wouldn't expect interfaith marriage to cause controversy in 2025. In the professional class, shared religion ranks well below shared ambition. The modern couple’s creed is compatibility — career, education, politics, lifestyle.

So when JD Vance — a Catholic convert who once moved easily through the meritocratic elite — said he hoped his wife might one day share his faith, it struck many as strange, even retrograde. But that’s only because he meant it. Vance shows what happens when someone in our secular meritocracy takes faith seriously — when belief stops being a cultural accessory and becomes a claim on the soul.

Where Hinduism says you are born to your station, Christianity says you are born again. Where one sanctifies hierarchy, the other sanctifies humility.

Keep it mind that Vance's language was hardly that of a wild-eyed zealot.

Do I hope, eventually, that she is somehow moved by the same thing I was moved in, by church? Yeah, honestly, I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel. … But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.

Yet that ordinary expression of devotion triggered extraordinary backlash. The Hindu American Foundation accused Vance of implying that his wife’s faith was "not enough," while a Hindu-American professor and author suggested that his remarks were somehow suggestive of "these larger politics of anti-immigration, anti-migrants, replacement theory and white Christian nationalism.”

But the controversy sidestepped the real issue: Vance dared to suggest that Christianity was true.

Usha Vance was raised in Southern California by Hindu immigrant parents, part of the Telugu Brahmin community from Andhra Pradesh. Her family background emphasizes scholarly achievement as much as Hindu tradition. Yet she herself — even while acknowledging and respecting her heritage — comes across as culturally Hindu but not deeply religious. In her words:

My parents are Hindu … and that’s one of the things that made them such good parents.

She and Vance agreed that their children would be raised Catholic; she often attends Mass with the family but remains Hindu by identity.

The credentialed caste

When Vance and Usha met at Yale Law School — the quintessential temple of American meritocracy — they were both first and foremost striving “elite” Americans: she from a high-achieving immigrant-Brahmin background, he a white working-class “deplorable” turned law student turned best-selling author. In that arena, nothing except success mattered.

Unlike Christianity, which erects an inconvenient standard that challenges worldly success, Hinduism (at least in its cultural shape) aligns neatly with the American worship of credentials and achievement. The traditional Indian caste system is less flexible but analogous to America’s unspoken caste system of education, networks, and privilege.

JD Vance began near the bottom of America’s merit hierarchy, where the elite track was something aspirational — a ladder to be climbed. For Usha, raised by highly educated immigrant parents (her father is a professor of aerospace engineering; her mother teaches molecular biology), it was a natural progression — a path expected and prepared for from childhood. But both shared the same fundamental assumption: that the track itself was worth striving for.

Born again

Christianity’s radical proposition — that worth is inherent and not earned, inherited, or compiled — challenges this assumption in a way that Usha’s native religion does not. Hinduism, in its cultural form, may not command conversion, but its social logic is deeply gradated. Whereas Christianity says, “You are born again; status is no barrier,” the caste-and-credential structure says: status defines you from birth, and mobility is uncertain.

Christianity’s radical proposition — that worth is inherent and not earned, inherited or compiled — challenges this assumption in a way Usha's native religion does not. Hinduism (in its cultural form) may not command conversion, but its social logic is deeply gradated. Whereas Christianity says, “You are born again; status is no barrier,” the caste/credential structure says that status defines you from birth and mobility is uncertain.

Birth as moral destiny

Hinduism, to the uninitiated, is often sold as incense and enlightenment — a smiling guru on a yoga mat quoting Rumi out of context. But beneath the linen and lotus flowers lies one of the oldest and most enduring social hierarchies on earth.

While Hinduism contains many schools of thought and not every community treats caste the same way, in much of Indian cultural Hinduism, the caste hierarchy has been deeply embedded and justified through ideas of karma, dharma, and rebirth.

