New research has revealed the stunning extent to which transgender-identifying males have taken over women’s sporting events, finding that almost 2,300 first-place medals have been taken by males. Women’s sports advocates say that federal legislation must be passed to once again restore a fair playing field for women and girls nationwide.
On Tuesday, Concerned Women for America’s Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) released research showing trans-identifying biological men who have been allowed to compete in female sporting events have taken 2,293 first-place medals from women and girls in the U.S. This has translated to women in professional sports losing $501,498 in prize money. The research further found that in Democrat-run states like California, over 611 women and girls have lost out on finishing first in sporting events due to males taking the top spot. All told, biological males have competed in over 14,300 amateur and professional female sporting events.
The staggering numbers come at a time when significant strides have been made at the state and federal level to protect the integrity of women’s sports. Over the past six years, 27 states have passed legislation protecting female sporting events from biological males — legislation that was upheld as constitutional in June by the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, President Trump issued an executive order in February 2025 defining Title IX based on biological sex and threatening to pull federal funding from schools that allowed males to compete in female events and gain access to female locker rooms and bathrooms.
Several international sports bodies have also issued rules protecting women’s sporting events over the past two years, including the International Olympic Committee, the International Cycling Union, World Aquatics, World Athletics (which governs track and field events), World Boxing Organization, Union Cycliste Internationale, World Rugby, and others.
However, American sports juggernauts like the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) still have not put in place adequate measures to keep males out of women’s events, allowing an unknown number of biological males to compete in female categories — most infamously swimmer Lia Thomas, who took first place in the women’s 2022 Division I 500-yard freestyle event. As detailed by sports attorney William Bock during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, despite claiming to have amended its rules in February 2025 following President Trump’s executive order, “Current NCAA rules are not based on biology, do not use sex verification testing, and do not hold NCAA member institutions accountable for protecting women against male competitors.”
Bock further noted that despite the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) newly established rules intended to keep women’s events only for women, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s (USOPC) rules to follow the IOC guidelines do “not include prescriptive terms, timelines for compliance, or sanctions for non-compliance” for U.S. national governing bodies (NGBs). This has led to NGBs including USA Biathlon, USA Cycling, USA Gymnastics, USA Racquetball, US Rowing, USA Rugby, USA Swimming, the U.S. Tennis Association, USA Triathlon, and USA Volleyball to enact “new but insufficient policies, containing loopholes that may allow men to compete in women’s sports.”
Experts say that despite the gains that have been made to protect women’s sports in the last two years, millions of female athletes, in particular girls at the middle and high school levels, are still being subjected to males being allowed to compete in their sporting events. Advocates say this not only compromises their physical safety, but also their human dignity.
“It is shockingly unfair for biological women to have to compete against trans-identifying men,” Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America LAC, stated following the release of her organization’s research. “… Biological men have distinct advantages over biological women. This reality not only puts women in harm’s way, but it eliminates opportunities for biological women to earn a living and win competitions.”
Nance further urged Congress to enact legislation protecting women’s and girls’ sports. “Congress should pass the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 (H.R.28/S.9) to prohibit federally funded school athletic programs from allowing males to compete in women’s and girls’ sports; the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act (H.R.1028/S. 405) to clarify that sports National Governing Bodies must designate women’s sports for women only under their Congressional authorization; and The Title IX Clarification Act (H.R. 8781/S.5179) to clarify that, for purposes of Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities, the term ‘sex’ refers solely to an individual’s biological status as male or female.”
“How many more women and girls will be subjected to an uneven playing field?” Nance added. “It’s time to put an end to this inherent unfairness and protect women’s sports.”
This article was written by Dan Hart and originally published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
New research from Concerned Women for America reports that transgender-identifying athletes assigned male at birth have won more than 2,293 first-place finishes in U.S. women’s events, adding to the debate over eligibility rules and federal sports legislation.
More than 50,000 Americans from across the country signed a new “Declaration for Life” within hours of its public release that calls on them and their fellow citizens “to stand for life” and for Congress “to ban the chemical abortion drug mifepristone,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters during an impromptu news conference in a Senate office building Wednesday.
“We think this declaration, written by pastors, is calling on spiritual leaders and everyday Christians across America to stand for life and to confront the scourge of chemical abortion. It is so critical on this the 250th anniversary of America,” Hawley said, referring to the four-page declaration he and a committee of pastors and other spiritual leaders from multiple denominations drafted.
The Declaration for Life was officially unveiled Wednesday during the first annual Missouri Prayer Breakfast hosted by the Show-Me State’s senior senator. The document is being circulated nationwide by multiple pro-life groups, including Family Research Council, and millions of Americans are expected to sign the document in the coming days.
“The Declaration of Independence gives us three examples of ‘inalienable rights:’ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life is the first of those rights because it is the condition of the others. It is thus the most foundational of rights,” the document proclaims at its outset.
“We believe we have an obligation as Christians and spiritual leaders to remind our countrymen of what Scripture and conscience together proclaim: That every human being from the moment of our knitting together in our mothers’ wombs, was fearfully and wonderfully made. The divine image each human being bears was not earned. It cannot be forfeited. And it is the first duty of the Church to defend human dignity where it is denied,” the document states.
The declaration continues, noting that “what is at stake on this anniversary is nothing less than the conviction on which every flourishing society finally rests: That each and every member of the human family, as a creature fashioned in the image of the divine Creator and Ruler, is the bearer of profound dignity. Where that conviction is honored, civilizations flourish. Where it is forgotten, cultures decline and fall.”
The declaration explains that while in the four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision “returned the abortion question from courts to legislatures,” that decision “did not end abortion in America. Far from it. More abortions are performed in this country today than when [Roe v. Wade] was still the law of the land — over one million abortions in 2025 alone.”
Three-fourths of those abortions are carried out using the chemical drug mifepristone, and, the declaration points out, “thanks to recent changes in government regulations, mifepristone can now be mailed into every state and city in America, regardless of local rules. The abortion drug is nearly always fatal to the unborn child and frequently injurious to the mother. Recent studies indicate the drug puts more than one in 10 women who take it at risk of serious, life-threatening complications, including hemorrhaging, infections and sepsis.”
Hawley told reporters he believes “the time has come to ban mifepristone abortions, and I want to emphasize this is something only Congress can do. … Only Congress can act to take mifepristone off of the Food and Drug Administration’s [approved drug] schedule, only Congress can say it will not be available for abortions. That’s something that Congress should do. Congress should stop passing the buck to other people. Congress should stand up and act.”
As long as Congress fails to act, Hawley emphasized, state actions such as those in Louisiana, Missouri, and others that have banned chemical abortions carried out by medical professionals in those jurisdictions will continue to be rendered meaningless so long as the drug can be mailed across state lines and administered in private by the mother with a cup of water.
Hawley added that “when it comes to elected officials in Congress, there hasn’t been much of anything [done] to protect the innocent unborn, and I think we’ve got to change that. One of the things we want to do with this Declaration for Life is call on candidates for public office in both parties to sign this declaration, to say ‘We support it, we support protecting human life.’”
Earlier this year, Hawley introduced S. 4066, the Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act that would outlaw chemical abortions. On the House side of the Capitol, the same legislation was introduced as H.R. 7902 by Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.). The Senate bill has seven co-sponsors, all Republicans, while the House bill has 11 co-sponsors, also all GOPers. Neither proposal has been advanced to committee hearings, as Republican leaders focus on other issues.
Another major obstacle for such reforms includes the lack of action from President Donald Trump, whose administration approved in October 2025 a second generic version of mifepristone for abortion use and has delayed a promised FDA study of the drug.
In addition, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told reporters during the Hawley news conference, the Republican Party at its 2024 convention abandoned its long-standing defense of the right to life, and its congressional leadership has since failed to act vigorously on the issue.
“Unfortunately, the Republican Party has lost its voice on the right to life issue, and in that vacuum, there are leaders who are stepping forward like Senator Hawley calling upon the church, communities, and the country to step up on behalf of the unborn,” Perkins said.
“We have made great progress,” FRC’s president continued, “but there has been a tremendous setback, and we’ve reached a point where I think we have to call upon the faith community, Christian pastors, to step into this vacuum and speak unequivocally about the sanctity of human life and hold elected officials accountable to the standard. This declaration is a starting point for establishing a standard for what we should be aspiring to as a nation.”
When asked by The Washington Stand if he would initiate legislative action in response to a Government Accounting Office (GAO) study released earlier this week that found thousands of abortions are being paid for annually with federal tax dollars through the Obamacare health insurance program, Hawley replied, “100 percent, and the other thing that is happening is that Planned Parenthood is getting funded right now. The ban on Planned Parenthood funding has expired, [and] it’s being funded with taxpayer dollars.”
The Hyde Amendment — named after former Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) who authored the measure — was approved by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1977. That law bars the use of federal tax dollars to pay for abortions except in a tiny class of exceptions.
This article was written by Mark Tapscott and originally published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Sen. Josh Hawley and Christian leaders are calling on Americans to sign a new Declaration for Life and urging Congress to ban mifepristone for abortion, placing chemical abortion at the center of a renewed national debate over abortion policy.
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“An innocent, defenseless human life, in a caring and humane society, deserves better than to be flushed down a toilet or burned in an incinerator.” Such are the words of Henry Hyde, the former U.S. congressman from Illinois who tirelessly championed life and introduced the Hyde Amendment in 1976. Almost 50 years later, the legislative rider faces the opportunity to be renewed again.
For a half-century, the Hyde Amendment has stopped taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
On Wednesday evening, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, hosted a Special Order on the House floor to acknowledge the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment on September 30. “The promise of America is that life is not just for the privileged, the planned, or the perfect,” Smith said, quoting Hyde. “This may sound odd, even ironic; you are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat, perhaps even the necessity of defeat. If you don’t know the principle or the policy for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.”
Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, explained to The Washington Stand that Smith and Hyde have a history. “Representative Chris Smith served with Representative Henry Hyde for 26 years; he’s been a tireless defender of the unborn in Congress for 45 years and comes as close as anyone to carrying Hyde’s inimitable mantle.”
After the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the U.S. government paid for an estimated 300,000 abortions each year via Medicaid. According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, since the Hyde Amendment’s first enactment in 1976, approximately 2.7 million lives have been saved.
During Wednesday’s event, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) asserted that society has a duty to protect the unborn. “Life matters. Who are we as a people if we cannot stand up in defense of the most innocent form of life there is — a child in the womb of its mother? That should be our calling. And we should be able to unite as human beings in defense of the defenseless.”
Legislative Assistant for FRC’s Government Affairs Chantel Hoyt praised what House members shared during the Special Order. “I appreciated seeing Representative Chip Roy connect this important anniversary to the toll that chemical abortion is taking,” she told TWS. “It’s encouraging to see members like Representative Chris Smith carrying on Henry Hyde’s legacy and seeking to not only retain but build on the protections of the Hyde Amendment.”
Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kan.) observed during the House event that he believes that abortion is not consistent with the Constitution. “Hyde should not be viewed as the finish line for the pro-life movement. It’s the floor. It’s a bare minimum compromise,” he shared. “America is founded on the self-evident truth that every person is created equal and endowed with our creator with an inherent right to life. That right is the foundation of every other right that we enjoy. As a father, I believe that every child is fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Every life has value, every child has purpose, and no child is a mistake.”
The Special Order and Hyde Amendment anniversary come at a time when chemical abortion has become a hot button issue on Capitol Hill. Pro-life politicians, lobbyists, and organizations continue to work tirelessly to ban the abortion drug mifepristone. “It’s always great to see members of Congress speak on the floor in defense of life, but especially now as we are urging the Trump administration to take action on chemical abortion to protect mothers and their babies,” Hoyt concluded.
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
As the Hyde Amendment approaches its 50th anniversary, lawmakers and pro-life advocates are reflecting on its history, its impact on federal abortion funding, and the continuing debate over abortion policy in America.
A Catholic couple in Massachusetts had their daughter taken away by the state under the guise of child abuse after refusing to affirm her so-called transgender identity. In 2024, the 15-year-old child was removed from the home of Joseph and Arlene Kutzko after they say she was secretly socially “transitioned” at Algonquin Regional High School. Now, they’re fighting to get her back before she is medically “transitioned” on high-dose testosterone.
“Here, a public school is ‘stuck on stupid’ by engaging in the willful and dehumanizing practice of destroying both family and child. This school should be closed permanently,” Walt Heyer, senior fellow at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The school abused the child emotionally and psychologically, causing lifelong damage. My life was destroyed by the trans insanity. Stop the madness.”
Fox News reported that a permanent restraining order was issued against the family, and the Department of Children and Families (DCF) cut off the Kutzkos’ contact with their daughter, Sophie, when they refused to refer to her by male pronouns. Fox also reported that the Kutzkos say DCF has “housed their daughter in a boys’ dormitory, stripped away her Catholic faith by denying her Sunday Mass, and put her on birth control and psychiatric drugs.”
“In Massachusetts today, a sizable portion of government and the population will call you a good mom if you violently strangle your own three kids to death but will take custody of your teenage daughter away from you if you don’t want her to be castrated & mutilated by the gender lobby. Let that sink in,” Daily Wire personality Isabel Brown posted on X Monday.
The Kutzkos appeared on the Fox News “Lighthouse Faith” podcast hosted by Religion Correspondent Lauren Green to share about the dire situation over the weekend, alongside their attorney Vernadette Broyles. “The Northborough-Southborough public schools and their counseling practices exposed our daughter to teachings on LGBTQ [ideology] and topics that conflict with our Catholic beliefs about human dignity, creation as male and female in Catholic teaching,” Joseph Kutzko said.
He continued, “[O]ur daughter had been placed in counseling with sessions at Algonquin Regional High School [with] school counselor … Denise Brienze, without our knowledge or consent. [W]e were told she was simply staying after school for extra math help.”
The Kutzkos say that they have not been able to have contact with their daughter since January 2025. “I even begged them [to allow me] just to hug her or kiss her. They say they can’t. They will not allow it,” Arlene Kutzko explained.
Just months before Sophie was taken from them, she wrote her dad a heartfelt birthday card. In October of 2024, her words to her father said, “Without you, I would have nothing. So wholeheartedly, fully, sincerely. I love you with no end,” Joseph read during an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino.
The Kutzkos explained that Sophie grew up loving church. “She led the parish in rosary before mass, and she was so faithful — everybody in the church knew it — that she was given a special dispensation to be confirmed early. So, one year early, she was allowed to make her confirmation.”
But at age 15, Sophie started experiencing some inner turmoil. Next thing they knew, the Kutzkos were losing custody of their daughter. They had no idea what had been going on at the school.
“The most important thing is to bring her back to our family. But a shorter-term goal is to prevent them from giving her testosterone,” Joseph Kutzko reiterated. Boyer explained that under Massachusetts state law, DCF could administer the hormones to Sophie without her parents’ permission even though she is still a minor.
“We are actively fighting in court to keep them from really poisoning this young lady with testosterone that would have the capacity to cause her to become potentially infertile, would harm her cardiovascular system, and would have a number of irreversible effects and harms to her body,” Boyer lamented. She added that DCF is hoping to move forward with giving Sophie the testosterone.
Time may be running out, but the Kutzkos are actively working to bring their daughter home. “We love her. We love her. We miss her,” Joseph Kutzko wanted people to know.
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A Massachusetts Catholic family is fighting to regain custody of their teenage daughter and prevent testosterone treatment, raising questions about parental rights, religious liberty, and the state’s authority over minors.
The mayor of New York City’s presence will not be welcomed by all at the metropolis’s upcoming 9/11 memorial service. “I am not asking politely, I am demanding” New York City Councilmember Vickie Paladino (R) asserted from the steps of New York City Hall on Tuesday, “that he not show his face on that sacred ground.” The councilwoman, along with many others in the Big Apple, has made one thing clear: they do not want the mayor to be present at the event on Friday.
The ceremony to be held is the official 25th anniversary 9/11 commemoration at the World Trade Center Memorial Plaza and is a private event for families who lost loved ones on that day. On Tuesday, Forbes reported that a change.org petition created by relatives of 9/11 victims has received over 100,000 signatures to exclude Mamdani from the event.
This resistance is largely the result of Mamdani’s affiliation with Ramzi Kassem, who Mamdani appointed as the city’s chief legal counsel. In the past, Kassem represented a convicted al-Qaeda member whose brother-in-law was one of the 9/11 plane hijackers. The mayor drew criticism last Friday when video circulated of Mamdani signaling for the symbolic pen he had just used to authorize an executive order regarding 9/11 at city hall to be given to Kassem.
“That was a message to each and every one of us,” Paladino said about the pen, and she stood in the sea of those gathered at the city hall. “Cryptic as it is, but read through the lines. What’s going on here at City Hall and what we got representing us at City Hall, they do not belong on sacred ground. I could go through a list of people that he associates himself with and continues to associate himself with. We, the people, do not care for Zohran Mamdani.”
Robert Maginnis, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand that the country can never lose sight of the effects of the tragedy that took place 25 years ago.
“What should not be lost in the political controversy is the extraordinary emotional significance of September 11. The memorial ceremony belongs first and foremost to the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered, the families who still live with that loss, the first responders and service members whose lives were changed by what followed, and a nation that promised never to forget. Anyone who participates in that ceremony should do so with humility and with an appreciation for just how deeply those memories still run.”
Charles Wolf, a man who lost his wife in the North Tower attack, also announced at city hall that he did not want Mamdani to attend: “We don’t want a mayor who only wants to be there for the publicity. This mayor is not serving us. He’s serving himself,” he shared.
“We are asking, respectfully, that he not show up even though there is going to be other politicians there. These are the politicians that helped us, pushed beneficial laws through, and literally held our hand during that time. Mayor Mamdani has not shown any of that. None of it. He just wants to be there because he wants to be there.”
Rudy Guiliani, the former mayor of New York City during the attack on the World Trade Center, also spoke against Mamdani’s planned attendance at the event. “Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that Sept. 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America,” Giuliani told Newsmax in an interview on Sunday. “Having lost friends there, and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.”
Maginnis said that his experiences in the post-9/11 world, including working at the Pentagon in the Department of the Army, have shaped his perception of the tragedy. “Those experiences have given me an enduring appreciation for what September 11 means to the families of the victims, to those who served in the years that followed, and to millions of Americans who remember the fear, anger, and grief of that day.”
“That is the context in which I view the controversy surrounding Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem,” he added. “Kassem’s prior representation of a terrorism defendant has become a particular point of contention for some 9/11 families. At the same time, representing a criminal defendant should not, by itself, be equated with sharing that defendant’s beliefs or actions.”
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
As New York marks the 25th anniversary of September 11, families of 9/11 victims and other critics are calling for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the memorial, arguing that the day should remain centered on those who were lost and the families who still carry that grief.
One morning, I was riding my bicycle along Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River when an egret glided over the trail. The pure-white wading birds have always fascinated me with their elegant stillness and regal grace. They look even more impressive on the rare occasions when they spread their wings and take flight, making them look even larger. Yet this impromptu bird-watching experience came to an abrupt and discordant end. The moment before the egret swooped into the brush and out of sight, he made like a bomber and dropped a load of ordnance worthy of an animal twice his size.
A graceful bird, caught in its least graceful position.
The minor incident nearly passed out of my mind until I realized that this un-constipated egret provided an apt example for man’s complex condition. From beginning to end, mankind’s creation is the gift of God. We are created in God’s image and likeness, given dominion over every living thing, and blessed with the good command to fill the earth with God’s image-bearers through procreation (Genesis 1:26-28). Yet our first parents squandered these divine blessings through disobedience and rebellion, for which they were cast out of God’s presence (Genesis 3:22-23) and condemned to die (Genesis 2:17).
