“A new PRRI survey shows that religiously unaffiliated Americans are the only group that has seen steady growth over the past decade — from 21% of all Americans in 2013 to 26% in 2023.” - RNS

The four candidates “addressed issues such as sexual abuse reforms… a constitutional amendment calling for only males to serve as pastors of any kind, what is ‘friendly cooperation’ in the SBC and transparency among entities.” - Baptist Press

Colin Hansen talks with Irwyn Ince, author of Hope Ain’t a Hustle: Persevering by Faith in a Wearying World (IVP). - TGC

Not too many people think much about Good Friday anymore.

There was a time when whole communities were virtually shut down on Good Friday afternoon. Businesses closed, or at least allowed their employees to attend church services. I’m sure some still do this—but I wonder how many people in the general public would even know what we mean when we talk about Good Friday.

“In general, surviving under difficult bosses involves a few universal strategies” - Phil Cooke

“ ‘When I think about how I’m going to talk about Easter, I’m thinking about how I’m going to talk to people far from God, because that’s the thing that matters most to us,’ Shearer said.” - CPost

“By His work, Jesus not only takes our guilt and exchanges it for His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21), but He also takes our shame and exchanges it for His honor.” - Breakpoint

“How unfortunate it is, then, for former President Trump during Holy Week to get on X and hawk the ‘God Bless the USA Bible.’ It markets itself as the ‘only Bible endorsed by President Trump!’” - World

“The merits-based question before the Supreme Court this week was whether the FDA illegally lowered safety standards for the abortion pill, mifepristone. However, justices spent most of the hour-and-a-half-long hearing questioning whether the doctors met the standing requirements to sue” - Daily Citizen

Related

Richard Baxter was one of the most voluminous writers in English history. He authored between 141-200 books during his lifetime. As one of his biographers notes, “The influence of is books is incalculable: from the early 1650’s they enjoyed greater sales than those of any other English writer.”¹

“I love the way Jesus responds to Mary’s beautiful, useless gesture and recognises it as something that is always worthwhile, something that will live forever, for all the carping and criticism of Judas, then and now.” - Malcolm Guite

“If a Christian told me he had never dealt with doubt, I wouldn’t believe him. Or at least I would respectfully conclude he was in denial, or lacked self-awareness, or wasn’t a serious-thinking person.” - Desiring God

“The word first appears in the first century BCE in Roman culture, with the Latin word religio. At the time, it meant ‘scruples,’ the concern that some activity is important enough to be performed carefully.” - Psychology Today

“Mississippi (32%), Alabama (36%) and Louisiana (37%) have the lowest share of adults who say they never or seldom attend services.” - Axios

“The bill … allow[s] for the revocation or suspension of the license of a doctor who provides minors with puberty blocking drugs, opposite-sex hormones and surgeries as a part of a ‘gender transition’ plan.” - Daily Citizen

“Shouldn’t creativity and imagination thrive in the digital age? Anyone can be an artist, musician, or storyteller these days….But what’s the point? What ultimately limits a culture of limitless self-expression is meaninglessness.” - Breakpoint

“ ‘Man of Sorrows’ was the last hymn Ira Sankey ever heard Bliss sing. Bliss’s name is on the top left and right of this hymn. The words and the tune came from him. The focus, however, is entirely on Jesus.” - TGC

“Three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, led by Mormons at 67%” - Gallup

“What’s fascinating for our present purposes is how Hosea’s comments about his own culture mirror trends that have been developing in Western culture over the last several decades.” - Kyle Dunham

Read the series.

“All Israel” shall see their Lord and Savior, first by faith (in response to the preaching of the two witnesses of Revelation 11) and then (more than three years later) by physical sight at His second coming. Soon after that, they will behold Him serving them at the inaugural kingdom banquet! Our Lord told the Jews,

“Reading James R. Coggins well-researched monograph, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation …provides a window through which to understand the origins of English Baptists out of the Puritan Separatist movement of the early seventeenth century.” - London Lyceum

“A new study suggests that sudden jumps in LLMs’ abilities are neither surprising nor unpredictable, but are actually the consequence of how we measure ability in AI.” - Wired

“part of the vulgarization of the Right is due to the Barstool Sports / Joe Rogan secularization of the base, in which Kid Rock is an avatar more than Lee Greenwood or Michael W. Smith. But much more alarmingly, the coarsening and character-debasing is happening among politicized professing Christians.” - Russel Moore

“I gave my son this Bible for two reasons. First, I wanted him to take a physical Bible to college. Second, I wanted him to experience, through all the visual clues, a fully used Bible—a sort of generational witness to the importance of keeping the faith.” - TGC

“ ‘The defamation of Dr. Greenway has been widely publicized, resulting in severe damage to his reputation and rendering him unemployable in the professional capacity for which he is qualified,’ the lawsuit states.” - The Baptist Paper

Related: A feud over a coffeemaker and Christmas decor leads to another Southern Baptist lawsuit - RNS

“The historic five fundamentals remain an important aspect of fundamentalism’s history and heritage, though they are not exclusive identifying marks of the movement.” - P&D

By Andrés Reyes

Imagine that the mayor of your town comes to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Imagine you are the one to lead the mayor to Christ. What counsel would you give this new believer as the next steps of obedience in his or her newfound faith in Christ? Many of us would correctly instruct the mayor to attend a good church.

But would we say, “Christians should not be involved in politics” and tell the mayor to quit his or her job? No. We would rejoice that the mayor is a believer and would likely uphold that leadership position in Biblical ways. Maybe Proverbs 29:2 would come to mind: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.”

“this renewed relationship with the EFCA will foster a closer ethos alignment. Several aspects of this ethos stand out.” - TGC

Guttmacher Institute “reports that there were an estimated 1,026,690 abortions in the formal U.S. healthcare system in 2023, up 10% from 2020.” - CPost

“Sure, celebrities can be a draw…But what happens when that celebrity that we’ve platformed and called people to follow lives in ways that contradict the teachings of Jesus?” - Roys Report