In lived experience, the caste system functions like spiritual software running the faith’s social order: You are born ranked, your worth preloaded. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra — and for those left off the list, the Dalits, the “untouchables.” A Dalit doctor may save a Brahmin’s life yet still not be welcome at his dinner table.

Caste is theology in action — the idea that birth itself is moral destiny. It tells the poor they earned their poverty, the oppressed that they deserve it, and the powerful that they were born benevolent. It turns suffering into a kind of divine bookkeeping, where pain is a balance due and injustice merely interest accrued. Once suffering is justified, compassion becomes optional. Why help the beggar if he’s merely working off last life’s bad karma?

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Grace against gradation

Christianity, particularly Catholicism, stands as the great heresy against that logic. Where Hinduism says you are born to your station, Christianity says you are born again. Where one sanctifies hierarchy, the other sanctifies humility. The Church’s saints were lepers, paupers, slaves — not because they were unlucky in the reincarnation lottery, but because God works through what the world despises.

That reversal is radical. It upends the whole karmic calculus. In Catholicism, your worth is inherent, not inherited or earned.

That’s what draws men like JD Vance to the Church. The incense and Latin are beautiful, but it’s the promise of undeserved mercy that matters — that the son of a drug addict from Ohio can kneel beside a trust-fund heir, both equally fallen and equally forgiven. That is Catholicism’s great equalizer: every soul on its knees, bowing not to someone higher on the ladder, but to what stands above every rung and rank.

Sanctified servitude

Vance’s faith, like his politics, offends the meritocrats because it dismantles their favorite fiction — that purity and privilege share a pedigree. Hinduism built that fiction into its bones; America has simply rebranded it. We call it “achievement.” You see it in Silicon Valley’s spiritual tourism — billionaires chanting mantras between board meetings, preaching mindfulness while outsourcing misery. Caste has gone corporate. The modern Brahmin doesn’t bless your crops; he manages your data.

There’s dark comedy in watching America’s tech elite flirt with the same faith that once sanctified servitude. From Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg’s pilgrimages to the Indian ashram Kainchi Dham — founded by the late guru Neem Karoli Baba — to the adaptation of Vipassana meditation as the ultimate productivity hack, the fascination is real.

Yes, the Hindu American Foundation describes caste as “one of the most complicated and misunderstood concepts” and denies that it is intrinsic to Hinduism. And the former tech exec drawn to Indian culture as the peak of "progressive, enlightened thinking" may be inclined to take them at their word.

But the actual Indians toiling in Silicon Valley have a different experience. Dalit tech workers report widespread discrimination from those in higher castes, to the extent that California lawmakers passed the nation's first anti-caste discrimination bill in 2023. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) subsequently vetoed it.

The scandal of Christianity

When Vance expressed hope that his wife might share his faith, critics saw coercion. But Catholicism teaches the opposite: that redemption can’t be inherited or imposed. You can’t inherit salvation the way you inherit caste or credentials. You have to choose it.

That’s the scandal of Christianity and also its comedy. In a world obsessed with genetics, code, and status, it says the drunk can stumble into heaven as long as he repents before he throws up. Try pitching that in Silicon Valley or New Delhi and see how far you get before being escorted back to reality.

That’s why my fiancée squirms when Western progressives romanticize Hinduism as a tolerant, mystical faith. You can admire the temples and still condemn the theology that built them. Her rejection isn’t of India or its culture, but of the cruelty embedded in its cosmology.

She still lights candles for her ancestors, still loves the poetry of her heritage, but she refuses to bow to its hierarchy. In a world that worships status, she has chosen dignity instead. And in that quiet defiance lies a truth older than any temple or text: Faith, real faith, doesn’t chain you to the past — it sets you free from it.

Why spanking a child is not cruel but Christian

I recently read a new book so steeped in self-righteousness that I contemplated watching a few Barack Obama speeches as a palate cleanser.