Man is a graceful bird, caught in his least graceful position.
Christianity’s nuanced view of human nature becomes incomprehensible without the first three chapters of Genesis. This is why so many human philosophies veer into error on either one side or the other. Most human philosophies boil down to the opinion that man is basically good, or that he is basically bad. Only the Bible (and those influenced by the Bible) can explain how man is created good, but corrupted.
Mankind’s complex condition affects every aspect of our lives, even the way we work. Before anything had tarnished God’s “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31), we read that “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Work is not a consequence of the fall, but a basic function of man, which God created for good. Adam’s task was merely to imitate God’s own example in creative effort (Genesis 2:9), and it carries religious undertones, as the same verbs are used to describe service at the tabernacle in Numbers 3.
However, mankind’s work did not escape the Fall unscathed. Not only was Adam cast out of the lush garden into uncultivated land, but God also declared, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).
The ground was Adam’s domain of work. By extension, this curse extends to all arenas of work. All work is toilsome, demanding, and sometimes fleeting, as the whole creation is “subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20).
Man is a graceful bird, caught in his least graceful position.
Again, the Bible’s complex theology of work has better power to explain the different attitudes people have towards their work than the fractured, individualistic worldviews dominant in America today. Some people love their jobs, while some people hate them. Why? Can individualism or critical theory offer a satisfying answer to this question? (Critical theory would blame group oppression, but that is not satisfying.)
The Bible has an answer. Some people love their jobs because work is a gift from God — a good gift that God created as part of his blessing on mankind. Even in a fallen world, the wise preacher concludes, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24, see also Ecclesiastes 5:18-19 and 9:9). Yet some people also hate their jobs because work is cursed after the Fall.
Man is a graceful bird, but he is still caught in his least graceful position.
The very unseemliness of the aforementioned egret’s evacuation is what makes it an appropriate metaphor for fallen man under sin. “We have all become like one who is unclean,” Isaiah confesses, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). We need one who can wash our filth away, to achieve for us what we could never achieve by our own works.
Even though work is good, it is not ultimate. The Lord God engaged in his creative work for six days, “and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). Just as man was made to imitate God’s work, so man was also supposed to imitate God’s rest (Exodus 20:8-11). But, under the curse of sin, that rest became fleeting and far off.
From the earliest generations, Adam’s descendants sought one who would restore them to God’s rest. Thus, Noah’s father Lamech said in hope, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). Yet Noah did not bring an end to toil, hard labor, or the futility of human industry. Nor did Moses, Joshua, David, or any human leader called by God throughout history. All were sinners, after all.
Yet painful toil under the curse is not man’s final condition, for “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Those who are forgiven of their sins by the blood of Christ receive true grace. They are not only restored to right fellowship with God, but they also receive eternal life and enter into God’s rest.
For now, we recognize that all honest work is good. “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty” (Proverbs 14:23). “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28). “It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops” (2 Timothy 2:6). But work is not ultimate, and one day our painful toil will come to an end.
Man is a graceful bird, and one day his graceless condition will be remedied in full. One day, those who are in Christ will enter into the glory and rest of their Redeemer.
This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Work is one of God’s good gifts, yet the Fall has made it difficult, frustrating, and fleeting. Scripture explains both our desire to find meaning in work and our longing for the lasting rest found in Christ.
The relentless hold that online pornography has on American society is continuing unabated, with limited public effort to contain or reduce it. Surveys show that porn use is almost as widespread among practicing Christians as it is in the general public. Even as age verification laws have spread throughout the country, a lingering question remains: could an internet service provider (ISP) filtration model implemented in the U.K. help lower porn consumption in the U.S.?
With the universal adoption of internet-enabled phones has come the reality that smut is now consumed as easily and privately as viewing a text. AddictionHelp.com estimates that an astounding 95% of porn traffic is viewed on phones, with just 5% of traffic viewed on desktops. This may help explain why porn use is so rampant among younger generations of adults aged 18-35 in America, with a stunning 87% of men and 28% of women viewing it at least weekly. Porn is so omnipresent that the vast majority (70%) of males under 18 have viewed porn, along with 40% of minor females. Fully half of teens under 15 have also viewed online obscenity.
Perhaps most distressing for the church is that even the majority of practicing Christians are consuming porn. According to a 2024 report from Barna and Pure Desire, 54% of those who say “faith is important to them and have attended church in the last month” sometimes view porn, compared to 61% of all U.S. adults.
All of this consumption is taking place on human beings who are being sexually abused and coerced into being filmed. One study found that all porn subjects were coerced to participate in being filmed in some way, with 96% of them being victims of sexual abuse as children.
The effects of porn use on consumers are also contributing to a spiraling mental health crisis in the U.S. Research shows that habitual consumption causes increased anxiety and depression, emotional numbness and relationship strain, impaired focus and productivity, and increased isolation and loneliness, not to mention increased sexual dysfunction.
The immense damage that porn has inflicted on public health has led to a large swath of U.S. states enacting laws that require porn sites to verify the age of potential users before allowing them website access. Since 2023, 25 states have passed such laws. While human rights advocates have rightly celebrated these efforts at reducing minors’ consumption of porn, subsequent studies have found that the laws have done little to mitigate overall porn use. One study found that the laws’ effect induced a 10% reduction in time spent on porn sites, but “Many users appear to have circumvented restrictions with VPNs [virtual private networks] or shifted to noncompliant sites that did not verify age.”
Another way that countries like the U.K. are attempting to tackle the smut problem is by requiring ISPs to offer internet services that filter out porn sites. In 2011, the U.K. government announced an agreement with the country’s four largest ISPs in which their default internet service would be free of porn sites, requiring subscribers to “opt in” to an unfiltered service if they wanted access to smut. ISPs began implementing the policy in 2013. But subsequent reports revealed that the vast majority of British users opted out of the service, showing that the model has likely had a negligible effect on lessening porn consumption in the country.
Still, the model remains untried in the U.S., where many parents would likely choose to curtail porn at its source instead of having to navigate third-party filters to protect their children. However, experts like Benjamin Bull, who serves as general counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, say that the ISP filtration model may not stand up to legal scrutiny if it were enacted in the U.S.
“While we admire the U.K. model for blocking pornography unless users opt out, I fear the First Amendment to the United States Constitution would likely make such a law in this country be held unconstitutional,” he told The Washington Stand. “Although pornography found by a court to be legally ‘obscene’ has no constitutional protection, there is a presumption of constitutional protection until such a ruling occurs. Our Supreme Court would likely strike down the U.K. model as a ‘prior restraint’ on presumptively protected expression and therefore a violation of the First Amendment.”
Bull continued, “However, in the most recent term of our Supreme Court, the court upheld a Texas law that prohibits dissemination of pornography to minors unless the online platform first obtains confirmation that the recipient is 18 years of age or older. In other words, age verification is now a requirement for online dissemination of pornography in Texas and several other states that have adopted this law. The reason is that while pornography is presumptively protected for adults, it has little, if any, protection for minors. Because of a ‘compelling’ governmental interest in protecting children, the Supreme Court held that the burden of determining that the recipient is an adult prior to dissemination passes constitutional muster.”
“This is much weaker than the U.K. model, and our Supreme Court may not have reached this decision had the U.K. not been a leader in curtailing unlimited access to pornography, which social scientists have concluded has a corrosive and negative effect on society in so many ways,” he added.
This article was written by Dan Hart and originally published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Pornography use remains widespread in America, including among practicing Christians. As states pursue age verification laws, questions remain about what can effectively protect children and reduce pornography’s harmful effects.
As China’s communist regime continues to accelerate its oppression of Christian pastors and believers, a campaign to allow a persecuted pastor ailing from cancer to reunite with his family is intensifying ahead of Xi Jinping’s summit with President Donald Trump in Washington in September.
Last week, reports surfaced that three young pastors of the independent Maizhong Reformed Church in Fuyang have been sentenced “to prison terms of up to one year and seven months” simply for performing weddings and organizing religious instruction, among other ordinary pastoral work. The court accused the Christian pastors of “organizing illegal gatherings” after the communist regime had legally shut down the church, claiming that their activities “had severely disrupted public order.”
Outcry over the case has grown after the wife of one of the pastors, Xu Chao, described the miscarriage of justice on social media. “What is infuriating is that people who clearly committed no crime have been forcibly convicted, while those who illegally installed surveillance equipment in my home remain free from consequences,” she wrote. “Those who cause innocent people to suffer injustice are the ones who are guilty. History will remember everything that is happening today and will judge every decision that has been made.”
As noted by ChinaAid, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has increasingly employed charges of “illegal business operations,” “fraud,” “inciting subversion of state power,” and “organizing illegal gatherings” to describe routine activities of churches that are disfavored by the state ever since it instituted its revised Regulations on Religious Affairs in 2018. As a result, a number estimated to be in the thousands of “unregistered” house churches have been shut down, and hundreds of pastors have been imprisoned.
A particularly tragic case that is being spotlighted by human rights advocates is that of Pastor John Cao, a permanent resident of the U.S. who spent seven years in a Chinese prison simply for serving the destitute along the China-Myanmar border. As described by ChinaAid Founder and President Bob Fu, Cao is being restricted from leaving the country to reunite with his family despite suffering from rapidly progressing stage 4 prostate cancer.
“He has been a faithful pastor, humanitarian, [and] educator,” Fu related during “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “He could have chosen to lead a comfortable American dream life when he came to the U.S. more than 40 years ago. But he felt God called him to really continue the gospel ministry — and especially on the field of education in China. And so, he established essentially 16 schools for 2,000 children on the China-Myanmar border for those children who are under persecution by the Myanmar military regime and who otherwise would not have any education at all. He gathered churches from the Chinese underground church and American churches [to] help them. But for that, basically, he was lured back into China and then sentenced to seven years [of] imprisonment.”
Fu continued, “He served [every] single day of [the] seven years, and unfortunately, the Chinese government [is] still preventing him from coming back to reunite with his Caucasian-American wife … and their two sons and even their first grandchild. … [N]ow he has been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and [it] is spreading into his bones, and he’s not able even to walk anymore at the age of 67 years old.”
Fu, who serves as a senior fellow for International Religious Freedom at FRC, went on to urge President Trump to appeal to Chinese President Xi Jinping during their upcoming September 24 summit in Washington to allow Cao to reunite with his family. “[T]ime is of the essence,” he underscored. “We urge … President Trump to speak from really [a] humanitarian basis to President Xi Jinping … to just give back his passport and allow him to fly back to spend the rest of his limited time on this earth to be with his family.”
Fu highlighted a petition drive asking the president to advocate on behalf of Cao with a goal of reaching 100,000 signatures before the September 24 summit. “Please pray fervently that the Lord will grant mercy and grace for President Trump to hear these petitions and make an appeal to [Xi] to get Pastor John Cao to be home with his family in the next few weeks,” he concluded.
This article was originally written by Dan Hart and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
As China intensifies its crackdown on independent Christian churches, advocates are urging action for Pastor John Cao, a U.S. permanent resident with stage 4 cancer who remains barred from leaving China to reunite with his family.
Across the U.S., a startling statistical anomaly has quietly metastasized into a national crisis: millions of working-age males have begun ditching the workforce. They’re not retiring, nor are they registering as unemployed. They simply have stopped looking for work.
While economists have debated endlessly over structural shifts, such as automation and wage stagnation, a more uncomfortable conversation is appearing in policy circles. The silent exodus of American men denotes a deeper cultural pandemic, which is a decaying work ethic stoked by a swell of public handouts and a pervasive social narrative that tells the individual that they should settle for nothing less than a passion project.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, labor force participation for those in the prime age for work — between 25 and 54 years of age — has experienced a steady, decades-spanning decline. At the midpoint of the 20th century, over 95% of men were working or seeking employment. Today, that rate has plummeted dramatically, leaving nearly seven million men of prime age sidelined as contributors to the American economy.
Policy analysts and sociologists alike warn that this developing trend cannot be explained away by mere shifts in demographics. Unlike past generations, who considered self-reliance a badge of honor, today’s lack of a vigorous workforce illustrates the fundamental erosion of the conventional work ethic.
As scholar Nicholas Eberstadt observed in his feature study on the crisis, “the progressive detachment of so many adult American men from regular paid labor can only result in lower living standards … and the consequences are not just economic. The male exodus from work also undermines the traditional family dynamic, casting men into the role of dependents and encouraging sloth, idleness, and vices.”
A major driver of this contraction in the workforce is the direct consequences of social safety net expansion. What was once designed with the intention of being temporary cushions during economic recession has morphed into a permanent way of living for millions of able-bodied Americans.
Divided amongst state-funded disability benefits, nutritional assistance, and low-income housing subsidies, the economic estuary that exists between a demanding career and remaining jobless has dried up to almost a point of non-existence. When safety nets mitigate non-work without demanding an exchange, the motivator to persevere through demanding labor dissolves.
Eberstadt warned that this trajectory threatens the fundamental ethos of the country, noting that “whether we choose to recognize it or not, this feature of the American condition, the new ‘men without work’ normal, is inimical to the American tradition of self-reliance.”
Building upon this policy failure is a corrosive cultural fable that has been fed to the younger generations, which is the notion that everyone is entitled to a job that falls in line with their own passions perfectly.
Over decades, higher education institutions and popular media have preached a doctrine of self-fulfillment above everything. Young men have been conditioned to believe that a job in manufacturing or heavy construction is a compromise of the potential they have when it doesn't align with their dream career.
Economic reality operates in the context of necessity, however, not utopian ideals. Popular figures such as Mike Rowe have strongly pushed back against this cultural illusion, arguing that “when people follow their passion, they miss out on all kinds of opportunities they didn’t even know existed… never follow your passion but always bring it with you.”
Branding ordinary, tough jobs as “beneath” today’s worker, American society has spurred young men to wait around for their dream opportunities to manifest — even though there’s no guarantee that it will ever arrive, rather than rolling up their sleeves and doing what is needed.
The economic consequences resulting from millions of idle men prove staggering. Business owners across trades report chronic labor shortages, superficially driving up supply chain costs and delaying infrastructure growth. Local communities meanwhile must deal with rising rates of isolationism and civic-service decline, a phenomenon tied directly to the absence of systemic labor.
The reversal of this decline will be vested in a realignment of policy and cultural values. Until policymakers take the steps to confront this reality that a flourishing state relies upon its citizens’ willingness to do things that are hard and uncomfortable, the already far too high number of America’s missing able men will continue to rise.
This article was originally written by Zach Patton and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Millions of working-age American men have left the workforce entirely. This article examines how declining work ethic, dependence on government assistance, and the pursuit of the “perfect” career may be contributing to a growing cultural and economic crisis.
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Rounding the corner, I was surprised to see nearly a dozen Fulanis, mainly boys, sitting in a small hallway waiting to speak to us on a warm afternoon in Plateau State, Nigeria. Some smiled, and some just stared at my travel partner and me from Christian Freedom International as we entered the modest office space where we would be interviewing them.
The mainly Muslim Fulani tribe has risen in international awareness in recent years as antagonists in conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, committing brutal acts of terrorism, violence, and kidnappings of Christians living in villages in Northern Nigeria. I witnessed the widespread scale of these attacks and their effects on Christian communities while visiting Nigeria earlier this year. However, the Fulanis lined up in the hallway were there to tell us a different story of what is happening among some Nigerian Muslims — they are turning to Christ.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mohamed was all smiles as he shared his story. Growing up in a Fulani Muslim family, he attended Islamic school where he was instructed to memorize the Qur’an in Arabic, a language he didn’t know. He asked his father why that was. Then he started to ask more and more questions about Islam, which made his parents suspicious.
So, Mohamed did his own research and continued to ask questions. It was at this time that he happened to become friends with a couple of Christians, who were able to tell him about Christianity. When Mohamed’s parents heard he was interested in Christianity, they gathered people in the community to persuade him to deny his growing conviction that the Christian faith was true. Yet, a woman in the community encouraged Mohamed to meet with her pastor — he did, and immediately gave his life to Christ.
After this, Mohamed’s mother acted very kindly to him and brought him a glass of milk. This was unusual given their strained relationship. Mohamed smelled what he thought to be rat poison in the milk and turned to his mother, asking “Mom, are you trying to kill me?” She denied it. He said, “Okay, well, it will be on your head.” After drinking one sip, Mohamed immediately doubled over and started vomiting. His mother said, “Let your God save you” and left him there.
Yet, Mohamed lived. When his mother came back to find him alive, she was furious and threatened to shoot him. He rose and started to run away just as his brother picked up a gun and tried to shoot him. In our interview, Mohamed lifted his pant leg to show the scar where a bullet had entered his leg as he escaped. Now, he is class president at his Bible school.
We also met 26-year-old Amadu. One night a few years ago, he had a dream of a man in white, but he couldn’t see the man’s face. Amadu prayed as a Muslim that God would show him what this dream meant. The dreams continued, and he couldn’t shake his need to understand them.
A small group of Christians at his work would gather on break to pray together. Searching for peace from his dreams, Amadu began to sit in on these gatherings. His Muslim boss told him to stop. But he needed someone to interpret his dreams, and his new Christian friends suggested he meet with their pastor.
This pastor told him that the man in white in his dreams was Jesus. The pastor said, “He wants to bring you from darkness to light and for you to know him.” Amadu asked, “What do I need to do?” The pastor told him he needed to accept Christ and become a Christian, but he told Amadu to go home and really think about it before making the decision because he knew it would be difficult with Amadu’s family.
A few weeks later, Amadu came back and announced he was ready to become a Christian. So, the pastor led him through the sinner’s prayer. Amadu started attending church, but something inside him told him not to tell his parents. Two months later, his parents began to ask why he wasn’t going to mosque or saying his daily Muslim prayers. Feeling their increasing scrutiny, Amadu made the hard decision to leave his parents’ house and flee to a different town. Amadu told us if his parents learned he became a Christian, “I will be killed.”
Another young man, Jalo, told us that he first became interested in Christianity when he was herding his father’s cattle. He would take the cattle to graze and sometimes go on to Christian farms, where his cattle could eat all the farmer’s crops in a single day. This is devastating to an impoverished farmer.
Yet, time and again, the Christian farmers would call Jalo’s father and say, “It’s okay, we forgive you, but please don’t do this again.” This was weird to Jalo. He thought, what kind of God do they serve that they forgive like this?
One day he asked the father of his Christian friend, “Why do you people always forgive when we do harm to you?” His friend’s father replied simply that Christians forgive. It was at that moment Jalo was sure he wanted to be a Christian. His friend told him to go home and that God would send someone to lead Jalo to Christ.
Jalo continued herding, and while he was sleeping overnight in a field, he began to have dreams. In one dream, a voice asked him, “You can have money, you can have everything. But what do you have if you have no salvation?”
With more determination than ever, Jalo pursued his Christian friend and asked to become a Christian. The friend took him to a pastor who gave Jalo a sober warning about the cost of following Jesus: “You will lose everything. They will persecute you. Christianity won’t give you anything… no money, not a wife. The only help we could maybe give you is send you to a Bible school.”
Jalo knew what it was to suffer; he had seen much suffering in the bush. And he was sure he wanted to follow Jesus.
Today, Mohamed, Amadu, and Jalo are all enrolled in the Bible college at Christian Faith Institute. There they are being discipled in the Bible and equipped to be missionaries and pastors themselves to be a witness for Christ in some very dark places.
I’m deeply grateful to have been able to travel to Nigeria with Christian Freedom International, a humanitarian aid group serving the persecuted church. Not only did I see first-hand the devastating impact of persecution, but I also saw the reasons to hope — that despite the darkness there, God is moving in the lives and hearts of those in the most difficult-to-reach and dangerous places.
