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

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

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

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

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

Smelling fear

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

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

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

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

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

The hope of second chances

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

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

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

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

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

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

menonsstocks/Getty Images Plus

The power of faith

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

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

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

Kairos takes a spiritual big tent approach to its work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Muslim

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

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

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

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

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

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

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Obama, not just the 'first gay president'?

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

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

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

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

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

"Your Christian faith," Stephanopoulos interjected.

"My Christian faith," said Obama.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The gospel in miniature

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the Rainbow Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John 3:16.

6 characters and a colon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did anybody actually look it up?

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

Mike Kerrigan did.

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

His father didn't know either.

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

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

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

Rainbow's end

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I watch a lot of it."

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

From the family Bible to Google

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The verse that wouldn't leave sports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is watching horror movies a sin? A Christian makes the case for fear

Should Christians watch horror movies?

This simple question has sparked a massive debate in Christian circles. It all started when "Relatable" host Allie Beth Stuckey raised concerns about believers consuming entertainment designed to terrify them.

Movies like 'Nefarious' and 'The Conjuring' set up battles between good and evil, showcasing what happens when the demonic realm bursts into our lives.

Whether you agree with Stuckey’s argument that we’re not meant to watch content that stokes fear in our hearts, the conversation — especially as Halloween looms — is worth having.

Lamp of the body

At first glance, the simplest response to the horror movie question is a whopping: It depends.

Christians often have different convictions, and even seemingly simple questions should be met with prayer and action based on the convictions that come from seeking God’s will. That said, I think it’s essential to go a bit deeper.

Christians are called to guard our hearts and minds, taking great care with what we consume. Matthew 6:22-23 offers a stark warning many of us overlook when we watch movies, listen to music, or consume content that bends moral boundaries:

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!"

The Bible is clear that we’re meant to keep our hearts and minds pure and focused on the Lord. But what does that mean for entertainment that deliberately frightens us or confronts us with evil? Does depicting something disturbing necessarily make a movie spiritually harmful?

Fear factor

I depart from Stuckey on the fear front. I have no problem watching content that stokes fear in my heart, so long as that fear serves a redemptive purpose. Sometimes fear is a storytelling tool that helps us understand the seriousness of evil, drawing us closer to our need for a Savior.

But I also agree with much of what Stuckey said about the dangers of some horror films. Much of the horror content on the market today is simply designed to disturb and perturb the mind, offering little more than jitters and insanely unpalatable imagery. The intent is simply to terrify, with no real purpose beyond the shock itself.

I’m not interested in that sort of content, and I don’t think it is honorable or helpful to the Christian mind.

We have to seek God when it comes to the level of horror and violence we’re willing to entertain, even if the end goal is a redemptive message. But I think the key question we should ask about every movie, song, and piece of entertainment we consume is: What’s the purpose?

Once I can assess the purpose of a project — and its fruits are generally evident — I have a pretty good idea of whether it’s worthy of my attention.

Good and evil

Movies like “Nefarious” and “The Conjuring” set up battles between good and evil, showcasing what happens when the demonic realm bursts into our lives. These films, though not for every believer, can help frame or even highlight a biblical understanding of evil.

Then you have movies like “Saw” and others like it — films that are grotesque and, from my perspective, fuel little more than a thirst for bloodshed and angst.

Christians need to be careful about the entertainment we consume. Many of us are willing to bend the biblical standard and ignore gore, sex, and excessive evil for the sake of entertainment.

Then I encounter verses like Philippians 4:8, which reads:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

Psalm 101:3 is similarly direct:

“I will not look with approval on anything that is vile,” it reads. “I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it.”

Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

Context and intent

None of us is perfect, but God consistently implores us to look upon good and holy things. If that’s the case, why are we making exceptions and subjecting ourselves to two hours of absolute debauchery, especially when the movie offers nothing redemptive in return?

The fact is, many horror movies today don’t fit into a biblical framework. They offer sadistic violence, torture porn, and demonic imagery that revel in suffering rather than revealing anything true about good, evil, or the human condition.

Ultimately, context and intent matter. The Bible itself contains difficult subject matter. Scripture covers murder, demonic activity, human depravity, and the consequences of sin.

But those accounts reveal truths about humanity, evil, God’s judgment, and our desperate need for redemption. I believe our entertainment choices should follow a similar pattern.

The question is whether a story exposes darkness for what it is — or encourages us to enjoy it, relish it, or embrace it.

The former can be worthy of our attention. The latter is not.

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."

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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To Divorce-Proof Your Marriage And Boost Your Happiness, Go To Church Often

Only half of Americans say shared religious values are important to marriage. New data shows those who don’t think so are wrong.

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.