"The Myth of Good Christian Parenting," by Marissa Franks Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, is less a work of theology than a sermon for soft parents — a long sigh bound in paperback. Every page drips with condescension, assuring readers that discipline is outdated, obedience is oppressive, and spanking is somewhere between a sin and a war crime.

Children don’t need friends with car keys. They need moral architects. The parents who fear offending their children will soon be ruled by them.

Their thesis is that corporal punishment has no biblical or moral grounding. Modern parenting should replace the rod with reasoning, the command with conversation. It’s the kind of argument that sounds enlightened until you remember what actual children are like.

D-Keine/iStock/Getty Images

Swat analysis

Children, bless them, are beautiful little anarchists. Left to their own devices, they’d eat cookies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, go to bed once a month, and discover that the toilet doubles nicely as a Jacuzzi for Legos. They’re not wicked, but they are wild. Civilization begins at the moment a parent says no — and means it. A gentle talk about “boundaries” might work on a golden retriever, but toddlers are not guided missiles of rational thought. They’re tiny tyrants with juice boxes.

That’s why spanking, properly understood, isn’t cruelty but calibration. It reminds a child that choices have consequences, that freedom comes with form. Scripture puts it bluntly: He who spares the rod hates his son. That’s not an endorsement of violence but a defense of reality. Actions have outcomes. Cause meets effect. Love, in its purest form, isn’t permissive; it’s corrective.

Of course, the definition of "violence" has never been more expansive than it is today. Everything is violence now — words, glances, even silence. The modern parent can wound a child simply by saying “no.”

When language is warped like that, meaning vanishes. A light swat becomes indistinguishable from abuse, and firmness becomes indistinguishable from fascism. The result is a generation of parents too frightened of headlines to raise human beings.

What we’ve bred instead are families where authority is on paternity leave and discipline forgot to clock in. Many parents seem desperate to be liked by their children, as if approval were the same as affection. But children don’t need friends with car keys. They need moral architects. The parents who fear offending their children will soon be ruled by them.

The discipline of faith

I was spanked as a boy — not beaten, but spanked. There’s a world of difference. I hated it at the time, naturally. But I can see now that it taught something far bigger than compliance. It taught that love sometimes hurts, that boundaries aren’t barriers but guardrails. My father didn’t enjoy it, but he did it because he believed my soul mattered more than my sulking. And years later, I thank him for it.

Contrast that with the new model — the “gentle parenting” gospel that treats structure as sadism and guidance as grievance. It produces parents negotiating with toddlers like diplomats in Geneva. “Would you like to stop screaming now, sweetheart, or in five minutes?” Meanwhile, the child is scaling the curtains, painting the dog, and testing Newton’s patience.

Spanking, done calmly and rarely, is not about pain but proportion. It communicates that wrong choices carry a cost and that the world won’t rearrange itself to spare your feelings. A child who learns that lesson young grows into an adult who doesn’t need therapy to survive a stern email.

Built on boundaries

The irony is that those now crusading against corporal discipline owe their manners to generations who believed in it. The men and women who built the schools, churches, and laws of the modern West were, without exception, raised in homes where clear boundaries existed. They understood that mercy means nothing without justice and love means little without limits.

None of this means children should live in fear. The Christian view of discipline is inseparable from affection. The same hand that corrects should comfort. The difference between abuse and authority lies in motive. The abuser strikes to dominate; the parent disciplines to direct. The point isn’t punishment but perspective, to shape the will without breaking the spirit.

But today, even perspective is suspect. To say a child is wrong is to commit ideological heresy. Every tantrum is “performance art,” every shriek “a statement.” The modern household has become a democracy of one, and its ruler is 4 years old.

When people hear “spanking,” they imagine red faces and raised voices. But in most Christian homes, it’s quieter — a moment of consequence followed by conversation and reconciliation. It’s the living metaphor of moral cause and effect. Pain passes; lessons remain.