Note: Names of those featured in this piece have been changed for their protection.
This article was originally written by Arielle Del Turco and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Three Fulani men in Nigeria share how they left Islam to follow Christ despite threats, persecution, and the possibility of losing everything, offering a powerful glimpse of how the gospel is advancing in some of the country’s most dangerous places.
A Christian education program previously canceled in Georgia has gotten the green light to restart after its director was punished for exercising his free speech rights on social media.
Vidalia City Schools made the decision to cut the program after director of Sweet Onion Christian Learning, Rev. Gady Youmans, criticized a possible spike in taxes on Facebook. His attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom defended the pastor, arguing, “Every American has the right to publicly criticize the government — that’s what makes the First Amendment guarantee of free speech so special and the envy of the world. Vidalia City Schools can’t punish Rev. Youmans — or his ministry providing high school students with free religious education — for simply sharing his opinion of a proposed tax hike,” Legal Counsel Mercer Martin insisted. “We’re pleased the court has reinstated Sweet Onion’s released-time program and restored Rev. Youmans’ constitutionally protected freedoms while his lawsuit proceeds.”
Like a growing number of school districts, Vidalia had allowed the program, which, with parental approval, releases students “for a part of the school day to attend off-site religious instruction offered by a private sponsoring group. It recognizes and reinforces the constitutionally protected right of parents to direct the religious education of their children.”
Sitting down with Family Research Council’s Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler reiterated, “The school had no business canceling the Sweet Onion Christian Learning Center and the release time program simply because of the Facebook posts that the executive director had made.”
“Basically,” Sechler continued, “he was criticizing proposed tax increases that he thought were unnecessary and unwise. And the school board didn’t like what he said. And soon he learned that the program would be canceled. And that’s just not consistent with the Constitution.”
According to its website, Sweet Onion’s mission is to make disciples through education centered around God’s word.
“We accomplish our mission to eradicate Biblical illiteracy by walking students through the Scriptures so that they can know God’s ways, in order to better know Him. When students know Him better they will know how to find favor in His sight,” the site reads.
ADF reported that the superintendent of Vidalia City Schools “secretly investigated Sweet Onion and learned that, six years ago, a parent from another school had removed her child from a Sweet Onion course after learning the ministry did not exclusively use the parent’s preferred version of the Bible. Based on this incident, the superintendent reported to the board that, in addition to disagreement with the content of Youmans’ Facebook posts, his instruction ‘reflected a particular interpretation of the Bible’ that wasn’t presented in a ‘neutral or well-balanced manner.’ By targeting his religious instruction, the district violated Youmans’ right to the free exercise of religion.”
When ADF filed the lawsuit in May, Sechler was optimistic about the case’s chances. Sechler stressed that it’s important to stand up for values, and to stand by them, such as in the case of Sweet Onion. “Don’t worry about the government coming after you. The First Amendment is there for a reason to protect your right to say things, and especially on social media.”
Sechler added that ADF hopes the case will inspire others to not let their voices be drowned out when it matters.
“The First Amendment protects Youmans’ right both to criticize the proposed tax increase and to teach the Bible from his religious perspective,” ADF noted. “By punishing him and his ministry for his criticism of the government and his religious instruction, school officials violated that fundamental right.”
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A Georgia Christian education program is returning after a federal court ruled in favor of its director, who argued that the school district violated his First Amendment rights by canceling the program over his social media comments and biblical teaching.
Americans have been so busy fighting against radical gender ideology and critical race theory in schools that one of the Left’s favorite ways to undermine parents has fallen under the radar. But the Trump administration hasn’t lost sight of graphic sex education, and parents everywhere should be grateful for it. In a very underreported move, the president’s team went on the offensive this summer, zeroing out millions of taxpayer dollars for controversial “Teen Pregnancy Prevention” programs in favor of solid curriculum that emphasizes abstinence and marriage.
The New York Times picked up on the cuts weeks after the fact in a sob story lamenting how caught off guard local nonprofits had been by HHS’s announcement. But frankly, no one should be surprised. The Trump administration slashed dozens of grants like this in its first term, arguing — rightly — that they only existed to sexualize children, not equip them to make positive and healthy choices. A whopping 53 programs ended up on the chopping block, saving Americans $67 million in what the president’s budget called “radical leftist ideology.” If anything, the administration argued, the Biden- and Obama-era sex ed models have only “normalize[ed] sexual activity for minors.”
Thanks to liberal ideologues masquerading as health experts, activists like Planned Parenthood have had unlimited access to America’s classrooms, knowing if they hook kids on sex, they’re grooming the next generation of abortion customers. It’s been a great down payment on future business — until now. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) made it clear that the department is under new management where all of this is concerned, posting a list of priorities that should relieve every sane parent in America.
First of all, the agency vows to ensure that adolescent program materials are “age-appropriate” and “do not promote harmful ideologies, such as gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology. OASH will focus on programs that do not promote material that depicts, describes, exposes or presents obscene, indecent, or sexually explicit content,” the document notes, “including content that encourages, normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors. OASH will prioritize OASH programs and funding that are in compliance with these priorities and applicable law.”
Second, OASH promises to defend parental rights “to the fullest extent of its authority under the law … including parents’ right to protect their children from exposure to content that burdens the exercise of their religious beliefs.”
Under this new criteria, NYT complains, anyone applying for taxpayer dollars “must teach abstinence,” also known as sexual risk avoidance, “as the only means to prevent teen pregnancy. Courses must stress the importance of marriage and procreation and instruct young people how to safeguard their fertility. They make scant reference to preventing sexually transmitted infections and virtually none to lesbian, gay and transgender sexuality.”
As FRC’s Quena González pointed out to The Washington Stand, “The fact that some professional sex ed providers who receive millions of dollars in federal funds are complaining that these priorities are now required to continue receiving taxpayer dollars should alarm parents and enrage taxpayers. We shouldn’t be allowing, much less paying for, schools to tell students, ‘We know you’re going to experiment, wink wink, so here’s how to derive the most sexual pleasure from underage sex.’”
González applauded the overhaul as an overdue change to the dangerous status quo. “Insisting that taxpayers pay adults to teach middle schoolers — typically 11-14 years old — about ‘sexual consent,’ pleasurable condom use, or how adolescent girls can use intrauterine devices and implants to avoid pregnancy, is just plain creepy,” he said. “Kids need to be taught that sex is a wonderful gift and a powerful expression of adult love when it is exercised within the safety of a loving marriage covenant. Sex isn’t a toy, and the harms of offering it to minors are well documented and not really debated; studies show that delaying sexual contact until marriage increases the chances of a stable marriage and decreases the chance of living in poverty.”
Valerie Huber, who’s spent decades fighting for this kind of principled approach to sex ed, had one reaction to the administration’s pivot: relief. “Mostly for the young people,” the president of The Institute for Women’s Health told TWS. “For years, sexual risk avoidance had to justify itself while the alternative was funded as though its results were settled. That was never a research question. It was a worldview question dressed up as one.” Now, thanks to Trump, “risk avoidance is being treated as a legitimate public health goal for adolescents, the way it already is for every other youth risk behavior. We do not teach teenagers to smoke carefully. We tell them the truth about risk, and we help them stay at no risk or move from high risk to low risk to no risk,” she emphasized. “Sexual health is the one place we abandoned that model, but now HHS is being consistent across all youth risk behaviors. Bravo!”
Huber looked back over the last several years, lamenting the damage that the Left’s “if-it-feels-good-do-it” message has done. “When adults in authority signal that sexual activity is expected of a 14-year-old, that is not neutral information,” she insisted. “It is permission, and for many students it is pressure.” Under Obama and Biden, she noted, “These programs routinely positioned outside providers, including organizations whose business model depends on abortion, as the trusted adult in a young person’s life — and treated parents as an obstacle to be managed. A curriculum that teaches a 15-year-old how to obtain services without telling her mother is not a health program,” Valerie argued.
With the exception of Trump’s first term, “Students have been offered risk reduction at best and rarely offered risk avoidance,” Huber stressed, “which is the only approach that eliminates risk rather than managing it.”
Although teen pregnancies have dropped over time, she acknowledges, it was a hollow victory. “We counted births. We counted birth control. We did not count infections, we did not count coercion, and we did not measure what happens when pregnancy prevention becomes a substitute for holistic health and thriving for young people,” Valerie said. “We called it a win. In those same years, the emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual health of American adolescents all declined. If your scorecard shows success while the young people on it are falling apart, you are measuring the wrong thing.”
Of course, the nonprofits who’ve been suddenly cut off from this federal gravy train are complaining that this creates an “existential dilemma” for sex ed. Some, the Times reports, are even suing HHS over the new requirements. But the reality is, there’s no “right” to taxpayer dollars — especially not for an indoctrination scheme that’s only exacerbating the problems they claim to solve.
What’s more, America needs to stop believing that young people can only meet the low bars we set. “Hand a young person a high standard and tell them you believe they can meet it, and most of them rise to it,” Huber underscored. “What they resent instantly is the adult who tells them they cannot be expected to control themselves. They hear that for exactly what it is, which is a low opinion of them.” The Left’s model assumes “every teenager is sexually active,” she shook her head. “Most high school students are not. … No one argues that because some teenagers will use drugs, prevention is unrealistic and we should teach safer use instead. We hold the optimal health standard, and we surround it with skills, support, and honesty about risk.”
To those who say the approach isn’t proven, Dr. Michelle Cretella strongly disagrees. “A rigorous review by the Institute for Research demonstrates that sexual risk avoidance education (SRAE) holds great promise. It aligns with the primary public health principle acknowledged by the CDC: abstinence is the only 100% effective way to prevent STDs and pregnancy, as condoms cannot guarantee absolute protection.” Unlike the Planned Parenthood-style programs, “effective SRAE is medically accurate,” she told TWS, citing an article she just authored for an online medical journal. It “discusses condoms and contraceptives and helps students commit to abstinence without decreasing contraceptive use among those who are already sexually active.”
At the end of the day, our schools were never meant to be a substitute for moms and dads, who have the ultimate responsibility to raise their children in a way that reflects their values. It’s not the job of teachers or outside “experts” to contradict those beliefs or commandeer a parent’s authority on topics that, in all honesty, don’t belong in classrooms in the first place. Now, instead of shipping off tens of millions of dollars to graphic programs that double as LGBT recruiting programs and abortion infomercials, the president is letting research, parents, and common sense dictate how America approaches sex ed. And we should all be thankful for it!
This article was originally written by Suzanne Bowdey and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
The Trump administration is redirecting federal sex education funding toward abstinence-based programs, emphasizing parental rights, age-appropriate instruction, and marriage while ending support for curricula critics say sexualize children.
Christians often treat God’s sovereignty and human responsibility like two truths that can’t occupy the same room. One feels safe and comforting. The other feels heavy and demanding. But Scripture refuses to let us choose between them.
In one sense, we love the comfort of knowing He is in control. In another sense, we love knowing that we have free will to make choices. If we aren’t careful, especially in regards to thinking through God’s sovereignty in all things, a risky question may arise, gripping the conscience: If God is truly sovereign, does what I do actually matter? That tension is real, and avoiding it doesn’t make it go away.
If you’re a believer, chances are you already understand that the God of the universe is, in fact, sovereign. That truth is tremendously beautiful and a deep comfort. Yet it can also feel nerve wracking when we begin asking honest questions about human responsibility — about the real roles we play in living out our faith. Rather than avoiding the tension, let’s tackle it head-on. Together, let’s pursue the clarity Scripture actually gives us, instead of letting confusion and uncertainty divide us or keep us from bearing fruit where we otherwise could.
Throughout the whole Bible we see God’s ultimate sovereignty over the affairs of His creation. Throughout the whole Bible we also see that what we do really does matter — for better or for worse. Rather than surveying every example, I want to focus on one analogy the Apostle Paul himself used:
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
The race is a theme that surfaces again and again in Scripture. And here is what I find striking: if we are called to run a race and to endure to the end, does that not indicate that we bear great and real responsibility for whether or not we cross the finish line? I don’t think the answer is as simple as either extreme could make it — or perhaps it’s even more simple than anyone is willing to admit.
When we understand this analogy rightly, we have to hold two truths at once. On the one hand, running is hard, and it is something we must choose to do. Even after we choose it, we know how exhausting it is. If we’re honest, many of us stop to walk, take extended breaks, or even find ourselves wandering off the course — not always eagerly sticking to the straight and narrow.
Yet in terms of human responsibility and our call to run with endurance, I firmly believe running is far more mental than it is physical. When I ran cross country, I was fit enough to keep going, but I would consistently want to stop and walk, genuinely thinking it wouldn’t cost me much. Little did I know, however, that an act as small as walking to catch my breath was stopping me from ever learning how to — and believing that I could — run for long periods of time without stopping to walk.
As I was instructed, the very nature of walking is not the same as running. They are two different forms with two different effects on the body. When I first started, I didn’t need to learn how to move my arms or legs. Before anything else, I needed to train my mind not to quit. Even if I had to run as slow as a snail, simply by keeping the form I eventually discovered I could run much longer than I thought possible, and that I could even enjoy it! With time, the more I refused to stop and walk, the more quickly I progressed in speed as I ran.
One thing bled into another, but it all began with where my mind was — removing the mental block that insisted I had no other choice than to walk.
For the Christian, the mental blocks we must remove are many: anxieties, grievances, financial hardship, loneliness. The list is essentially endless. Thankfully, the Bible doesn’t leave us staring at the obstacles but gives us better things to set our minds on. I encourage you to find your verse — the one that steadies your heart and keeps you running. Mine is Acts 20:24: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”
So yes, there is real responsibility we bear in running this race and running it well. But here is the truth I most want to drive home: none of us would be able to run this race at all without the God of the universe by our side. It is He who paved the way through the death and resurrection of His Son. He is the One who brought us out of spiritual death and into spiritual life. He is the One who supplies the strength. He gives purpose to trials and hope amid suffering. He is the One who made the finish line exist and who made crossing it possible. Better yet, the race He calls us to run is not one He is asking us to win by our own effort. Why? Because it has already been won. Christ Himself declared, “It is finished.” He stands in victory across the finish line, seated at the right hand of God the Father.
In this race, God is the one who sustains and guides us. Even when we wander, He leaves the 99 to bring us home. When we cheat and break the rules, He is ready with mercy, grace, and forgiveness. When we grow weary, He spurs us on and gives us rest. Even when the race takes us through high waters, He has promised we will not drown. Not even the fires of adversity will consume us. When we stumble, He doesn’t leave us in the dust but He picks us back up onto our feet. Unlike any other race, this God — and the people with whom we co-labor — run with us, hand in hand, step by step.
And so, together, with each step we “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). And the end goal, according to 2 Timothy 4:7, is simple. All of us who believe long to be able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Christ is waiting for us with open arms. May we be able to say that we have finished the race — yet it will be He who says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Until that day, may we never lose hope and never allow our faith to wither. May we run well, with endurance and with joy, knowing that “they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
This article was originally written by Sarah Holliday and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
How do God's sovereignty and human responsibility work together? This article explores the Christian life as a race, showing how believers are called to run with endurance while relying completely on God's sustaining grace.
The blood of Christians is irrigating Africa’s soil, with Nigeria as an epicenter. As a senior research analyst at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in that continent (ORFA), Steven Kefas has been following closely horrific stories of martyrdom.
He is now one of the principal contributors to the explosive ORFA six-year study on violence and religious freedom in Nigeria. Because of Kefas’s investigative journalism, documenting human rights abuses and insecurity in Kaduna State, he faced growing pressure from authorities until he was arrested and imprisoned for 162 days in May 2019.
Kefas witnessed deaths among inmates and suffered health challenges. “An experience that only strengthened my resolve to continue exposing injustice,” he said for this interview.
For more than a decade, he has meticulously documented religious persecution, terrorism, mass killings, kidnappings, and forced displacement across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and other affected regions, combining field investigations, survivor interviews, and data analysis to better understand the drivers of violence and to ensure that the voices of victims are not ignored.
What were the key findings of the recent ORFA report on violence and faith in Nigeria?
The scale of violence documented by ORFA is staggering.
Between 2020 and 2025, our research documented 79,323 people killed and 34,773 civilians abducted across Nigeria. On average, that translates to about seven attacks and 36 deaths every single day over the six-year reporting period.
Of those killed, 42,033 were civilians, while 37,290 were security personnel or members of armed groups. One of the report’s most significant findings is that Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), despite receiving the most international attention, accounted for only about 12% of civilian deaths during the reporting period.
By contrast, the groups ORFA classifies as Fulani terror groups were responsible for 18,577 civilian deaths — about 44% of all civilian killings documented.
The religious dimension of the violence is equally concerning. ORFA documented the killing of 28,551 Christians and 13,224 Muslims. After adjusting for the population of affected states, Christians were killed at approximately 4.4 times the rate of Muslims.
While abductions appeared relatively similar in raw numbers — 15,932 Christians and 15,272 Muslims — our companion study, Captivity by Creed, found significant differences in how victims were treated. Christian captives consistently faced higher ransom demands, longer periods in captivity, harsher treatment, greater pressure to renounce their faith, and a higher likelihood of being executed even after ransom payments had been made.
These findings challenge many prevailing assumptions about the conflict and underscore the need for a more evidence-based understanding of the violence affecting Nigeria.
What challenges did ORFA face in conducting field research?
The greatest challenges were security and funding.
Many of the communities we studied are active conflict zones where attacks remain frequent. Conducting field investigations often meant travelling into areas where there was a genuine risk of terrorist attacks, kidnappings, or ambushes. In many cases, our researchers had to work under extremely difficult conditions while ensuring the safety of survivors who agreed to speak with us.
Funding has also been a major limitation. ORFA has carried out this extensive research with relatively modest resources. Despite those constraints, we have built one of the most comprehensive datasets on religious freedom-related violence in Nigeria.
With greater financial support, we could expand our geographic coverage, increase the frequency of field investigations, verify even more incidents, and provide a more complete picture of the crisis.
Could you share some of the stories that had the greatest impact on you or your team while collecting the data?
The testimonies of survivors who spent months, and in some cases hundreds of days, in terrorist captivity had the greatest impact on me personally. Their accounts gave us rare insight into the internal operations of terrorist groups, their methods and, importantly, the motivations behind many of their atrocities.
One story that continues to haunt me involves Christian women abducted from communities in Southern Kaduna. Many were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their captors, forcibly impregnated, and pressured or compelled to convert to Islam while in captivity. After enduring months of unimaginable suffering and finally regaining their freedom, some returned home only to face rejection by their own families. In several cases, their husbands refused to accept them back because they returned with children conceived through rape.
These women survived terrorism only to encounter another form of trauma upon returning home. Their stories remind us that the consequences of terrorism extend far beyond the attack itself and often continue long after victims escape captivity.
What is the typical reaction of Nigerian authorities to reports of this kind?
The reaction has too often been one of denial or dismissal rather than serious engagement with the evidence.
Instead of acknowledging the scale of the crisis and responding to the concerns raised by independent researchers, authorities have frequently sought to downplay reports documenting religiously targeted violence. We saw this clearly when the U.S. government under President Donald Trump raised concerns about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
Rather than addressing the underlying issues, the Nigerian government strongly rejected those characterizations and publicly disputed the findings. It also retained the U.S.-based lobbying firm DCI Group under a contract reportedly worth approximately $9 million to improve Nigeria’s international image.
My hope is that future reports will be met not with denial but with constructive engagement, transparent investigation, and meaningful action to protect vulnerable communities.