Theology of the tap

A society that forgets that truth doesn’t raise children. If anything, it raises dependents. Kids who mistake correction for cruelty will grow into adults allergic to accountability. They won’t admire their parents’ wisdom; they’ll diagnose it.

There’s nothing barbaric about a well-timed swat on the backside. What’s barbaric is a generation raised without consequences, now stunned to learn that the world still has them.

So no, spanking isn’t the enemy of Christian parenting — it’s one of its oldest allies. It has absolutely nothing to do with humiliation and everything to do with humility.

I read "The Myth of Good Christian Parenting" and discovered the real myth: that you can raise grown-ups without ever acting like one. I hated being spanked when I was six. But watching parents haggle over chores like diplomats and negotiate bedtime like hostage situations, I now consider it an early rescue mission — and, in many ways, an act of mercy.

AI can fake a face — but not a soul

The New York Times recently profiled Scott Jacqmein, an actor from Dallas who sold his likeness to TikTok for $750 and a free trip to the Bay Area. He hasn’t landed any TV shows, movies, or commercials, but his AI-generated likeness has — a virtual version of Jacqmein is now “acting” in countless ads on TikTok. As the Times put it, Jacqmein “fields one or two texts a week from acquaintances and friends who are pretty sure they have seen him pitching a peculiar range of businesses on TikTok.”

Now, Jacqmein “has regrets.” But why? He consented to sell his likeness. His image isn’t being used illegally. He wanted to act, and now — at least digitally — he’s acting. His regrets seem less about ethics and more about economics.

The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity.

Times reporter Sapna Maheshwari suggests as much. Her story centers on the lack of royalties and legal protections for people like Jacqmein.

She also raises moral concerns, citing examples where digital avatars were used to promote objectionable products or deliver offensive messages. In one case, Jacqmein’s AI double pitched a “male performance supplement.” In another, a TikTok employee allegedly unleashed AI avatars reciting passages from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” TikTok removed the tool that made the videos possible after CNN brought the story to light.

When faces become property

These incidents blur into a larger problem — the same one raised by deepfakes. In recent months, digital impostors have mimicked public figures from Bishop Robert Barron to the pope. The Vatican itself has had to denounce fake homilies generated in the likeness of Leo XIV. Such fabrications can mislead, defame, or humiliate.

But the deepest problem with digital avatars isn’t that they deceive. It’s that they aren’t real.

Even if Jacqmein were paid handsomely and religious figures embraced synthetic preaching as legitimate evangelism, something about the whole enterprise would remain wrong. Selling one’s likeness is a transaction of the soul. It’s unsettling because it treats what’s uniquely human — voice, gesture, and presence — as property to be cloned and sold.

When a person licenses his “digital twin,” he doesn’t just part with data. He commodifies identity itself. The actor’s expressions, tone, and mannerisms become a bundle of intellectual property. Someone else owns them now.

That’s why audiences instinctively recoil at watching AI puppets masquerade and mimic people. Even if the illusion is technically impressive, it feels hollow. A digital replica can’t evoke the same moral or emotional response as a real human being.

Selling the soul

This isn’t a new theme in art or philosophy. In a classic “Simpsons” episode, Bart sells his soul to his pal Milhouse for $5 and soon feels hollow, haunted by nightmares, convinced he’s lost something essential. The joke carries a metaphysical truth: When we surrender what defines us as human — even symbolically — we suffer a real loss.

For those who believe in an immortal soul, as Jesuit philosopher Robert Spitzer argues in “Science at the Doorstep to God,” this loss is more than psychological. To sell one’s likeness is to treat the image of the divine within as a market commodity. The transaction might seem trivial — a harmless digital contract — but the symbolism runs deep.

Oscar Wilde captured this inversion of morality in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” His protagonist stays eternally young while his portrait, the mirror of his soul, decays. In our digital age, the roles are reversed: The AI avatar remains young and flawless while the human model ages, forgotten and spiritually diminished.