Could it be said that the efforts of terrorist groups in Nigeria are aimed at eliminating or diminishing the Christian presence in the country, especially in the geographical and socio-political transition zone in central Nigeria known as The Middle Belt?
Based on ORFA’s findings, I believe there is compelling evidence that, particularly in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, many attacks by Fulani terror groups disproportionately target Christian communities.
The pattern we documented extends beyond isolated attacks.
The Middle Belt separates the predominantly Muslim far North from the mostly Christian South and is characterized by its high ethno-linguistic diversity and crucial agricultural output. Is that a factor for the violence?
Entire Christian farming villages have repeatedly been attacked, churches destroyed, clergy killed or abducted, and thousands of predominantly Christian communities forcibly displaced. In numerous cases, displaced communities have remained unable to return to their ancestral lands for years, with reports that some abandoned villages have subsequently been occupied by the attackers or others.
While motivations can vary across different armed groups and regions of Nigeria, the evidence from many parts of the Middle Belt indicates that Christian communities have been disproportionately targeted in ways that have significantly reduced their presence in affected areas.
In 2016, the BBC and other major media outlets framed the violence in Nigeria as disputes between herders. Have you seen any shift in the mainstream media narrative regarding the violence in Nigeria?
Yes, I believe there has been a gradual shift.
A decade ago, much of the international media described the violence primarily as “farmer-herder clashes,” implying that both sides were engaged in roughly equivalent communal disputes over land and grazing resources.
That framing overlooked the organized, sustained, and often highly lethal attacks against civilian communities that many local researchers and affected communities had been documenting for years.
Increasingly, however, journalists, researchers, policymakers, and international organizations are recognizing that many of these incidents cannot be adequately explained as resource conflicts alone. The scale, organization, and recurring targeting of civilian populations point to a much more serious security challenge involving terrorist violence carried out by armed Fulani militant groups in many parts of Nigeria.
While some media outlets continue to use the farmer-herder narrative, there is now a broader appreciation that the violence is more complex. Also, that terrorism, ideological extremism, criminality, and religious targeting all play significant roles in different parts of the country. I believe this more nuanced understanding is an important step toward developing effective responses.
This article was originally written by Yoe Suarez and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
In this exclusive interview, researcher Steven Kefas discusses a landmark report on violence and religious freedom in Nigeria, sharing sobering data, survivor stories, and why he believes the persecution of Christian communities demands greater global attention.
WNBA player Sophie Cunningham grabbed a lot of headlines this week after saying she believes “truth” requires protecting women from biological men invading their sports.
The basketball star told ESPN on Tuesday, “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
One user slammed her position on X, “Sophie Cunningham is unafraid. Unafraid to be blatantly transphobic.”
Another account posted, “Sophie Cunningham has to be suspended today. You @WNBA can’’t claim to have ‘No Space for Hate’ and then suspend Sandy Brondelo for her comments but allow Sophie to be wildly transphobic in a ESPN article and skate away without consequences. The punishment must be equal.”
After generating chatter on social media, the 29-year-old guard for the Indiana Fever doubled down on Wednesday when speaking with reporters before her team’s game against the Connecticut Sun. “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense,” Cunningham asserted. “And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. I stand on what I said.”
Cunningham and Caitlin Clark, another guard for the Indiana Fever, are considered to be the two most popular WNBA stars.
“Sophie has proven she is a defender, she is bold, and she is completely in tune with the spirit of sport. She isn’t letting brand deals or politics control or distract her — she’s simply unafraid to say what everyone is thinking,” Macy Charles, a legislative strategist for Concerned Women of America told The Washington Stand.
Cunningham cited Title IX as a reason for fairness in women’s sports. “That’s why you have some of the greats in women’s sports,” Cunningham said. “If Title IX and women’s sports weren’t protected, then you wouldn’t hear about any type of women in sport. And so, I think in the future, it’s just really important to protect.”
“And, like I said, I’m gonna stand true to that,” she continued. I’ll never falter in my beliefs in that.”
Despite speaking out, Cunningham is tight-lipped about her political beliefs.
Charles pointed out that Cunningham recognizes the commonsense purpose of the WNBA. “She also knows her opportunities were made possible because she wasn’t expected to participate in the NBA — equality and fairness were exactly why the WNBA was created. She is preserving that for those coming after her. Sophie said she spoke ‘in love,’ and that’s important. Scripture tells us that love rejoices in the truth. Speaking truth in love isn’t a contradiction. It’s exactly what we’re called to do.”
Cunningham’s views are also incredibly mainstream, New York Times/Ipsos polling shows. A whopping 80% of Americans believe biological men should not compete in women’s sports — including 67% of Democrats. Among Republicans, support for the star guard’s position is almost unanimous: 94%.
At a press conference at the White House on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the situation.
“The backlash she [Sophie Cunningham] is receiving from Democrats and left-wing figures across the country is astonishing. They are clearly very out of touch with the American public on this issue, which again, is an 80/20 issue. It’s common sense. It’s rooted in basic biological fact that men should not be competing against women on playing fields across the country,” Leavitt said.
Other politicians outside of the White House rallied behind Cunningham on X, including Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), and Rep. Eli Crane (Ariz.). Fellow athletes Riley Gaines and Martina Navratilova also showed support.
Jennifer Sey, the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, posted on X, “Let this be a lesson to other high level female athletes ... if you are a draw, speak up. They won’t can you.”
Ella Frei, a 17-year-old high school volleyball player from Wisconsin who has said she faced online harassment after criticizing her school’s transgender bathroom policy, also posted, “Thank you @sophaller for being the first female superstar athlete to have my back. It means the world to me.”
Briley Lechner, a high school volleyball player in Michigan who was forced to share a locker room with a biological male identifying as a female from an opposing team, commented that she is inspired by Cunningham as well: “Watching @sophaller say it out loud — that girls shouldn’t have to give up fair competition or our privacy — meant more than she’ll ever know. When a WNBA star says it, maybe people finally listen. I know what it’s like to have your voice on this treated like it’s hateful. It isn’t. Wanting a fair game and a private locker room was never hate. It’s just the truth, and I’m done being afraid to say it. Thank you, Sophie, for going first. You made it easier for the rest of us.”
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
WNBA star Sophie Cunningham is standing by her support for protecting women's sports, saying biological men should not compete against women. Her comments sparked a national debate and drew support from athletes, lawmakers, and advocates.
House Republicans are advocating for protecting children from being exposed to transgender content in TV shows.
On July 13, 47 House members wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imploring a “review of the TV Parental Guidelines to ensure that children are not being indoctrinated with radical gender ideology behind their parents’ backs.” Some of the GOP members who signed on included Andy Ogles (Tenn.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), and Randy Fine (Fla.).
“American children and families are under attack. Parents deserve full transparency from television and streaming services regarding unwanted sexual content in programming rated for children, and it is our intention to provide them with the tools and information they need to make informed choices for their families,” stated the letter. “Unfortunately for America’s children, Democrats disagree.”
This comes after a Public Notice issued by the FCC in April stated that “parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents,” specifically referring to shows with transgender and “non-binary” programming.
“We believe that families should not be blindsided by ideological content hidden inside entertainment marketed to minors,” the House members penned in their letter.
An analysis by Concerned Women for America found that “Netflix programming rated appropriate for children revealed that 41% of G-rated series and 41% of TV-Y7-rated series contain LGBTQ+ content.”
“Parents are highly concerned about content indoctrinating their children, and our recent polling shows a majority of parents say it is crucial for TV programs to disclose sensitive themes in children’s TV programming. We are grateful to those 47 House Republican members who have stood up for children and families,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America.
CWA discovered in a poll that 87% of Americans think it is “very important or somewhat important” that children’s content includes labels indicating themes such as gender and sexual orientation.
“We believe the FCC needs to ensure that the TV content ratings system is transparent and accurate so parents can make informed viewing decisions for their children. Right now, the TV ratings system does not alert parents to LGBTQ+ themes in their children’s TV shows. Parents should have that information, and it’s time to give them that choice,” Nance said.
The April FCC note added that per the Telecommunications Act of 1996, “parents should be provided with timely information about the nature of upcoming video programming and have the ability to block violent, sexual, or other programming that parents believe is harmful to their children. Congress specifically excluded ratings based on political or religious content.”
In recent years, progressive and “woke” themes have become increasingly ever-present in TV shows made for children.
One such show, “The Owl House,” is a cartoon that aired from 2020-2023 on the Disney Channel. The media recommendations site Screenwise described the show as “...(suitable for ages 7+), following a teen girl who stumbles into a magical world full of witches, demons, and surprisingly deep feelings. It features LGBTQ+ representation, moderate fantasy violence, and some genuinely intense/scary moments…”.
According to a press release, CWA filed a comment with the FCC “about why TV programs should alert parents to LGBTQ+ and other sensitive content in shows, especially those targeted to children.”
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A group of House Republicans is urging the FCC to strengthen TV parental guidelines by requiring greater transparency about gender identity and LGBTQ+ themes in children's programming, arguing that parents deserve clear information before choosing content for their families.
Optimism is insufficient to hold you up against the harsh reality of telling your daughters you won’t be alive long enough to walk them down the aisle or letting your parents know they’ll have to bury their son, Ben Sasse shared in The Wall Street Journal late last year.
Sasse is a 44-year-old former senator from Nebraska who was diagnosed with metastasized, stage 4 pancreatic cancer in December 2025 and given mere months to live. He is also a husband and father of three children.
“I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do,” Sasse said. “As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come,” he continued. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”
Sasse’s response to his diagnosis created shockwaves. While optimism is insufficient for Sasse, there’s one thing that isn’t: the hope, security, and comfort found in Jesus Christ.
“We [Christians] hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place,” he wrote.
For the believer, Sasse’s response is not confusing — it makes sense. A Christian’s inheritance is the perfect peace of Christ.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid,” Jesus reassures us in John 14:27.
“The way in which the former senator and his family are clinging to Christ in the midst of profound suffering is a vivid reminder for so many of us that a Christian’s hope is not rooted ultimately in favorable circumstances, but really in the character of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” David Closson, the director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.
In a recent survey, the American Bible Society asked respondents if they turn to the Bible when they encounter difficulties in life or if they blame God for their troubles and reject any religious expression.
The organization found an increase in Bible reading, which directly results in an increase in hope for those who have put their trust in the Lord.
“From a biblical perspective, this makes sense. Scripture never promises that Christians will be spared suffering. In John 16:33 Jesus tells his followers that in this world you will have tribulation,” Closson said. “But Scripture consistently teaches that suffering has a way of stripping away false securities, and reminding us of our dependence on God, and then we could also say trials often expose the inadequacy of the other things we are tempted to trust in, such as our health, careers, finances, relationships, or sense of control.”
The report shows that those who experience difficult life circumstances and trauma are even more likely to read the Bible and rely on their faith for peace and healing than those who haven’t dealt with hardships.
Steadfast faith does not deny the reality of pain, Closson said. “It rather demonstrates that suffering does not have the final word.”
Bible reading was recorded to be 48% for those who faced a life-threatening illness or injury, like Sasse, compared to 37% for those who have not.
The report also found that 38% of those dealing with a life-threatening illness or injury said that their faith was “a great source of comfort to them” as they navigated “life issues,” compared to 31% of those not experiencing a tragedy.
“The mind regulates more effectively when attention is gently anchored to something safe, meaningful and true,” Joanna Hargreaves, a Christian psychotherapist, posted. “Regular Biblical Meditation soothes your amygdala. The amygdala is your brain’s alarm system triggering fear, stress, and anger.”
It is the natural tendency of the heart of the believer to turn to God in the midst of trials and tribulations. It is a mark of spiritual health to lean on the promises of eternity found in God’s word rather than looking to the world for comfort during times of impossible pain.
Closson also observed that unique opportunities for gospel ministry are presented when people are confronted with their own mortality. “As believers, we should be prepared to meet those moments with compassion and care and share the hope that’s ultimately found in the gospel,” he argued. “This report confirms something that Christians have believed for centuries, which is that while God does not waste suffering, he often does use it to draw people closer to himself.”
Because of sin, we live in a world where dads lose their lives to cancer too early, where divorce is common, and confusion about gender and sexuality runs rampant.
But God.
“The testimony of many believers is the suffering that has become the very context in which the promises of God become most precious. Bible passages that maybe seemed abstract in times of ease suddenly become more personal when read from a hospital room or while caring for a sick loved one,” Closson mused.
Take heart, for I have overcome the world, Jesus tells his followers. He calls us not to be discouraged. Sasse is a living example of what it means to embrace this. Amid the trial, he understands what we could all benefit from as a reminder: though we live in a fleeting world, there is an unfailing hope.
This article was originally written by Quinn Delamater and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Former Senator Ben Sasse's response to a terminal cancer diagnosis points to a hope that transcends circumstances. His story reminds believers that true peace is found not in optimism, but in the unchanging promises of Jesus Christ.
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In a sign of the continuing breakdown of religious freedom in Europe, Finnish parliament member Päivi Räsänen was banned by the U.K. from traveling to Heathrow Airport for a planned layover due to her Finnish Supreme Court conviction in March for authoring a pamphlet containing supposed “hate speech” toward those who identify as LGBT.
Räsänen’s legal saga began in 2019, when she wrote a post on social media questioning why her Finnish Lutheran Church was choosing to participate in an LGBT Pride event, citing the scriptural prohibition against same-sex conduct from Romans 1:24-27. Finnish authorities eventually charged her and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola with “hate speech” for authoring a pamphlet advocating for a biblical view of sexuality and for the social media post.
Even after Räsänen and Pohjola’s eventual unanimous acquittal of the charges by two lower courts in 2023, prosecutors continued to press the case by appealing it. In March of this year, a narrow 3-2 Finland Supreme Court decision found Räsänen and Pohjola guilty of “hate speech” for authoring the pamphlet and sentenced them to pay a €1,800 fine. The decision also ordered that the pamphlet be removed from public access and that all physical copies be destroyed. She was not found guilty for two other charges based on the social media post and a radio debate.
Notably, the court admitted in its ruling that Räsänen and Pohjola’s conduct was not “serious.” “[I]t must be taken into account that the text forming the basis for the conviction did not contain incitement to violence or comparable threat-like fomenting of hatred,” the court wrote. “The conduct is therefore not particularly serious in terms of the nature of the offense.”
Nevertheless, Räsänen recently revealed that because of this single “not particularly serious” charge, the U.K. has rejected her Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) merely to pass through the country via Heathrow Airport (after initially approving it) while traveling from the U.S. to Helsinki, Finland’s capital. Räsänen further revealed that the U.K.’s revocation of her ETA could imperil her plans to attend an upcoming conference and speaking engagement in Northern Ireland next month about — ironically — freedom of speech.
Experts like author and columnist Rod Dreher say that the decision of a Western nation like the U.K. to bar Räsänen from stepping foot in the country because of perceived “hate speech” is a sign that Europe is rapidly sliding toward totalitarianism.
“Now that I hear someone as innocent and gentle as this Finnish granny has been forbidden by the British government even for setting foot in their international airport … well, it confirms my suspicions,” he posted last week on his Substack page. Dreher went on to note how the European Parliament is currently considering a measure that would “enable monitoring of people’s private, encrypted chats” to find any hint of perceived “hate speech” and further erode the ability of Europeans to freely express their religious beliefs.
“I think Päivi is a canary in the civilizational coal mine,” Dreher added. “The progressive bureaucratic order in European countries would rather attack faithful Christians as Enemies Of Society than deal with the actual problems they have. We can expect more of this. It’s a Finnish Lutheran lawmaker and grandmother today; it could easily be you tomorrow.”
European free speech advocates like Peter McIlvenna agree, noting that the U.K. barring Räsänen from entering is just the latest in a recent string of travel bans.
“We had a similar situation a couple of months ago whenever we had a United Kingdom rally organized by Tommy Robinson, and the U.K. government blocked 11 individuals who were traveling from Europe, I think, including Ezra Levant [who] was from Canada,” he pointed out during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “They were given this statement, ‘Your presence is not conducive to the common good and therefore you are being blocked for entering.’ Of course, any government can have that ability to stop people coming in. I wish they used it to stop illegal immigrants coming in, but hey, they’re using it for members of Parliament. … [Räsänen] has been a member of [Finland’s] Parliament there for decades and decades.”
McIlvenna, the co-founder of Hearts of Oak, a U.K.-based free speech alliance, went on to describe the extent of the free speech violations that are occurring in his country.
“[T]o think that [Räsänen] is a danger in the U.K. is utter, utter madness,” he lamented. “But that’s where we’re going. … [The government] arrests people for statements online. We have 30 arrests a day for people saying things online that the government does not like … and that fits into our hate crimes. Anything you say that may be perceived as offensive to someone else, then you’ve committed an offense. So it’s where we are.”
“[Europe is] very dark place now,” McIlvenna added. “Finland is a very secular country. Scandinavia and Britain have always prided themselves on our Christian heritage or tradition — 1,700 years of that Christian thread that is very quickly disappearing with an apostate church and very few Christians involved in public office. So that is where we are going, far away from our traditional Christian faith.”
Still, Räsänen sees a thread of hope within the persecution that she has faced, recently describing how it has opened up opportunities for her to share her faith. She recalled that after her “hate speech” case became public in 2019, a young man who identified as an atheist sent her an angry message. After she replied in kindness and shared the gospel with him, she described that he later reached out to her again.
“He said that after his conversation with me, he has found Christ, and he has found a way to eternal life,” Räsänen remembered. “I understood that this is not in vain. It is not in vain to defend these freedoms. It is not in vain to share the message of the Bible.”
This article was originally written by Dan Hart and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
After a Finnish lawmaker was barred from traveling through the U.K. because of a "hate speech" conviction tied to her biblical beliefs, growing concerns are emerging over whether religious freedom and free speech are eroding across Europe.
The U.S. government remains alert to Iranian threats against President Donald Trump, even here on U.S. soil, according to remarks by Mike Waltz, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, on Sunday. The Islamist regime in Tehran has plotted to assassinate Trump on at least two prior occasions, both in peacetime and wartime, and recently redoubled its rhetoric vowing Trump’s death.
“I won’t get into specific intelligence, but this regime, going all the way up to the ayatollah, has plotted to kill President Trump for many years,” Waltz said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “They have operatives here in the United States. Plots are ongoing. But our intelligence community, the FBI, our law enforcement entities are absolutely on top of it.”
The remarks followed reporting last week that Israeli officials had warned President Trump of a fresh Iranian plot against his life, although no official spokesperson confirmed this.
The report came as no surprise, given the Iranian regime’s open vendetta against Trump since his first term in office. Iran has vowed retaliation against Trump ever since he ordered the airstrike that killed IRGC general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on January 3, 2020.
More recently, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has a more personal cause for revenge, after his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, died amid Operation Epic Fury. In only his second public statement, Khamenei the Younger vowed vengeance for “the blood of all those martyred … by bringing the criminal and dishonorable killers to justice. … These criminals — whose names are known from top to bottom — will take to their graves the unfulfilled wish of dying peacefully in their beds.”
Attendees of Khamenei the Elder’s July 4 memorial ceremonies displayed a banner declaring, “We Will Kill Trump.”
Recent history has shown that Iranian attempts on Trump’s life are neither Israeli fiction, nor too low to stoop for a regime that has unwaveringly declared “Death to America” for the past 47 years.
On November 8, 2024, the Biden Justice Department (the same one that spent so many years persecuting Trump) announced an indictment against Farhad Shakeri, an Iranian national, for “a plot to murder a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin in New York,” as well as a plot to assassinate then-president-elect Donald Trump.
“According to statements made by Shakeri in recorded interviews with law enforcement agents, the IRGC has also tasked Shakeri with carrying out other assassinations against U.S. and Israeli citizens located in the United States,” the DOJ stated. “In particular, Shakeri has informed law enforcement that he was tasked on Oct. 7, 2024 with providing a plan to kill President-elect Donald J. Trump.” However, “Shakeri claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC.”
While the DOJ did arrest two co-conspirators, “Shakeri remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran,” the statement admitted. “Shakeri immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported in or about 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.” According to the DOJ, he “used a network of criminal associates he met in prison in the United States” to plan his attacks. However, due to his physical absence, the charges against Shakeri have never gone to trial.
On the other hand, the DOJ did obtain a conviction in the case of Asif Merchant. On March 6, 2026, the DOJ announced that a federal jury had convicted Merchant “of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries.” The Pakistani national was a trained IRGC operative who tried to recruit hitmen “to steal documents, stage a protest, and arrange the murder of one of three specific U.S. government officials,” including President Trump. In June 2024 (still under the Biden administration), Merchant paid a $5,000 advance to men he believed to be hitmen, but who were in fact undercover federal law enforcement officers.
Thus, the DOJ has publicly revealed at least two Iranian plots from 2024 to assassinate Donald Trump. Other less mature plots may have been foiled before attaining the same level of threat, and some may remain undisclosed to protect intelligence assets. In any event, the same regime that sought revenge on Trump in 2024 has much more reason to seek revenge now — and fewer inhibitions against making the attempt.
President Trump responded stoically to the report, suggesting his prior awareness of the threat or at least an acceptance of the risks attending his high station. “They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” he told reporters in Ankara, Turkey, before the U.S. Secret Service insisted that he fly home on his old Air Force One, not the jet gifted by Qatar. “I’m on every list. I saw this morning, I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn’t last very long.”
Trump has even gone so far as to give instructions about how much firepower to unload on Iran in the event that one of their assassination plots succeeds.
“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump blasted out on Truth Social. “Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran — PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”
This reveals once again the spirit of defiance in the face of mortal peril that Trump displayed when he lifted a fist after being grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The renewed effort by Iran to assassinate a sitting U.S. president — even during a ceasefire — provides Americans with a fresh reminder that the Islamist regime in Tehran remains a mortal enemy of the United States. Theirs is an ideological hatred that cannot be placated by gifts of cash or appeased by endless diplomacy, or even military surrender. They want to destroy the United States. Although they lack the firepower to do so openly, they do not and will not show any qualms about stooping to use an assassin’s bullet.
This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Iran has repeatedly plotted to assassinate President Donald Trump, and U.S. officials say the threat remains active. This article examines the regime's longstanding hostility toward America, past assassination attempts, and why the danger has not diminished.
In a setback for religious freedom, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled last Thursday that Christian schools in Maine must comply with pro-LGBT regulations that conflict with their religious beliefs, if they want to participate in a public tuition assistance program. “Essentially what the court has said is that you can believe what you want to believe, you can talk about what you believe, but once you exercise what you believe, that’s conduct that the state of Maine can regulate,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, which brought the lawsuit.
In Crosspoint Church v. Makin, a two-judge panel (one judge died before the opinion was issued) partially upheld a lower court order denying a preliminary injunction against Maine’s pro-LGBT regulations. Crosspoint Church runs Bangor Christian School (BCS). The court decided a second lawsuit featuring a Catholic school (St. Dominic Academy v. Makin) on the same day, on almost identical grounds.
BCS holds employees and students to basic biblical standards for gender and sexuality, and requires teachers to ascribe to a statement of faith. But those standards run afoul of provisions in the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), which Maine now applies to schools seeking to participate in its tuition assistance program. “A private school that participates in the tuition-assistance program and then violates the MHRA exposes itself to civil suits from both the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and private alleged victims, with remedies including injunctive relief and monetary damages,” the court described.
Specifically, the MHRA “‘Religious Nondiscrimination Rule’ bars covered schools from discriminating in admissions, financial aid, academics, and the like on the basis of religion,” as the court described, and its “‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule’ bars discrimination in all the same activities on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity but exempts religious schools that do not receive public funding.”
In practice, this rule would have the effect of preventing BCS’s attempts to enforce its biblical norms of sexuality and gender, Dys told The Washington Stand. For instance, if a male student identified as transgender and wished to use the female restrooms and locker rooms, BCS could not enforce its policies against him without violating the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule. “When the state of Maine presents this sort of regulation on conduct, it creates a real problem,” he said.
Yet the court concluded the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Rule “works no constitutional violation.” It also held that “certain of BCS’s policies” violated the Religious Nondiscrimination Rule, including “church member discounts” and “consideration of ‘prospective students’ spiritual fit.’”
Besides these rules, the MHRA also establishes an “Employment Rule” that “bars employment discrimination based on ‘race or color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry, national origin or familial status,’” as the court described. With regard to this rule, the court partially reversed the district court, finding that Crosspoint Church fell into a carveout in the rule, thereby eliminating the “case or controversy.”
Finally, the MHRA’s “Religious Expression Rule” stipulates that, “to the extent that an educational institution permits religious expression, it cannot discriminate between religions in so doing.” The court rightly held that “the Religious Expression Rule unconstitutionally violates Crosspoint’s free-exercise rights” and remanded it to the district court for an injunction.
In the lawsuit, Crosspoint argued that “a set of recent amendments to the MHRA specifically targets BCS, in violation of the Free Exercise Clause,” as the court characterized it, based on a years-long history of litigation.
Maine has offered state tuition assistance to enable parents to send their children to the school of their choice since 1980. However, the program excluded Christian schools until 2022, when a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court found the policy unconstitutional in Carson v. Makin. Parents at BCS were at the center of that case.
Based on its recent decisions in Trinity Lutheran (2016) and Espinoza v. Montana (2019), where government entities tried to block Christian schools from generally available public benefits, the Supreme Court in Carson held that “Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”
In anticipation of a defeat in front of the Supreme Court, the Maine legislature amended the law in 2021, allowing Christian schools to receive state tuition assistance, but only if they complied with the state’s rules for nondiscrimination towards sexual orientation and gender identity.
In 2023, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) professed to be scandalized at the very nature of a Christian school. “The education provided by the schools at issue here is inimical to a public education,” he complained. “They promote a single religion to the exclusion of all others, refuse to admit gay and transgender children, and openly discriminate in hiring teachers and staff.”
Frey’s comments came in response to another federal lawsuit filed by Crosspoint Church, alleging that attaching general state funding to LGBT strings amounted to a “poison pill” for accepting the money. “Putting Plaintiff to the choice of participating in a generally available benefit program or surrendering its constitutionally protected religious exercise penalizes its religious exercise and constitutes a substantial burden,” the lawsuit argued.
However, the district court refused to view the circumstances in that light, or to apply the recent string of Supreme Court precedents. Instead, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled in February 2024 that “the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they are neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest.”
This language reached further back to the “neutrality” test established in the Supreme Court’s 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, the controversial decision that prompted a furious Congress to overwhelmingly pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1991.
Dys contended that both the district court and the appellate court were wrong to rely on the neutrality test in this context, “because you can’t simply exclude religious exercise because it’s religious,” he told TWS. “You have to give full faith and credit to that part of the Constitution,” referring to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
“I suspect there’s going to be further action on this case,” he concluded. First Liberty is still reviewing whether to appeal the case to the full First Circuit or directly to the Supreme Court. In either case, Dys said, “We’re going to seek further review.”
“We are disappointed that though the First Circuit acknowledges that religious institutions can teach what they believe, it would then refuse to allow conduct consistent with those beliefs,” Dys declared. “Religious education plays a critical role in our diverse society, but Maine’s leadership will not tolerate conduct consistent with those religious beliefs. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said, punishing religious institutions for being religious is odious to our Constitution.”
This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A federal appeals court ruled that Christian schools in Maine must comply with state LGBT policies to participate in a public tuition program, raising new questions about whether religious freedom protects both belief and biblical practice.
Patience is a 19-year-old Christian girl who has suffered far more grave injustices than most people are forced to endure in their lifetime.
In 2018, her father was killed by Fulani terrorists who broke into their house in the middle of the night.
In 2019, her grandfather and three of her extended relatives were killed in another Fulani attack on her village.
In 2020, she was raped by Fulani terrorists. At the time, she was just 14 years old.
In February 2026, her uncle also died at the hands of a Fulani terrorist.
Patience is from Plateau State, Nigeria, where I visited with the humanitarian organization Christian Freedom International a few months ago.
We were able to meet Patience and dozens of other Nigerian survivors of persecution and attacks. Many people rightly point out that the situation in Nigeria is complex, but staying next to a village known for facing repeated attacks and visiting survivors of persecution in their homes starts to bring the picture into focus.
I visited the small corner shop belonging to Amarachi, a middle-aged woman who could not be more ecstatic to see us. She showed us around her small shop — which she managed to start with the help of an organization who gave her seed money and taught her the basics about business.
After having us try a Nigerian snack, she wanted to show us her home several blocks away. In the modest rented house that she shared with her adult children, she told us about her husband’s death several years prior.
He was on his way home from a weekday prayer meeting at church when he was ambushed. Fulani militants rushed out of tall grass nearby and slaughtered him on the path. It was believed they were looking to target Christians leaving the church that day.
His wife and children were left to mourn their father’s death and do the best they could to carry on. His children are in college now. Amarachi had to provide for the family, so she opened her small store.
But Amarachi’s husband’s death wasn’t the end of the terror the family would face. Her village — located close to a Nigerian military lookout — routinely faces raids from Fulani militants. Typically, the militants target this village for kidnappings, charging steep ransoms to release the kidnapped victims. Families and churches must band together to offer a ransom and negotiate down to a feasible price.
One expert told me that kidnappings and ransoms are the militants’ largest source of income. These groups are often better equipped than the Nigerian military itself. When a large group of Fulani militants launches an attack, the military has been known to tell villagers to flee because they cannot defend against the militants.
My friend from Christian Freedom International asked Amarachi if she felt safe from local Fulani attacks since she had a courtyard door, main door to her house, and bedroom door — all with sturdy-looking locks. She gave us a confused look and said no. Our Nigerian driver explained that these would do little to stop attackers. He said they could break through any lock and gain entrance to any building. He called them “experts” at it.
I asked what she does during the overnight raids. Amarachi said that she simply lies in her bed and prays and tells her children to do the same. She doesn’t flee the village like many residents do during an attack. She believes that she has suffered enough, and God will not let her suffer more. So far, the militants haven’t targeted Amarachi’s house.
As an outsider, it’s difficult to grasp the normalized level of fear that must accompany daily life in a Christian village in Northern Nigeria. Yet, terrorism isn’t new for Nigerian Christians. The last few decades have seen an increase in the rise of Islamist terrorism and general violence against vulnerable Christian communities in Northern Nigeria. In 2014, the infamous terrorist group Boko Haram was at its height, seizing control of approximately 70,000 square miles in Northeast Nigeria.
In Jos, we met siblings Joy and Gabriel. They are now teenagers, but as children, they and their mother were captured by Boko Haram and held in one of their camps for over a month before being released. Their father was killed. Tears streaming down her face, Joy wanted to press through and share how Boko Haram destroyed her village in Northeast Nigeria, forcing those who survived to flee.
Patience, Joy, and Gabriel are now living at Christian Faith Institute (CFI), a non-denominational Bible school and ministry in Jos, Nigeria, where I was able to meet them. Founded by Australian missionaries Kent and Ruth Hodges, the ministry is dedicated to serving on the frontlines.
The Hodges, with their great African team, train Nigerians (and many from surrounding Sahel nations also impacted by terrorism), mainly from rural northern areas, to be pastors and missionaries themselves, equipping them to return to their villages across the north and share the good news of the gospel. At the Bible school, students are equipped with income-generating practical vocational training to be able to provide for themselves and their families. The Hodges also have a children’s crisis home and school that serves hundreds of kids, almost all of whom have faced persecution and terrorism themselves, like Joy and Gabriel.
While the violence in Nigeria has been ramping up for decades, it has gained more public awareness in the United States over the last few years. In November 2025, President Trump designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” on religious freedom. The designation was first instated in the last year of President Trump’s first term and undone in President Biden’s first year in office.
On Christmas Day in 2025, the United States launched strikes against ISIS in northwestern Nigeria. In May 2026, the U.S. worked with Nigerian forces to strike more ISIS targets, killing the global ISIS second-in-command. However, experts and those on the ground say that the situation for Nigerian Christians has worsened, not improved, in recent months.
Now, religious freedom advocates are hoping the Trump administration keeps up the pressure on the Nigerian government until its leaders take concrete action and successfully protect Christians in Northern Nigeria. Though the darkness and gravity of the situation in Nigeria feel overwhelming, ministries like CFI are a reminder that God is at work there and hope is not lost.
On the last day of my trip, I spent time with one mother whose daughter asked when the “crisis” will end. She told her daughter she didn’t know if it would end, but to pray for protection for their family and for comfort for those experiencing loss.
Note: Names of the victims featured in this piece have been changed for their protection.
This article was originally published by The Washington Stand and written by Arielle Del Turco. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Despite enduring unimaginable loss and relentless persecution, Christians in Northern Nigeria continue to trust God with unwavering faith. Their stories reveal both the devastating cost of following Christ and the enduring hope that sustains them.
When ideologically opposed governments clash, those caught in the middle usually duck for cover like pedestrians in Godzilla’s shadow. Such instinctive acts of self-preservation can produce absurd situations, like the one Colorado Children’s Hospital found itself in on Monday. After the Colorado Supreme Court judicially compelled the hospital to resume providing gender transition hormones to minors, not one doctor in its gender center was willing to shoulder the risk, out of fear of federal consequences.
Through 2025, Colorado Children’s in Aurora was the state’s largest supplier of gender transition hormones to minors, subjecting 257 children to puberty blockers and 549 children to cross-sex hormones last year alone (though it reportedly never carried out transgender surgeries).
But that practice came to an abrupt halt on January 5, when the hospital announced it would no longer provide gender transition hormones to minors. Along with dozens of other hospitals, Colorado Children’s had received a federal subpoena for information on its provision of the drugs to minors, which it is trying to quash in court. The hospital was also concerned about losing access, even temporarily to federal Medicaid funding, which covers roughly half of the hospital’s patients.
But the Rivendell of Californian expats could not long endure any behavior — however rational its basis — that smelled like compliance with the Trump administration, which Colorado treats with all the hatred and disgust of elves for orcs. Left-wing activist groups brought a state lawsuit to force the hospital to reverse its suspension of services, arguing that a state anti-discrimination statute required it.
After losing in a district court, the activists won a favorable (5-2) ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court on May 18. “Any potential harm to the public’s interest in access to healthcare is speculative,” wrote Supreme Court Justice William Hood. In a dissent, Justice Brian Boatright countered that “CHC’s decision to terminate gender-affirming care for minors was plainly not ‘because of’ petitioners’ gender identity, sex or disability. It was a decision driven by the direct threat to the viability of the entire hospital.”
Nevertheless, the pro-transgender position prevailed by a sizable majority, holding that the hospital must provide gender transition hormones as a matter of law and returning the case to a lower court to deliver the final order. Denver District Judge Ericka Englert issued that order on Thursday.
The hospital initially asked the judge to require its opponents to post a $250,000 bond to cover the hospital’s financial risk but withdrew that request the next day. In the final analysis, Judge Englert set the bond at one dollar.
Thus, on Monday, Colorado Children’s announced that it had “reinstated medical gender-affirming care into our scope of services,” to comply with the Colorado courts. But the announcement contained one major twist: not one of the doctors who worked at Colorado Children’s TRUE Center for Gender Diversity was willing to prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Instead, each doctor “has independently decided they will not prescribe or renew gender-affirming medications for patients under age 18,” the hospital said.
How the hospital is complying with the court order without the cooperation of any of the doctors remains unexplained. Are the prescriptions being written by nurses or by doctors from other departments? Or is this the hospital’s way of saying, we wish to comply, but it is out of our hands?
The reason why the doctors could refuse to cooperate with the hospital is that “Children’s Colorado does not employ the medical providers at the TRUE Center or direct their independent clinical decisions,” the hospital explained. Instead, the doctors are all employed by the nearby University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine and retain control over their care and prescription decisions.
It turns out that the doctors had each individually reached the same rational conclusion the hospital had reached on January 5 — that the risk of consequences for carrying out gender transition procedures on minors had become greater than the benefit of providing them for an interim period.
“At this time, the medical providers at the TRUE Center have each determined that we will not be prescribing, refilling, or renewing gender-affirming prescriptions for patients under 18 years old,” the doctors said in a statement. “We were each individually forced to make a very difficult decision and none of us reach this decision lightly. Ultimately each of our decisions is driven by the serious risk of federal action that could result in the inability to continue serving and caring for any patients for years into the future.”
The risk of federal action to individual practitioners is not hypothetical. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital after which the hospital paid $10 million to cover fraudulent medical billing, agreed to open a detransitioner clinic, and permanently fired five doctors who had provided gender transition procedures to minors there. Weeks later, the DOJ reached another settlement with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio that included “a decades-long commitment to not perform or offer sex-rejecting procedures.”
Unsurprisingly, these Colorado doctors had no wish to become the next whitecoats in the DOJ’s crosshairs.
Nor is it surprising that left-wing activists responded with outrage to the news. “Instead of complying with the court order, Children’s Hospital is now claiming that it is not responsible for whether its medical staff discriminates against children based on sex, gender identity, race, religion, or any other protected category,” complained Attorney Paula Greisen, who brought the lawsuit. “The hospital at first sacrificed the children and now they’re throwing the doctors under the bus, basically raising their hands in the air, saying we have no control over these doctors.”
The better question is, who is under which bus? With state penalties looming on one side and federal penalties on the other, the many hospitals and doctors who conducted gender transition procedures merely to make a quick buck are scrambling for the nearest exit.
This has been the hope of pro-children strategists for years. One goal behind state laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures was to increase the risk of liability. For many doctors, this is a far more effective method of deterrence than any amount of state prosecution. Thus, most state laws allowed for private civil suits over a long period of time. Already, this spring, a detransitioner won the first ever malpractice suit for $2 million, even under New York’s pro-transgender laws.
But state laws and individual lawsuits could only slow the runaway semi of transgender medicine one speed bump at a time. It took the might of the federal government — with its massive law enforcement apparatus and control of incentives through Medicaid — to finally pull out a titanium lasso strong enough to halt its momentum mid-career and begin to reel it backward.
It’s a rare day when such positive news washes down from the marijuana-scented slopes of the Rocky Mountains’ majesty. The bizarre situation demonstrates that, even in far-left jurisdictions, there are rational actors who will respond to incentives — if the government sets the incentives properly. It also demonstrates that the Colorado Supreme Court remains far out on the Left fringe, where it would force a hospital to shoulder massive liability against federal wrath in the misguided pursuit of non-discrimination.
This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A Colorado court ordered Children's Hospital Colorado to resume providing gender transition hormones to minors, but every physician in its gender clinic declined to participate, citing concerns about potential federal investigations and legal consequences.
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and attorneys general in four states filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), accusing the group of misleading doctors, parents, and children to promote the lucrative business of administering transgender procedures to minors. In a 123-page complaint, the FTC lays out “ten specific unlawful misrepresentations or omissions” by WPATH and seeks “a permanent injunction to prevent future violations.”
“When an organization provides guidance designed to mislead families about the risks, benefits, or medical consensus behind a treatment, it undermines trust in those responsible for providing medical care,” declared FTC Commissioner Mark R. Meador. The FTC was joined in its lawsuit by attorneys general from Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas.