Jacqmein can’t destroy his portrait. It’s contractually owned by someone else. If he wants to stop his digital self from hawking supplements or energy drinks, he’ll need lawyers — and he’ll probably lose. He’s condemned to watch his AI double enjoy a flourishing career while he struggles to pay rent. The scenario reads like a lost episode of “Black Mirror” — a man trapped in a parody of his own success. (In fact, “The Waldo Moment” and “Hang the DJ” come close to this.)

Photo by imaginima via Getty Images

The moral exit

The conventional answer to this dilemma is regulation: copyright reforms, consent standards, watermarking requirements. But the real solution begins with refusal. Actors shouldn’t sell their avatars. Consumers shouldn’t support platforms that replace people with synthetic ghosts.

If TikTok and other media giants populate their feeds with digital clones, users should boycott them and demand “fair-trade human content.” Just as conscientious shoppers insist on buying ethically sourced goods, viewers should insist on art and advertising made by living, breathing humans.

Tech evangelists argue that AI avatars will soon become indistinguishable from the people they’re modeled on. But that misses the point. The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity. They want to see imperfection, effort, and presence. They want to see life.

If we surrender that, we’ll lose something far more valuable than any acting career or TikTok deal. We’ll lose the very thing that makes us human.

The poisoned stream of culture is flowing through our churches

On most days, the creek that runs behind our home in Montana looks like something out of a painting. The water tumbles over slick stones, swirls beneath the wooden bridge, and flashes like glass in the sunlight as it winds through the trees.

On hot afternoons, I take off my boots and stand in it awhile, letting the cold mountain water swirl around my feet. Even in August, it stays clear and shockingly cold — refreshing on hot, dusty feet. It looks so pure and inviting that you’d think you could cup your hands and drink from it.

The world’s water might soothe for a moment, but it can’t sustain. Only Christ, the living water, can cleanse, restore, and refresh a parched heart.

Yet I know better.

While helping a rancher move some cattle across the property, a few of them wandered down into that same creek. They lingered there, swishing tails and doing what cows do. The water still looked clear from a distance, but you certainly wouldn’t drink from it. Even a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t need a biologist to figure that out.

The water in that creek started high in the mountains, clean and cold. It was once pure, but animals do what animals do. People, though, take it further. We pollute on purpose. That’s not instinct; that’s sin.

We talk about free will, and we have it. But left to ourselves, we use it to wreck what was good. The culture isn’t just wandering into the water; it’s content to poison it, and sinners seem to care less about a polluted stream than cows do.

Downstream from belief

We’ve all heard that politics flows downstream from culture. But if you trace that current far enough, you’ll find that culture flows downstream from belief. Whatever people worship, they eventually legislate into law.

Today, we have ceased worshipping God. Instead, we bow before slogans, systems, and grievances that mollify us rather than giving worship to the one to whom it is due. From a distance, it all looks good — flowing with energy, language, and even a sense of virtue. But somewhere upstream, something has wandered into the water — or been poured into it.

Too often, the church is wading downstream, cup in hand, trying to stay “relevant” while drinking what has already been polluted. The poison is sin itself, the moral waste of self-worship that seeps in until it becomes part of the current.

When the church starts drinking downstream, the songs continue, the sermons sound familiar, and the branding shines. But the taste changes. Conviction weakens, holiness becomes optional, and relevance becomes everything. We echo the world’s vocabulary of identity and justice without the foundation of repentance and redemption. The message gets muddied, and we don’t even notice the shift.

And when that happens, the thirstiest suffer first. Those are the ones who come to church desperate for something real.

What really sticks

I’ve spent 40 years as a caregiver, and I’ve learned what real thirst feels like. When you’ve poured yourself out for years, almost any water looks good. You pray for strength, for truth, for something steady, and too often what comes back sounds like marketing. You sit in church and hear, “Claim your victory,” “Speak life,” or, “Step into your blessing,” and you wonder if anyone sees the wreckage you live with. Then, from another pulpit, you hear, “God understands,” “It’s not that bad,” or, “Everyone struggles.”