The lawsuit is significant because it goes directly to the source of claims undergirding transgender medical practice. In countless other legal battles, pro-transgender activists have invariably cited WPATH as the foremost authority on transgender procedures for minors. Now, the FTC has challenged WPATH itself to prove that its claims, often cited as an expert authority, can hold up in a court of law.
The lawsuit challenged the accuracy of specific claims made by WPATH, as well as omissions in the most recent version of its so-called, unofficial “Standards of Care” (SOC-8):
“(1) WPATH misrepresents that pediatric medical transition is medically necessary to prevent suicide in children who express dissatisfaction with or report distress about their sex traits.
“(2) WPATH misrepresents that pediatric medical transition is effective at preventing suicide in children who express dissatisfaction with or report distress about their sex traits.
“(3) WPATH misrepresents that puberty blockers are fully reversible.
“(4) WPATH misrepresents that cross-sex hormones improve mental health.
“(5) WPATH misrepresents that performing breast amputations on children is safe, effective, and consistently results in better health and quality of life.
“(6) WPATH misrepresents SOC-8 to be the result of unbiased, evidence-based expert consensus.
“(7) WPATH misrepresents that pediatric medical transition is the “standard of care” for children who express dissatisfaction with or report distress about their sex traits.
“(8) WPATH fails in SOC-8 to adequately disclose certain side effects of puberty blockers including hot flashes, lethargy, and cognitive problems.
“(9) WPATH fails in SOC-8 to adequately disclose certain side effects of cross-sex hormones including mood disturbances, vocal pain, pelvic pain, pelvic floor dysfunction, clitoral discomfort, vaginal pain, persistent sexual dysfunction continuing after cessation of use, and erectile pain.
“(10) WPATH fails in SOC-8 to adequately disclose certain side effects of breast amputations including inability to breastfeed, nerve damage, and necrosis of the nipples.”
“WPATH made each of these ten misrepresentations or omissions expressly or by implication,” the complaint declared. “WPATH knew they were false or misleading, and WPATH further knew — and intended — that they would provide WPATH members and other providers of medical transition services with the means to mislead consumers.”
The FTC challenged WPATH’s SOC-8 in detail, alleging that its methodology “does not satisfy accepted medical standards of evidence” for at least four reasons. “WPATH selected authors who had conflicts of interest; WPATH ignored the consensus protocol that SOC-8 purports to follow; WPATH failed to adhere to proper protocols both in evaluating scientific and medical evidence and in making recommendations based on that evidence; and WPATH made material changes to its recommendations in response to external pressure rather than scientific evidence.”
Regarding conflicts of interest, the FTC argued that WPATH selected drafters for SOC-8 who had both “intellectual conflicts of interest” and “financial … conflicts of interest.” The intellectual conflicts of interest stemmed from the fact that its selection criteria required every team leader to be a “longstanding WPATH Full Member in good standing” and a “well recognized advocate for WPATH” — in other words, professionals “who already supported medical transition services.”
The financial conflicts of interest concerned the fact that many authors directly performed and thereby profited from the procedures under review, such as Dr. Marci Bowers. Bowers, the complaint stated, “made more than a million dollars in a single year from transition surgeries but declared it ‘absurd’ to disclose that conflict or attempt to account for it in SOC-8.”
Regarding external pressure, the FTC referenced “the removal of age minimums for pediatric medical transition drugs, surgeries, and services including cross-sex hormones, breast amputations, surgical penis removal, and facial surgery.” This removal came after the Biden administration Department of Health and Human Services asked in 2022 “if the specific ages can be taken out” to combat “the conservative anti trans agenda.” In addition, “According to a WPATH leader, the American Academy of Pediatrics threatened to ‘actively publicly oppose’ SOC-8 if WPATH did not remove the age minimums,” although without “any sound evidence-based argument(s) underpinning” the change it demanded.
“One WPATH committee member acknowledged that it was ‘the most strange experience’ to see WPATH eliminate minimum age recommendations at the ‘last minute’ after internal discussion made clear that ‘nobody [on the committee] wanted to [eliminate] them, and personally not agreeing with the change,’” the complaint stated.
Regarding consensus protocol, the FTC elaborated on the same issue, noting that WPATH failed to strictly follow its own selected “Delphi process” for achieving expert consensus. “At least one WPATH member could not ‘see how we can simply remove something that important from the document — without going through a Delphi — at this final stage of the game.’”
Regarding the quality of evidence, the FTC excoriated WPATH for “a deliberate decision to obfuscate the strength of the evidence supporting WPATH’s recommendations and allow WPATH to overstate the strength of its evidence.” WPATH claimed to use an evidence-rating system called “GRADE,” but it chose not to include the GRADE ratings to make the evidence look stronger than it really was. One draft leader, Dr. Eli Coleman, admitted in 2023, “[a]ll of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in research to back up our recommendations.”
Yet the SOC-8 authors “knew ‘what we should end up with,’” the complaint alleged, because “SOC-8 authors had prejudged that SOC-8 would ultimately make strong recommendations in favor of pediatric medical transition regardless of whether the quality of the evidence supported such recommendations.” As one author, Dr. Amy Tishelman, said in February 2026, “The sun and the moon existed before we understood anything about why. Lots of things we observe in life, we know to be true, and we don’t understand them.”
The complaint goes on to argue that WPATH failed to “follow the science” in other important respects. For instance, “SOC-8’s authors commissioned systematic reviews of evidence regarding pediatric medical transition from Johns Hopkins University,” according to the complaint. However, “WPATH secured significant control over … they would ultimately be published.” When the reviews “found little to no evidence about children and adolescents,” “WPATH rejected multiple Johns Hopkins manuscripts, causing” the head of the research team “to express frustration that WPATH was ‘trying to restrict our ability to publish.’”
The incident echoes the 2024 controversy involving Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, later head of USPATH (WPATH’s American outpost), who refused to publish the results of a taxpayer-funded study after they contradicted her belief in using puberty blockers for the purpose of gender transition. The complaint referenced another “notable evidentiary exclusion” involving Olson-Kennedy. Although a study she conducted “formed the evidence base of SOC-8,” SOC-8 “did not disclose” that two subjects of the study committed suicide during the observation period or “discuss … how they might undermine SOC-8’s conclusion that pediatric medical transition improved psychological well-being.”
Finally, the complaint alleges that WPATH’s guidelines discourage clinicians from exploring other “numerous potential root causes of a child’s distress about or discomfort with their sex traits,” such as sexual assault or other mental illnesses. Although it acknowledges that such intervening factors do exist, SOC-8 attacks them as “gatekeeping practices” that act as a “barrier to the provision of” transgender procedures.
“Even if WPATH legitimately encouraged clinicians to investigate whether medical transition treatment is appropriate for a given child, SOC-8 offers no genuine method for making such a determination,” the complaint continued. “Indeed, WPATH defines ‘gender incongruence’ as a subjective ‘experience’ that is ‘deeply felt’ by the child. It offers no objective diagnosis criteria for clinicians,” even though “SOC-8 purports to require rigorous diagnostic procedures.” So much for following the science.
These accusations raise an important question: what would motivate the physicians associated with WPATH to venture so far from established science. Beyond the obvious ideological reasons, the complaint focuses on another motive: profit.
“WPATH misrepresents scientific and medical consensus and makes false, deceptive, or unsubstantiated claims regarding pediatric medical transition and related services for a simple reason: WPATH’s members generate significant profit because of the organization’s representations and guidance,” it declared. “Two of the five current members of WPATH’s executive committee are surgeons who specialize in medical transition procedures, and a third member specializes in medical transition procedures for children.”
As a result of WPATH’s non-scientific, profit-motivated guidelines, the complaint continued, children and their families were misled and thereby harmed. “WPATH’s assertions that its recommendations represent evidence-based and “consensus-based expert opinion” give members and other clinicians the means to misrepresent to consumers that the SOC reflects expert scientific consensus,” it argued, “and to repeat the unsubstantiated statements therein when persuading parents and children.”
Whether they visit a family doctor with no specialized training, a gender transition specialist, or an activist center, “children and parents are unlikely to avoid being influenced by WPATH’s deceptive claims and omissions. Indeed, WPATH board member and former president Dr. Marci Bowers claims that ‘the vast majority of mental health providers in the country that [Dr. Bowers is] familiar with follow the WPATH standards of care.’”
“Clinicians begin selling parents and children on medical transition procedures once they arrive at a medical transition provider’s clinic,” the complaint explained. “Sometimes, clinicians make the sale by directly invoking WPATH’s name and providing parents with the SOC or other material containing WPATH’s deceptive claims. Other times, clinicians repeat WPATH’s deceptive claims without attribution. And even without telling parents, clinicians often rely on WPATH’s deceptive claims in making diagnoses and recommending treatment.”
The complaint included numerous examples of WPATH’s malign influence:
“Clinicians emphasize the need for pediatric medical transition by stating or strongly implying that if parents do not consent to medical transition, their children will commit suicide. Some clinicians tell parents that if their children die, the parents will be to blame. Clinicians often ask parents if they would ‘rather have a dead son or a living daughter,’ or vice versa,” the complaint added. “Clinicians make these statements because WPATH represents that medical transition is ‘lifesaving’ and SOC-8 expressly represents that medical transition is ‘medically necessary’ and reduces suicidality, thereby providing clinicians with the rationale that they use to pressure parents into consenting.”
The complaint provided another half dozen examples of this practice.
“Collectively, WPATH’s deceptive statements and material omissions cause parents to worry that their children are in mortal peril and that the only effective solution is to consent to pediatric medical transition,” it stated. “In many cases, the pressure created by WPATH’s unlawful conduct — and the fear it creates — causes parents to purchase pediatric medical transition drugs, surgeries, or services.”
For years, WPATH was cited not only in doctor’s offices but also in state houses. As some 27 states moved to pass legislation protecting minors from the irreversible effects of gender transition procedures, pro-transgender activists always lined up to appeal to WPATH as experts, citing the “scientific consensus” that “gender-affirming care” was “medically necessary” and “life-saving.” But the evidence never lived up to the buzzwords, and now the FTC is taking WPATH to task.
“Children, but especially their parents, must have complete and truthful information when making decisions to purchase medical services. … The complaint filed today reflects that same long-standing mandate: when an entity makes a claim about a medical treatment, the claim must be truthful, evidence-based and not misleading,” declared FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. “WPATH … made false and unsubstantiated claims regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones and sex-change surgeries.”
This article was originally written by Joshua Arnold and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
A federal lawsuit against WPATH challenges the scientific basis of pediatric gender transition treatments, alleging misleading claims about puberty blockers, hormones, surgeries, and mental health outcomes.
When Augustine of Hippo wrote “The City of God” in the early fifth century, Rome was collapsing around him. He lamented the horrors of war, yet he also recognized that governments bear responsibility for preserving order and restraining evil. Augustine argued that just wars arise because of the wrongdoing of aggressors and that political authorities sometimes have a duty to protect the innocent when peaceful remedies fail. From that hard recognition emerged the Christian just war tradition: not a license to fight, but a moral framework designed to make war harder, not easier, to justify. Sixteen centuries later, Pope Leo XIV has declared it obsolete.
In paragraph 192 of “Magnifica Humanitas,” his encyclical released May 25, Pope Leo writes that just war theory “which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.” He argues that humanity now possesses “far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.” While he does acknowledge in a footnote that military force can be used for “legitimate defense,” his insistence on “updating” just war theory implies that every part of the theory is on the table for adjustment, which could lead to an entirely new theory.
Every Christian can honor that desire for peace. The encyclical’s conclusion on this point, however, rests on a misunderstanding of what the just war tradition teaches — and it arrives at exactly the wrong moment, when artificial intelligence is remaking warfare at a pace no diplomatic instrument can match.
Just war doctrine was never a theological permission slip for ambitious princes. When Thomas Aquinas codified Augustine’s reasoning into formal criteria in the 13th century, every element was conceived as a restraint on power. Legitimate authority prevents private actors from waging war on personal grievance. Just cause limits conflict to resisting genuine aggression. Right intention rules out conquest and vengeance as acceptable aims. Last resort requires that statesmen genuinely pursue peaceful remedies before reaching for the sword. Proportionality forbids using more force than the threat demands. Discrimination protects civilians from deliberate targeting.
Each criterion was designed to make going to war morally harder, not easier. The doctrine has been abused across centuries — Leo is right about that — but the answer to the abuse of a sound principle is to apply it more rigorously, not to abandon it. We do not discard contract law because contracts are sometimes breached.
History vindicates the doctrine when leaders follow it. The Allied response to Nazi Germany met every just war criterion: aggression was undeniable, diplomacy had been exhausted at Munich, and military resistance became morally necessary to halt a catastrophic evil. The 1991 Gulf War coalition rested on the same grounds — an aggressor had violated international borders, peaceful remedies had been genuinely pursued, and coalition forces acted with proportionate force to restore the status quo. History’s condemnation falls not on Augustine’s framework but on those leaders who chose to ignore it.
The ongoing conflict with Iran offers a more searching test. The United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026, targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and military leadership. Christians across denominations have invoked every just war criterion to evaluate those strikes — questioning whether last resort was truly satisfied when Omani mediators reported a diplomatic framework still within reach, whether a president acting without new congressional authorization met the standard of legitimate authority, and whether proportionality was observed given the civilian casualties that followed. Those are exactly the right questions to ask. That they are being asked — vigorously, publicly, across the church — proves the doctrine is functioning as Augustine intended: as a moral check on the temptation to use force. Remove the framework, and there is no vocabulary left with which to hold a government accountable. The answer to a contested war is not to abolish the criteria. It is to apply them with greater discipline.
The present makes the same case. Russian forces entered Ukraine in February 2022 and have continued to shell civilian infrastructure, occupy sovereign territory, and forcibly deport Ukrainian civilians. Ukrainian resistance satisfies the right Pope Leo himself acknowledges, self-defense “in the strictest sense.” The just war criteria are not making that resistance harder to justify — they are the only internationally legible moral framework by which Ukraine’s defense can be distinguished from Russia’s invasion, and on which the moral and material support sustaining Ukraine depends. The doctrine is not the obstacle to peace — the aggression is.
Pope Leo is at his most persuasive when “Magnifica Humanitas” turns to autonomous weapons. He warns that any technology facilitating attacks “without seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict,” and insists that decisions involving life and death “must not be entrusted to machines.” As a retired U.S. Army infantry officer who has written extensively on these questions in “The New AI Cold War,” I take that warning seriously.
The battlefield of the near future involves autonomous drone swarms, AI-assisted targeting, predictive intelligence networks, and cyber weapons operating at machine speed. The Department of War’s DoD Directive 3000.09, Autonomy in Weapon Systems, updated in January 2023, requires that commanders retain “appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force” precisely because machines making lethal decisions without human oversight is a live danger, not a hypothetical one.
Seen clearly, every danger Leo identifies in AI-enabled warfare is an argument for applying just war doctrine more rigorously, not for retiring it. Artificial intelligence compresses decision cycles and lowers the threshold for initiating conflict — which is precisely why last resort becomes more indispensable, not less. Autonomous systems distribute and obscure accountability across command-and-control chains, which is why legitimate authority becomes a sharper requirement than ever. Machine-speed targeting raises the risk of uncontrolled escalation, demanding more careful attention to proportionality. Targeting algorithms that cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians make the principle of discrimination more urgent, not obsolete. Augustine’s framework has not been overtaken by technology. It has vindicated it.
Leo’s diagnosis of the AI age’s dangers is sound. Where the encyclical goes astray is in concluding that those dangers discredit the tradition rather than calling it back into force.
Scripture’s teaching in Genesis 1:27 that human beings bear the image of God is the theological foundation on which just war reasoning rests. A machine carries no such image and bears no moral guilt. When an autonomous system misidentifies a civilian target, no algorithm faces a court-martial, and no targeting model confronts its conscience before God. That is not an argument for abandoning moral frameworks around warfare — it is the most powerful argument available for insisting that human beings, commanded in Romans 13 to bear the sword as God’s servants for good, must never surrender that accountability to a machine. The theological case for just war has seldom been more urgent than it is right now.
The pope’s proposed alternatives — dialogue, diplomacy, and forgiveness — are not actually alternatives to just war doctrine; they are already embedded within it as requirements. Last resort has always been one of the tradition’s core requirements. The framework demands that peaceful options be genuinely pursued before force is ever considered, and that war be undertaken to restore peace rather than achieving conquest. Far from competing with diplomacy, just war doctrine elevates it by making recourse to arms morally difficult to justify. What no doctrine can do is substitute for diplomacy once diplomacy has already failed — which is precisely the situation Augustine was addressing, and precisely the situation that confronts the world today.
Pope Leo XIV has done something important. By devoting a major teaching document to artificial intelligence and warfare, he has forced a global conversation that Christian statesmen, military planners, and pastors have largely avoided. His warning that decisions involving life and death must remain in human hands, not in algorithms, deserves to be taken seriously across every faith group. That much of the encyclical stands.
Where the document falls short is in urging the retirement of a moral framework rather than its more disciplined application. The future battlefield will be shaped by lethal drones, AI-assisted command systems, and autonomous platforms operating at speeds that compress human decision-making toward the vanishing point. The questions that will matter most in that environment are the same ones Augustine posed in the ruins of Rome — who authorized the use of force, were peaceful alternatives genuinely exhausted, were the innocent protected — and no algorithm will ever be equipped to answer them.
As I develop in “AI for Mankind’s Future,” the church’s task in the age of artificial intelligence is not to retire the frameworks that discipline warfare but to insist, with renewed urgency, that they govern it. The human being created in God’s image — not the machine built in a laboratory — must remain the moral center of every decision about lethal force.
This article was originally written by Robert Maginnis and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Pope Leo XIV’s call to reconsider just war theory has sparked debate among Christians. This article argues that the rise of AI-powered warfare and autonomous weapons makes the moral framework of just war more relevant and necessary than ever.
Only days after U.S. President Donald Trump left a Beijing summit with CCP Chairman Xi Jinping, where religious freedom and jailed religious leaders were discussed, authorities in eastern China demolished a prominent church, razing the building with large excavators last week. Yazhong Church (also referred to as Yayang Church), an unregistered Protestant church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province — a region known as “China’s Jerusalem” — has been under siege since late last year.
On December 14 and 15, local authorities arrested 103 church members in a pre-dawn raid and took control of the church building, as confirmed last week in new reporting by Le Monde. That same week, at a public event, an unidentified government official announced: “We will see this campaign through to the end.”
Five months later, on Sunday, May 17, heavy construction vehicles passed through tightly controlled security checkpoints set up by authorities, according to multiple sources confirmed by ChinaAid News. On May 18, crews began to demolish the multi-level structure from the top down. By 11 a.m. Beijing Time on Tuesday, May 19, the beautiful and ornate sanctuary had been reduced to rubble.
Concurrently with the demolition, authorities arrested four additional church members, one identified as You Ci’en, according to local sources, cited anonymously to protect their safety. They join 18 other members of Yazhong Church previously jailed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities.
The families of all detained individuals reportedly received official warnings instructing them to remain silent, sources familiar with the situation stated to ChinaAid News. Authorities reportedly imposed strict information controls ahead of the demolition, measures that sources said appeared intended to limit public scrutiny.
Multiple confidential sources said the area surrounding the church had been placed under lockdown in recent weeks, while checkpoints and guard posts were established roughly one kilometer from the site to prevent unauthorized access. The church cross was also covered with black cloth prior to the demolition.