It sounds compassionate, but it isn’t. It’s corrosion.

The first slick of contamination began with the serpent questioning the Word of God, and all too many pulpits echo that same hiss today. They downplay sin, soften the edges, and serve up messages that keep people comfortable yet captive. They offer sympathy instead of repentance. That’s not grace; that’s decay.

Ornate and large pulpits don’t necessarily mean clean water. Visibility isn’t the same as vision. The purity of the message isn’t measured by the size of the platform of the one delivering it but by how faithfully it points upstream to Christ Himself.

Truth, the real kind, usually starts with one hard word: repent. It’s upstream, and it’s not easy to get there. But that’s where the water runs clean. Downstream, you’ll only find a little contamination, a little compromise, a little manure, and just enough to make you sick.

freedom007 via iStock/Getty Images

I’ve tested the various platitudes and slogans in the emergency room, ICU, and dark watches of the night more times than I can count. None of them hold up.

Here’s what does.

Only one water stays pure no matter who steps in it. It’s the same water that met a Samaritan woman at a well. It’s the same water Isaiah promised when he wrote, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” That’s the invitation — not just to the church, but to every soul that’s dry and staggering: Walk upstream.

Go upstream

When we drink deeply from that pure spring, holiness stops feeling like a burden and starts feeling like oxygen. It gives clarity instead of confusion, courage instead of compromise.

That’s the call to the church and to every weary heart. Don’t drink what the world has trampled. Don’t settle for water that only looks clean from a distance. Polluted streams can’t quench the thirst of thirsty people.

The world’s water might soothe for a moment, even cool our weary feet, but it can’t sustain us. Only Christ, the living water, can cleanse, restore, and refresh a parched heart.

So go upstream. The source is still pure, and it’s still flowing.

Evil never announces itself — it seduces the hearts of the blind

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

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Allie Beth Stuckey on 'Fox & Friends': Charlie Kirk 'was such an encourager of so many of us'

What made Charlie Kirk such a force to be reckoned with?

That was one of topics up for discussion Monday when BlazeTV's Allie Beth Stuckey joined "Fox & Friends" co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Griff Jenkins before headlining that evening's Turning Point USA tour stop at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

'He really was an anomaly. God just blessed him with amazing work ethic and persistence and energy.'

"He was so generous with his time," the "Relatable" host recalled, noting that the slain activist miraculously managed to balance traveling nonstop, raising a young family, scaling TPUSA into a national juggernaut, and igniting a movement that reached millions — all while still making time for others:

He could've been doing a million other very important things, but he would take the time every day to text his friends, to text his colleagues, to send Bible verses, to say, "Hey, keep going," "I saw this article," or, "I saw you talk about this topic. You did such a good job."

He was such a champion, such an encourager of so many of us, and that is going to continue to bless me for the rest of my life.

'Keep slugging'

Jenkins asked Stuckey what she anticipated seeing at the Baton Rouge TPUSA event, especially in the wake of LSU's Charlie Kirk tribute back in September.

"It makes me think of when we heard Charlie's widow, Erika, talk about, 'You have no idea what you've done,' and you hear Andrew Kolvet, Charlie's producer, talk about that he hopes that the TPUSA events are going to be bigger than ever before. Is that what you anticipate seeing tonight?" Jenkins asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Stuckey said.

And her instincts were spot-on.

The sold-out Baton Rouge event — hosted by the local TPUSA chapter — drew a massive 1,600 attendees, far exceeding expectations. Lines wrapped around the block, and doors opened early to accommodate the surging crowd of young conservatives eager to honor Kirk's legacy and rally in support of faith, family, and freedom. The vibe was electric and defiant, pulsing with patriotic fervor as chants of "USA!" and "Charlie Kirk!" erupted from a packed house.