Wenzhou has been called “China’s Jerusalem” due to its large Christian population. The destruction of Yazhong Church escalates a broader suppression campaign in Taishun County, documented over months by ChinaAid News.
The campaign has included continuous surveillance, stringent information controls, and the closure of businesses linked to alleged church members.
“My brothers and sisters in the faith have stood strong for so long,” said Bob Fu, president of Texas-based nonprofit group ChinaAid and a senior fellow at Family Research Council. “More so than the loss of a church building, I lament how the CCP has cracked down on this area known for its faithful Christians and oppressed them more and more day by day.”
He added, “These recent actions show that the persecution of Christians by Chinese authorities has intensified, becoming more institutionalized and targeted.”
The conflict originated from the church’s resistance to what congregants perceived as increasingly aggressive methods of religious repression imposed by local Chinese Communist Party authorities.
Yazhong Church is affiliated with the “Local Church” movement (also known as the “Assembly” movement), a faith tradition that traces its origins to the early 21st-century Chinese preacher Watchman Nee and shares historical roots with the British Closed Brethren movement.
Due to its location in the remote mountainous region of southern Zhejiang, the church has maintained the independent traditions characteristic of Wenzhou’s local churches and has historically kept a distance from local government authorities.
According to congregants, tensions escalated significantly during the previous summer. The immediate catalyst was a government directive requiring the Chinese national flag to be displayed inside the sanctuary and a flagpole erected on church grounds, which believers regarded as an infringement on the sanctity of their faith.
Subsequently, in June 2025, government personnel entered the church property by force, demolished part of the outer wall, and installed the flagpole, prompting collective protests and sparking a standoff between the church and the authorities.
Analysts who closely monitor religious freedom in China note that Wenzhou has been among the most aggressive regions in implementing religious policies over the past decade. Only churches affiliated with the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement are officially sanctioned.
“Any Christian church unwilling to submit to state power — even this one, without any political involvement — the Chinese Communist Party feels it has to silence and even destroy,” said Fu.
Chinese authorities planned the operation against Yazhong Church several months in advance, as previously reported by ChinaAid News.
On December 14 and 15, 2025, Zhejiang authorities deployed large numbers of special police and riot-control officers to Yayang Town, conducting coordinated “inspection operations” at 12 local church gathering sites.
During the operation targeting Yazhong Church, more than 100 believers were dispersed and temporarily detained.
As the government’s campaign intensified, the scope of detentions broadened. To date, 22 believers, including church leaders Lin Enzhao and Lin Enci, have been subjected to long-term criminal detention, according to multiple sources.
Authorities charged them with the ambiguous offense of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a broad public-order offense frequently used against activists and religious groups.
However, sources note that four church members were recently released on bail pending trial.
Last week, French media outlet Le Monde continued its reporting on believers in Yayang last week with a video detailing new developments following an extensive January investigation.
Despite ongoing international scrutiny, local authorities’ demolition of Yazhong Church reflects continuing tensions between Beijing and independent Christian communities across China. Observers have compared the incident to the 2014 demolition of Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou, which drew international attention. In this recent case, sources said authorities imposed a near-total ‘information vacuum’ before demolition crews arrived.
Law enforcement personnel at the scene reportedly imposed strict monitoring of electronic devices. Individuals attempting to take photographs or record video with mobile phones were immediately intercepted, expelled, or detained, sources tell ChinaAid News.
Human rights advocacy groups state that the authorities’ severe restrictions on online discussion and information dissemination highlight the sensitivity of such actions.
One analyst, granted anonymity for his safety, asked: “If the demolition was entirely lawful and proper, why would authorities go to such extraordinary lengths to impose a total information blackout?”
As of publication, neither the Wenzhou municipal government nor the Taishun County Public Security Bureau had issued a statement.
Sources indicated that local police continue to conduct sporadic arrests and interrogations targeting believers involved in the incident or those attempting to speak publicly about it.
“Our sources confirm that this beautiful and sacred place of worship has been destroyed — but our prayers are not reduced to rubble,” insisted Fu. “May this loss wake up the global church to what’s happening in China, a great conflict between faithful believers and state power.
This article was originally written by Goa Zhensai and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Chinese authorities demolished a prominent underground church in Wenzhou after months of arrests, surveillance, and intimidation, highlighting the intensifying crackdown on independent Christianity in China.
If the internet can be trusted, we spend one third of our life at the office.
That’s a lot of time.
Work is all around us. It’s unavoidable. For most people, work involves hanging out with coworkers, stressing over projects, and joining the rest of the commuters on the highway heading home. Jobs can feel mundane, boring, routine, unspiritual. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Your job is your ministry, whether it’s considered “spiritual” or not.
Every occupation has a chance to be more than clocking in and out every day. All good work, ecclesiastical or otherwise, is a launchpad for kingdom work. The danger happens when we believe “secular” work is less meaningful than “sacred” work (occupations deemed “religious,” such as biblical counselors, church leaders, ministry partners).
Just as it takes a calling to be a pastor or spiritual leader, it also takes a calling to be a technician or a car salesman or a high school teacher or a stay-at-home mom. Each person is equipped with unique talents to serve the body of Christ and minister to the world. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, we can’t all be eyes or ears. Someone’s gotta be the toes. And the beauty is that we can only step forward when everyone is working at the thing they are best at. Just as it would be wrong to force an eye to carry the weight of the body, so it is also wrong to force toes to use glasses.
English writer Dorothy Sayers provocatively puts it this way: “Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade — not outside it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meet they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meet for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.”
The mistake of categorizing work into sacred and secular is that we steal dominion from God. In essence, we’re saying “religious” work glorifies the Lord more than “non-religious” jobs do not. But this isn’t the case. As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” God seeks glory from the most mundane of tasks: eating and drinking (1 Cor 10:31). The God who blesses the farmer (2 Cor 9:10), cares for the field laborer (Ruth 2:19), and provides for tentmakers (Acts 18:3) is intensely interested in all good occupations. God demands more than just religious jobs; to him, all worthy jobs belong to the realm of sacred.
At the end of the day, it’s not what the job is (assuming it’s a non-sinful occupation), but rather how the job’s done. In Jesus’s parable of the Talents, it wasn’t ultimately about the sum of money the three servants received. The point was how they did — or didn’t — steward that money in the ruler’s absence. Jesus delights in faithfulness to small things. Erik Cooper, who (among many roles) serves as an executive leader for a nonprofit real estate company, comments, “There was never intended to be a sacred-secular divide. Whether we’re putting our hands to closing loans, making films, or accounting, it all matters to God. It is all part of his forming, filling, and subduing. It can all be redeemed by the finished work of Jesus because it was always intended to be part of God’s work in the world.”
As stewards in God’s kingdom, our calling is to labor well. God’s dominion extends far beyond the walls of church buildings. He cares about how you cultivate that one-third of your life. No task is too small or insignificant to go unnoticed by the King. Jon Bloom, co-founder of Desiring God, sums it up nicely, “According to 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, your job (assuming it’s not inherently unethical or immoral) is a ministry assignment from God. It may not be your career assignment, but it’s today’s assignment. And God wants you to carry out that assignment with dependent faith, diligence, and excellence.”
This article was orginally written by Hannah Tu and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Work is more than a paycheck or daily routine. This article explores how every vocation, from ministry to ordinary labor, can glorify God and serve as meaningful kingdom work.
Humans are lonelier than ever before. Even before the pandemic, almost five out of 10 U.S. adults reported experiences of loneliness. For young adults aged 15-24, time spent in-person with friends has fallen almost 70% from 2003 to 2020, from about two and half hours down to 40 minutes per day. The lack of meaningful interaction comes with a cost. Research finds that a lack of social connections can be as dangerous to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Humans were designed for community, not for isolation. But the solution is always trickier than it first appears.
In a culture that values independence and autonomy, making time for community seems tangential or even burdensome. For some, the mere thought of a social event depletes their personal energy battery. In a fallen world, relationships are complicated. People can be our best friends, and cruelest enemies. We get burned, withdraw, and then experience loneliness while making little effort to socialize.
Our society subtly reinforces the concept that reality is something to flee or escape; a bad dream to smother underneath a barrage of entertainment, information, or other forms of distraction. With the proliferation of smartphones, unplugging from the current situation and escaping into the digital sphere has never been so easy or so tempting. Additionally, many in-person connection points have now moved to screens. Online college options, virtual training, and remote jobs are increasingly prevalent. That’s not to say that online spaces are somehow bad or should be avoided; rather, with every advantage (think flexibility, cost, and time-savings), there is always a disadvantage (a sense of association without the anchor of relationships).
The issue is that we don’t reinvest the time and resources gained by the virtual world back into in-person relationships and interactions. The data provides the proof. In 2018, Pew Research Center found, “A majority of Americans (59%) say they feel some attachment to their local community, but only 16% say they feel very attached; 41% say they are not too or not at all attached to the community where they live. Adults in urban, suburban and rural areas report nearly identical levels of attachment to their local community.”
Our immediate community often lacks the tailoring, diversity, and ability to fast-forward that the digitalscape so frequently offers. Marketers call this phenomenon fragmentation: the splintering of groups defined by distinct preferences or requirements. When we get used to such customization to our preferences, we naturally grow more isolated from one another as we become increasingly defined by what sets us apart.
But there’s no easy fix. After all, relationships are the result of time, energy, effort, and being authentic about ourselves and with others (not to mention the emotional stakes that come with the drama and messiness of other sinners). But that’s the interesting thing. Redemptive history starts with two people in a garden and reaches its climax as a cultivated city: a sanctified arena when God’s creation and a multitude of people coexist in community. Human flourishing happens in fellowship, not in isolation. And more than ever, Christians need to lead by example.
Brian Brown understands this tension well. He’s the founder and executive director of The Anselm Society, a Colorado-based organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination and recapturing the sense of shared community among kingdom-minded creatives. “We live in a culture that has made escapism into a virtue. We’re encouraged by a million cues to be anywhere but here, anyone but who God made us to be,” he remarked to The Washington Stand. “In the face of that, the person who chooses to show up has tremendous power — to see and be seen, to invite others in, to treat the local church and the dinner table as essentials rather than extras. But to do that, we have to dare to see ourselves as God sees us: as beloved bearers of His image.”
As images of God, we reflect him best in our collectiveness and diversity. It’s when the body of Christ comes together in fellowship that we get a more accurate glimpse at the vastness and depth of divine character (Ephesians 4:11-13; 15-16). Through the Messiah’s redemptive work, Christians have the opportunity, indeed the calling, to work towards restoration of the vision.
Despite the digital advances in communication and connection points, people are lonelier than ever before. It’s easy to run with the culture, burying ourselves in the endless mountain of “extra things,” perhaps even attempting to fill our own ache for meaningful connection. There is both pain and reward in pulling our heads out of the mountain and “showing up” in acts of simple relationship-building. “Showing up” doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it needs to be essential and intentional if we are serious about changing the tide of isolation.
In a hurting world, the simple act of being there for someone matters. If Christians are to be known by our love for one another (John 13:35; 2 Corinthians 13:11), we must be willing to demonstrate it.
This was orginally written by Hannah Tu and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
Despite constant digital connection, loneliness and isolation continue rising across America. This article examines how technology, individualism, and escapism are reshaping relationships and why authentic Christian community matters more than ever.
Fifty-four-year-old former Nebraska senator, husband, and father of three, Ben Sasse, was tragically diagnosed only six months ago with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and told he had three to four months to live. While the clinical trial that his doctors put him on has given him more time on earth than doctors predicted, the cancer has sadly continued to spread to his liver, lymph nodes, lung, and vascular system.
Each day that he lives is a miracle. Knowing this has caused Sasse to focus on what is truly important, and he has graciously shared his wisdom in several interviews recently. The following are five insights that we would all be wise to listen to and reflect upon.
In a recent extended interview on “60 Minutes,” Scott Pelley asked Sasse, “If you had another 30 years, what would your priority be?”
Sasse reflected, “I wish we’d had more babies. We have three great kids. I wish we had four or five. If I had 30 years left from now, I’d be working hard to take my zealous achiever daughters and try to figure out how you build something that’s a little bit like a family compound. How do you build something where you can have different generations come and go from it and have a thickness and a support system? How could you spend more time around your cousins or build the opportunity for your kids and your grandkids to spend more time around their cousins?”
He went on to share his regret of having a period where he spent too much time working and not enough time with his family: “I would travel a little bit less for work. … I spent way too many nights in hotel rooms. And I don’t know if my family even knows this, but I never really threw away any of my hotel keys. I’d come back from every trip, and I threw them in a box in a closet in my office, and there are thousands and thousands of hotel room keys, and sometimes I just look at it and feel a heaviness of regret. I would make better decisions about that.”
Later in the interview, Sasse expressed how tragic it is that people around the world have stopped having babies. He explained, “Having a baby is a bet on the future. And almost everywhere in the world — and the world is richer and richer and richer statistically than it’s ever been — people have decided, ‘Ah, actually babies are kind of an inconvenience.’ Babies have always been an inconvenience and the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and to make a bet on the future. … We’ve stopped making babies. We’ve decided that being distracted by a dopamine hit around a Candy Crush might be a good way to spend your time. Not if you’re fully human.”
Similar to fellow Christian Charlie Kirk, Sasse sees the importance of following God’s Fourth Commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. In an interview with Focus on the Family President Jim Daly, he shared:
“I have repented to my family. It started before this diagnosis, but we’ve talked about it a lot more intentionally since then. I have repented to my family about not having been a good leader about the Lord’s day. We never missed Sunday morning worship, but often by [2:00 or 3:00] in the afternoon, our hearts and affections and attentions were getting on to all the achievements we had to do, starting Monday morning and all the work we needed to do. And a lot of that work is important and meaningful, but man, the feast day of the soul is more important than I gave it attention to. And I now want my kids to view the glory of not needing to strive from Saturday night to Sunday night as an unbelievable blessing that we get to rest.
“Martin Luther’s great ‘A Mighty Fortress’ is based on Psalm 46, and if you read Psalm 46, there’s pretty obviously three movements. There’s you don’t have to fear anything. You’re going to be fine. God’s got this. And then this command: ‘Be still.’ It means stop trying to be self-sufficient. You get to be a child of the eternal king. And every Sunday, we can live that. I didn’t do that enough.”
Similarly, when Daly asked Sasse what advice he would give dads, he reiterated the importance of family worship time on the Sabbath:
“Let’s be humble with our kids and say … it’s glorious to get to reflect on the things of the Lord. What can we read together as a family this Sunday? How can we lock up our phones? How can we set aside time on the Lord’s Day to just linger and reflect back on the sermon, not have to get out of church the second it’s over, but go find the folks who are in need there or the visitors there. But I’d say two of the most practical operationalizable ones for us: we lock up our phones most of Sunday and we read aloud together a lot.”
During CBS News’s “Things That Matter” townhall, a member of the audience asked Sasse how a Christian’s faith should impact his politics. He responded by emphasizing that Christians should seek to maintain order through government, not try to force religion on citizens. He explained:
“The secular sphere is still God’s space and God’s sphere, but it’s a question of whether or not explicit revealed theology is guiding our government. And I think that the purposes of government are to maintain order. It’s not to be theologically precise or accurate about what anybody should believe. The First Amendment is the most glorious inheritance anybody’s ever gotten in the history of government. Government is not the most important thing in the world, but it is glorious that our First Amendment has freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest or redress of grievances. But that means that what I want government to do is create a space that is free from violence.
“So people can worship as they see fit, whether I agree with them or disagree with them. As a neighbor, I might want to wrestle with theology with somebody, but I don’t want to use the state to accomplish theological ends. I want to maintain order for a secular sphere that is free from violence.
“So I don’t subscribe to views of geopolitics as God is accomplishing a precise thing in those places. I think our servant leaders are responsible for using their time in office to try to minimize violence, maximize order [and] human liberty. In my view, the future of geopolitics 10 or 40 years from now is going to be more U.S.-led or more Chinese Communist Party-led, and I would rather have open navigation of the seaways, freedom of religion, human rights, commerce, trade, transparent contracts. And so, I would rather have there be more U.S.-led freedoms for the world — but not because the U.S. is an eternal entity. The U.S. is just the best experiment in government we’ve ever known. But governments are going to pass away ultimately. At the end of days, when we all wrestle through and with the questions around our own mortality, there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer, there will also be no more government. Government is a tool. It’s a really important tool, but it’s a time-limited tool.”
In his interview with Daly, he explained, “Government is about restraining evil. It’s not about the glory of what happens at worship. It’s not about the warmth around your dinner table where you’re telling your kids how much you love them and asking them about their day. Government is just about a framework for ordered liberty. And so our passions [have to] hold moderately to certain institutions like government because they’re important, but they’re passing away.”
Sasse believes that how society handles the current communication revolution (especially social media and AI) is crucial, telling Daly, “I think a hundred years from now, if the Lord hasn’t returned yet, when we look back on this moment, we’re not going to talk very much about public policy. We’re going to talk about the fact that social media created a completely different kind of information ecosystem. And there [are] these grand temptations to steal our attention all the time. We know that only about 12% of Americans will read a book this year.”
Sasse told Pelley, “We’re living through a technological revolution which is creating an economic revolution. Let’s be clear, we’re the rich middle-class median. Americans are the richest people any time and place in all of human history. And yet, the economic revolutions that we’re living through are unsettling culture and place,” he pointed out. “And so people are incredibly rich at a material level statistically. And yet we’re pretty impoverished spiritually and communally in that we don’t have fit community. We don’t know our cousins. We don’t know the people who live two doors away from us. And we don’t feel like we’re in a common cause with people right now. And politics wants to trivialize that by screaming there’s some bad political actor somewhere. And if only that person were ripped out of the public square, politicians could fix all this. No, neighbors are going to have to fix this.”
He went on to say, “I do think social media is one of the fundamental problems that we’re dealing with right now. Right now, almost all politicians’ impulses and incentives … is to go narrow but deep and to do a lot of fan service. It doesn’t encourage a lot of self-scrutiny. It doesn’t encourage a lot of humility. It doesn’t encourage someone saying, ‘You know what, I used to believe this, but I listened to somebody else, and I realized I was wrong, and I’ve learned this new thing. There’s no audience for that. You want to just say more of, ‘We’re definitely right, and they’re definitely wrong.’ And that tribalism makes us pretty stupid.”
He continued, “One of the glorious things about the American experiment is believing in souls that can do deferred gratification. We can do deliberation that says, ‘Maybe I don’t have all the answers right now at my fingertips, and maybe the glories of a big and diverse creation is I can learn a lot from my neighbors.’”
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Pelley observed, “You are completely devoted to your faith: what’s known as Reformed Christianity or Calvinism. And one of the tenets of that faith is that God ordains everything. And I wonder why you think God has put you to this test?”
Sasse answered, “Death is wicked. Death is evil. Death is not how it’s supposed to be. And me getting a cancer diagnosis again is pretty small on the grand scheme of things, but it’s a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth. And the lie I want to tell myself is that I’m the center of everything, and I’m going to be around forever, and I can work harder and store up enough that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can’t. And so, I hate cancer, but I’m also grateful for it. I tell a lot more truth to myself than I used to … when I thought I was super omnipotent and interesting.”
The most emotional and inspirational part of these interviews came at the end of this conversation. Everyone should listen and learn from this man of deep Christian faith.
Pelley, on the verge of tears, managed to say, “I make no comparison to what you’re going through, but there was a moment on 9/11 at the World Trade Center that I knew I was dead. And in that lightning flash of an instant, the only thing that crossed my mind was leaving my family behind. And I wonder how you reconcile that.”
Sasse responded, “Yeah … I’m incredibly blessed. My wife Melissa … we’ve been married 31 years. …We’re going to be apart for a time. But she’s tough and gritty and theologically rooted, and she’s going to be fine. My daughters are 24 and 22, and they’re extraordinary. I want to walk them down the aisle when they get married,” he paused, getting emotional. “That’s not likely to be. That’s not the math of my timecard. My son, we have a providential surprise. He’s a decade younger than big sisters. He’s … going to be fine, and he’ll have other wise men and women to put a hand on his shoulder. But I’m super bummed to not be there at 16 and 18 and 20 years old in his life. I want to give him more advice than he wants, and I want to put my arm on his shoulder, and I want his shoulders to get taller. But it’s not a surprise to God.”
Pelley noted, “And God, you believe, has a plan.”
Sasse, without hesitation, answered, “Absolutely. There are no maverick molecules in the universe.”
This article was written by Kathy Athearn and originally published at The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
As former Senator Ben Sasse faces terminal cancer, his reflections on family, faith, work, technology, and the future offer a sobering perspective on what truly matters in life.
On April 26, I spoke at Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Milton, Florida, about AI’s impact on children and families. After the service, parents and grandparents lingered with questions — not about geopolitics or corporate boardrooms, but about what was already happening inside their own households. They wanted practical steps to protect their children. Their concern is well-founded.
Picture the moment: a child sits at the kitchen table, struggling with homework. He doesn’t ask a parent — he opens an AI app and types the question. Within seconds, a clear, confident answer appears. No friction. No conversation. No one who loves him is involved at all. Across the room, his mother consults her own parenting app for guidance on how to handle his behavior. The moment looks utterly ordinary, and that is the problem.
The question those parents in Milton were asking is the right one: who is raising our children — the parent or the algorithm?
A Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 U.S. teenagers found that 64% now use AI chatbots — including 12% who have sought emotional support from these tools and more than half who turn to them regularly for schoolwork. A companion Pew report found that only 51% of parents believe their teenager uses AI regularly, while 30% have no idea. What parents don’t see, they cannot shape.
The Brookings Institution, drawing on input from more than 500 participants across 50 countries, concluded in January 2026 that the risks of AI in children’s education “overshadow its benefits” — because those risks strike directly at foundational development: attention, reasoning, social relationships, and independent judgment. Children often cannot recognize, question, or even see the technologies quietly shaping their earliest experiences. This is not simply a technology problem. It is an authority problem.
For generations, parents controlled which outside voices entered the home. A television could be turned off. A book could be closed. A teacher could be called. AI operates differently. It is embedded in the devices children already carry, available at any hour, and patient in ways no human being can sustain. It does not raise its voice or express disappointment. It does not ask what the child thinks before delivering an answer. Those qualities feel reassuring to a child — which is precisely what makes them quietly formative.
A RAND Corporation study found student use of AI for schoolwork jumped from 48 to 62% in just seven months during 2025, with 67% of students acknowledging the practice weakens their critical thinking. In one conversation I had recently, a college student told me she has watched her Christian peers consult AI the way they would a pastor. That is not a metaphor any parent or pastor should let pass without reflection.
There is a relational cost embedded in all of this that rarely gets named. Real formation — the kind that produces character, judgment, and wisdom — happens through friction. When a child shares a tough question with a parent, they gain more than any AI can offer: the parent’s wisdom, a strong relationship, and an appreciation for patience. AI systems are engineered to be responsive, affirming, and conflict-free — optimized for engagement, not formation. Engagement sustained over years becomes its own kind of formation, only one running in a vastly different direction.
Scripture understood this before algorithms existed. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). That charge was given to parents — not to AI platforms. The Hebrew verb for “train” — chanak — carries the sense of dedication, of establishing a direction through habitual influence. Formation is cumulative. Every time a child turns to an algorithm instead of a parent — and every time a parent turns to AI for guidance on how to respond — that cumulative process is quietly redirected.
Artificial intelligence has no conscience. It is not accountable to God. It cannot love your child, discern his heart, or distinguish between what he wants to hear and what he needs to know. As I examine at length in “AI for Mankind’s Future,” unchecked reliance on algorithmic systems erodes the very human judgment those systems were meant to supplement. The voice is confident, the answer is instant, and children are not equipped to evaluate what they are being handed. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). A child trained by habit of leaning on an algorithm rather than a parent is being pointed in a fundamentally wrong direction — not by malice, but by the steady drift of convenience.
Parents who think they are managing this problem by monitoring screen time are already behind it. Treating AI like a hazard to be filtered addresses the symptom while missing the cause. A more effective response means being present in the conversation — asking the question before the AI app gets to it, discussing what the app provided, modeling the slower and more honest work of thinking through a problem. It means teaching children that truth is different from a confident answer delivered in two seconds by a machine. Moses understood the principle: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7). The home was always the first classroom. Parents have always been the first teachers. AI has not changed that assignment — it has only made it more urgent.
Pastors need to address this with the same directness they bring to any other threat to spiritual formation. AI is shaping how young people think, relate to authority, and understand where truth comes from — and that is not a secondary concern. Policymakers need to move beyond phone bans — a political band-aid on a deeper wound — and confront the design incentives that make these systems so compelling, because removing a phone from a classroom does not fix a platform engineered to capture students’ attention the moment school ends.
In “The New AI Cold War,” I argue that the future security of this nation depends as much on the character and discipline of its people as on its technology. That argument starts in the home. A generation shaped more by algorithms than by parents will not have the judgment, resilience, or relational depth to defend what they have inherited.
The AI is already in your home. It is neither neutral nor passive, and it is not going away. The parents who understand that clearly will still have a chance to answer the question those families in Milton were asking. The ones who are still waiting to take it seriously may find the answer has already been made for them.
This article was originally written by Robert Maginnis and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
AI is quietly reshaping how children learn, think, and seek guidance, raising urgent questions about parental authority, formation, and whether algorithms are replacing relationships in the home.
On January 20, 2026, historian Yuval Noah Harari stood before the World Economic Forum at Davos and issued a direct challenge to Christians worldwide. “If religion is built from words, then AI will take over religion,” he said, then named Christianity by name: “This is particularly true of religions based on books, like Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.” And he left this question in the air: “What happens to the religion of a book when the greatest expert on the holy book is an AI?”
The clip accumulated 1.2 million views within days. The room at Davos did not object.
Harari’s 2026 remarks are the current edge of a worldview shift building for years — visible in the public statements of the most powerful technologists of our time, spanning five distinct domains of the human person.
It was Harari himself who told the same World Economic Forum in 2020 that we are “no longer mysterious souls — we are now hackable animals.” Six years later, he has moved from contesting human identity to contesting the authority of Scripture. The trajectory is not random.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in 2017 that “the merge has already started” — that phones and algorithms already “control us” and “decide what we think.” By 2025, he had enlarged that frame: an essay titled “The Gentle Singularity” described AI as “building a brain for the world,” projected brain-computer interfaces, and suggested “some people will probably decide to ‘plug in.’” Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has called AI development a “moral obligation” and envisions every person equipped with an AI “assistant, coach, mentor, tutor… therapist” — roles Scripture reserves for God, parents, pastors, and community.
Billionaire, AI investor, and co-founder of Palantir Technologies Peter Thiel has said, “I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing… I prefer to fight it,” investing millions to turn mortality into an engineering problem. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, writing in more restrained terms, envisions AI-enabled biology offering “control and freedom over our own biological processes” addressing conditions “we currently think of as immutable parts of the human condition” — potentially including a doubling of the human lifespan.
These statements come from different people with different assumptions. What they share is a common direction: the human being as improvable hardware, death as a bug to be patched, and — in Harari’s own words before world leaders — the Bible as a database awaiting a more capable administrator.
In “The New AI Cold War,” I document how China, Russia, and Iran are weaponizing artificial intelligence to surveil populations and export digital tyranny worldwide. That geopolitical contest is real and urgent. But the deeper one is being fought inside Western civilization itself — on the terrain of human identity and, as Harari’s Davos appearance confirmed, on the terrain of Christian faith. The architects of AI understand this better than most Christians do.
No technological development alters what Scripture says about human beings. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Genesis 1:26). That declaration is the load-bearing wall of Christian anthropology — the reason human dignity is inherent and not a function of what AI can do with our genome or our sacred texts.
In “AI for Mankind’s Future,” I examine what it means to bear the imago Dei when machines imitate human intelligence. Harari’s question has a Christian answer no algorithm can produce: the Holy Spirit, not processing power, illuminates Scripture. The soul is real and not reducible to data. The body is not hardware — it will be raised imperishable. Death is an enemy, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ has already answered that claim. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is not a devotional sentiment — it is the posture Scripture commands for this moment.
The most consequential shift in AI is not technological. It is jurisdictional. AI is migrating from tool to authority — not by coercion, but through the frictionless convenience of daily use. Algorithms already shape what millions of people read and believe, mediate education, and form moral character. Andreessen’s vision of AI as universal tutor, therapist, and life guide is not a distant scenario. It is the operational goal of every major platform already in your household.
When a digital system begins answering the questions of identity, purpose, and meaning that once belonged to God, to parents, and to community, it does not remain a tool. Romans 1:25 describes the exchange in which Paul warns against trading the truth of God for the created thing. Harari is more candid than most about where that exchange leads — and at Davos, he named your Bible specifically.
AI produces genuine benefits — in medicine, national security, and communication — and “AI for Mankind’s Future” acknowledges them. The argument here is against surrender: surrendering judgment to the algorithm, and the formation of the next generation to systems whose designers have already decided the human being is improvable hardware and the Bible is a word-processing problem.
Christians must engage AI with discernment — using the technology without adopting its embedded anthropology. That means defending what the technologists are actively contesting: that human dignity is a gift of the Creator, not a product of code, and that the authority of Scripture cannot be transferred to any machine. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12).
Harari posed the right question at Davos, and the answer has not changed since Moses received it at Mount Sinai. What remains is whether the church will say it loudly enough, and soon enough, for the world to hear.
This article was originally written by Robert Maginnis published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit Real Life Network.
AI is no longer just a tool. From Davos to Silicon Valley, leading voices are questioning Scripture, identity, and human purpose. This article examines the growing challenge to biblical truth and why discernment is critical for Christians right now.
On April 6, 1990, I wrote in my Bible the following words: “It’s nice to be back. I’ve been gone too long — only through the power and love of Jesus I have come back,” and I signed it “Walt,” a remarkable occurrence after falsely identifying as a woman for eight years.
My experience offers living proof of the power of the gospel to transform a life seemingly lost in an alternate “trans” identity, and the important role the church plays in restoration.
The Bible says the body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul writes: “Do you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” The good news is that no matter what your past looks like, or what you may have done to your body, redemption awaits you in the arms of Jesus, and God’s Spirit who dwells in you will restore you.
When I was identifying as a “transgender woman,” I was mentally unstable and unable to comprehend the lifelong consequences of using cross-sex hormones and surgery to change my appearance to that of a woman. Even worse, I was drinking to excess. At my initial appointment with “gender” therapist, Dr. Paul Walker, I was intoxicated, yet he quickly diagnosed me with gender dysphoria, a diagnosis that never should have happened. Following his advice, I underwent gender surgery in 1983 at the age of 42 and began my pretense of presenting in life as a woman.
I had been living what I see now was a life of sin but, to my amazement, my messy life was not too big for Jesus. Jesus did not turn His back on me.
Jesus preserved me through despair and attempted suicide, led me to a church and sobriety, and provided a home and a strong support team. The relationships with leaders at church cemented my foundation in Christ and, in time, gave me the courage to seek counseling to confront the childhood traumas that had caused me to seek an alternate identity.
The turning point occurred during a prayer with a counselor several years into my sobriety in a personal encounter with Jesus I will never forget. My lord and savior Jesus appeared to me, held me in His arms, and said, “You are now safe with me forever.” That day, I was born again in Christ and trusted He would put me on the path to full restoration as Walt. That’s when I wrote it in my Bible and signed “Walt.”
The church’s basic approach to reaching anyone, no matter what the issue, starts with welcoming love and standing for truth and is deeply rooted in compassion and concern for both the needs of the person and the congregation.
Reaching out to help an adult in your congregation who is presenting as the opposite gender requires building a relationship with that person. It may require a pastor or elder to have a one-on-one conversation first to determine if the individual is willing to receive spiritual guidance. You can learn a great deal in that conversation, and it will help in knowing if and how to provide support and boundaries.
In my case, my needs were great on many levels — financial, spiritual, emotional, legal, psychological — for an extended period. My pastor suggested I chronicle them in a regular note to the leadership so they could pray and provide. This “note” over time became a weekly prayer letter keeping the leadership in tune with my journey, at times celebrating the triumphs and at other times, carrying my burdens. The pastor gathered a strong support team of two or three mentors to encourage me with consistent Bible study and contact on the phone, over meals or coffee. These spiritually mature people were the very hands and feet of Jesus, showing me care and providing accountability.
In my life, the restoration process was messy for me and the church, and it can be messy for the church today. But, oh, it is so worth the effort to see God work. Redemption through Jesus has given me peace, healing, freedom, and victory. This year I celebrate 40 years of sobriety and 35 years in my right identity.
You can see why I strongly oppose cross-sex hormones and surgery as “treatment” for identity distress. I came to Jesus and learned hormones and surgical procedures are not, and never have been, medically effective in changing a man into a woman or a woman into a man, a boy into a girl or a girl into a boy. Medical practitioners who promote this “treatment” are imposing great harm, especially on children, and lawmakers are stepping up.
The proposed Chloe Cole Act will prevent doctors and hospitals from introducing wrong-sex hormones into bloodstreams of children and removing healthy body parts in pursuit of a false identity.
The life-long harmful effects of hormone therapies and radical surgeries don’t stop at the age of 19; sadly, I can attest to that. Our lawmakers should start now to consider laws that will protect adults as well.
The church played an enormous role in my restoration even though resources about alternate identities were non-existent so many years ago. To support people in the congregation who are struggling with their biological sex, it’s important for the church, especially the leadership, to be equipped with accurate information.
To combat non-biblical misinformation and to teach Christians how to apply God’s word to helping trans-identifying people, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens and I applied our expertise and experiences in trauma and gender distress to write the book, “Embracing God’s Design.”
Written for the church, it presents an easy-to-read understanding of the topic from the Christian and psychological perspectives, reveals what drives adults or children to identify this way, chronicles the harms inflicted by “gender” clinics, and shares how Christians can minister to them and their families.
I give all the glory to Jesus for my new redeemed life “only through the power and love of Jesus.” I had no idea on that day of April 6, 1990, what redemption would look like, but 35 years later I do understand redemption is about the Lord fulfilling His promises. For believers, Christ’s redemptive work fulfills every divine promise made for our salvation and restoration. What is so beautiful is it’s yours for the asking.
So come to Jesus. Get your redemption started on Easter Sunday 2026.
For more information on how the church can respond, see the FRC resource, “Embracing God’s Design.”
You can support the Chloe Cole Act by contacting your members of Congress here.
This article was originally written by Walt Heyer and published on The Washington Stand. For more content like this, visit the Real Life Network.
A powerful testimony of how Jesus used the local church, God's Word, and discipleship to bring redemption, healing, and identity restoration to someone who once lived a transgender life.
Introduced in September of 2025, the Chloe Cole Act, named for the young woman who bravely speaks out against “gender affirming care,” would prohibit health care providers, clinics, and hospitals from carrying out or facilitating “gender transition” procedures on minors, and allow those harmed to bring suit with an extended statute of limitations of 25 years beyond the minor’s 18th birthday.
This important bill needs to be passed and signed into law. I began raising awareness about protecting trans-identifying children in 2015 from medical experimentation, and I’m grateful that this bill has been proposed. Prohibiting these procedures is exactly what needs to be done.
Furthermore, by allowing patients to sue practitioners for damages up to 25 years later, this legislation will cause health care professionals to have “skin in the game” and decide whether carrying out or facilitating “gender transition” for minors is worth the risk to them personally and professionally.
Chloe Cole and I have a lot in common in advocating for the passage of this bill.
Sadly, both Chloe and I experienced distress as minors and were both diagnosed with gender dysphoria, given cross-sex hormones, and had healthy body parts surgically removed to our lasting regret. The gender therapists, clinics, and hospitals from which we sought care misled each of us into thinking gender therapies were the only answer to relieve our distress. Both of us have emphasized our early identity distress stemmed from deeper issues.
Chloe Cole started puberty blockers at age 13 and underwent a double mastectomy at 15 — only to return to identifying as the woman God designed her to be in her late teens. Chloe reported her childhood at times was challenging as the youngest of five children, and at an early age she exhibited signs of autism and ADHD but was not officially diagnosed until her late teens. She cites the onset of early puberty, social media influence, and mental health struggles for warping her thinking and making her vulnerable to medical intervention.
My struggle began early in childhood after being cross-dressed at the hands of my grandmother at the age of four and being sexually abused by a family member. As a teen, I secretly cross-dressed and identified as a female at age 13. I continued struggling with my identity, starting on female hormones at the age of 35 in 1976, and started feminizing surgeries on my body. At the age of 42, after only two visits, my gender therapist advised me that surgery would relieve my gender distress, so I underwent what was called “sex change surgery.” After eight years identifying as a woman, with the help of psychotherapy, I began the journey back to restoring my God-given male identity.
Both Chloe and I found that hormones and surgeries are not effective in resolving early childhood distress that underlies dysphoria.
Our common ground has us publicly stepping forward to tell our personal stories of having needlessly suffered the unimaginable and horrific consequences of using surgeries and hormones to alter perfectly healthy bodies into resembling the opposite sex, so-called “gender affirming care.” It’s not care at all, but medical malpractice, and the lawsuits are coming.
We speak out and advocate for laws to end the practice of transgender medical interventions, particularly for minors, because they inflict egregious harm and dehumanize a person’s ability to function as God designed. We testify in legislative hearings, along with so many other advocates for protecting children, and clarify that gender transition is often driven by social influence, trauma, and inadequate mental health care.
I started speaking out about protecting kids from hormones in 2009 on a Canadian television show called “16x9,” Canada’s version of “60 Minutes.” In the years since, I’ve written books and articles, participated with organizations, such as Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation, bringing doctors, parents, and regretters to the same table to shed light on the harms being perpetuated by practitioners of “gender medicine.” I started meeting with legislators on Capitol Hill in D.C. in 2019 with Tony Perkins of Family Research Council and traveling to individual states to testify to the harms and to advocate for laws to prohibit hormones and surgery for trans-identifying children.
Chloe Cole started testifying to legislators at the young age of 17 and has been an extremely effective voice for opening people’s eyes to the widespread harms.
Testimonies from Chloe, myself, and many others confirm that the harmful effects of hormones and surgical procedures for the treatment of gender dysphoria go far beyond the teen years; the harm to bodies, in fact, is often permanent.
Thank God for the many former trans-identifying people, parents, lawmakers, pastors, medical doctors, educators, athletes, podcasters, and others who have stood for years, and are standing now, for truth and against this evil deception.
You can too. Contact your members of Congress here. For more information on how the church can respond, see the FRC resource, “Embracing God’s Design.”
This article was originally written by Walt Heyer and published on The Washington Stand. You can also find more content like this on the Real Life Network.
Two individuals who regret their gender transitions share their stories and find common ground in advocating for stronger protections for children, warning about the long-term consequences of medical interventions at a young age.
Washington Stand is the news and commentary platform of Family Research Council, led by President Tony Perkins. From a biblical worldview, it provides timely reporting and thoughtful analysis on faith, family, freedom, public policy, and the cultural issues shaping our nation.