Stuckey inspired and challenged the crowd with a powerful speech on "five of Charlie Kirk's most controversial truths," motivating students with Charlie's favorite phrase of encouragement: "Keep slugging."

'He really was an anomaly'

Earhardt told Stuckey she found it "amazing" to hear from so many people all that Kirk had done for them. "I'm hearing you say he would text you, encourage you," she marveled.

"He also had to fundraise. He also had a family. He was traveling. He was contacting so many people and really pouring into their lives. How did he balance it all? How did he have time to do it?"

“I have no idea,” was Stuckey's candid response.

"You know, I've joked a few times that, in true Charlie fashion, he is giving all of his friends and his team a whole lot of work. ... Gosh, it's taken at least a dozen of us to make up for Charlie's speaking engagements and all of the different obligations that he had on his show and everywhere," she laughed.

"He really was an anomaly. God just blessed him with amazing work ethic and persistence and energy because, of course, God knew that his time was tragically short. And he had a lot to accomplish, and he did."

In the end, Charlie didn't just create a movement — he multiplied one.

"Even though he was the center of it, it's far beyond him," Stuckey said.

The Charlie effect

And she's right. Since his tragic death, Charlie's American Comeback Tour, which was rebranded as This Is the Turning Point Tour to honor his legacy, has experienced an explosion in participation. Campus events see massive, exceeding-expectations turnouts. Thousands are left outside as arenas fill to bursting. Patriotic chants fueled by grief-turned-determination electrify the atmosphere.

Interest in TPUSA membership has also dramatically increased, with the organization receiving more than 120,000 requests to start local chapters since the founder's martyrdom.

The Charlie effect is real — and it's fueling a nationwide revival.

"He left a legacy that really multiplied, and that speaks to who he was as a person but also just where we are as a country right now. People have woken up, and people are ready to step off the sidelines and come into the arena, and I say let's go,” Stuckey urged.

Mamdani’s false Tolerance Boulevard ends in darkness

Everybody knows the real victims of 9/11 weren’t the 3,000 murdered Americans or their grieving families. No, according to the new progressive hierarchy, it’s Zohran Mamdani’s second cousin — thrice removed, four times hijabed — who claims she was once offended on the subway. Allegedly.

So if you’re keeping score at home in the “words are violence” sweepstakes, here’s the latest update: Something that probably never happened is righteous if it helps an Islamic socialist become mayor of America’s largest city. Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic candidate for attorney general gets a pass for fantasizing about the murder of a Republican lawmaker and his family.

Nothing new under the sun. Just another civilization sprinting toward its chosen darkness, proud all the way.

You’d think New Yorkers might have enough self-respect not to be played so easily — especially when it comes to one of the most fateful days in American history. But no. Apparently Loki was right. They were made to be ruled — and by the very people who treat the ashes of Ground Zero as a holiday display.

I’d wager real money that at least one family member of a 9/11 victim will vote for Mamdani next week. Loki, it seems, must have read John Calvin at some point in his multiverse journey: When God wants to punish a rebellious people, He gives them wicked rulers.

The worldview beneath the wreckage

We can’t outrun our worldview. Because worldview is destiny. When a people deny reality, they descend into madness. That’s what’s happening to those voting for Mamdani. They are largely godless, and once you reject the author of reality, you’re on a short, steep slide toward hell.

Hell, for its part, knows how to work with human nature. The devil discovered long ago that our fallen desire to shake a fist at God rivals even his own. That’s how you get from watching the Twin Towers fall to, just 25 years later, electing a man who shares the same ideology as one of the hijackers.

Not secretly. Not reluctantly. These voters are proud of it. They’ll call friends and family “racists” and “Nazis” for disagreeing. Such is the will to power when you reject God: The world must be turned upside down and morality twisted into a hall of mirrors.

When even Ayn Rand saw the abyss

Ayn Rand, no friend of Christianity, at least saw the problem. In an interview late in life, she told Phil Donahue that without some objective truth in the universe, nothing else made sense. Why do we reason instead of acting on instinct like animals? Rand recognized, however dimly, that a world without truth collapses into nihilism.

But that clarity is rare. Rand was a unicorn. Most people in her camp never do the math. They end up voting for their captors, praising their murderers, and calling it freedom.

The short version is simple: If you’re not in Christ’s camp, you belong to chaos. There are no neutral parties. Hell is happy to let you think otherwise — right up to the moment the darkness slams the door shut.

The believer’s tension — and the city’s choice

Every true believer wrestles with the tension between judgment and mercy. We are commanded to love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength — and to love our neighbor as ourselves. You can’t be “nicer than God,” but you must strive to let mercy triumph over judgment whenever you can.

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

New York doesn’t care. The city long ago chose the darkness, which knows no such tension. Evil allows the illusion of tolerance until the moment comes to plant its flag.

By all means, take one more stroll down Tolerance Boulevard, Big Apple, and see where it ends. You’ll find it’s a one-way street to annihilation.

The math checks out

New York has made its peace with godlessness. First it worshiped the idol of corporate power. Then it voted for Sandinista Bill de Blasio’s Marxism. Now it’s ready to give the false god of Islam a chance to shatter its soul completely. The math checks out every time.

Nothing new under the sun. Just another civilization sprinting toward its chosen darkness, proud all the way.

God help us all.

Joe Rogan, Christian? The podcaster opens up about his ongoing exploration of faith

Joe Rogan may not be ready to call himself a Christian, but the former atheist does find himself rubbing shoulders with believers on many a Sunday.

The podcaster once again revealed details about his ongoing exploration of the faith, including his habit of regularly attending church.

'It's almost like everybody is under a spell.'

He also demonstrated a newfound appreciation of why someone would need God in his or her life. When recent podcast guest Francis Foster expressed amazement at how much a friend of his could rely on religion as a foundation for getting through tough times, Rogan didn't seem nearly as surprised.

"If you really do believe that, it definitely will help you," the comedian concurred.

Church going

At that point, fellow guest — and Foster's "Triggernometry" podcast co-host — Konstantin Kisin chimed in that he himself had been becoming more religious.

"I haven't got there, but I have started going to church every now and again," Kisin explained.

"Do you enjoy it?" Rogan asked.

"I love it," responded Kisin.

"I do too," confessed Rogan, adding, "It's a bunch of people that are going to try to make their lives better. They're trying to be a better person."

Rogan then described his church experience as getting together with a group of people who read and analyze Bible passages.

"I'm really interested in what these people were trying to say because I don't think it's nothing," Rogan said.

No 'fairy tale'

From there, the New Jersey native addressed claims he has heard from atheists and secularists who dismiss Christianity as being "foolish."

The 58-year-old pushed back against the characterization that Christianity as a collection of "fairy tales" by "self-professed intelligent people," noting that a proper understanding of the faith requires considering historical context, translation difficulties, and oral vs. written tradition.

"I think there's something to what they're saying," Rogan offered.

Trust the science

While noting that modern science has found physical evidence for the biblical flood story told in Genesis, Rogan said he also appreciated the Bible as a compelling depiction of society 6,000 years ago.

Further segments in the podcast revealed that, perhaps due to a renewed interest in faith, Rogan's algorithm may have even changed.

- YouTube

This became evident when the group discussed some of Kisin's protest journalism, where he asks befuddled liberals the reason they are attending the current protest of the day.

In response, Rogan pointed to a video of a man doing interviews at a left-wing No Kings protest. The man asks attendees if they believe in human rights, to which they affirm, until they are asked about human rights "in the womb," which is when they dismiss the idea.

"It's almost like everybody is under a spell," Rogan laughed.

Rogan first confirmed he was going to church in June, after hinting at the idea that he was becoming more religious. He described his attendance similarly at that time:

"It's actually very nice; they're all just trying to be better people."

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