(ESSAY) When I began exploring the history of Christianity and the art it inspired, I had no idea it would lead me to one of the closest friendships of my life. That friend was Alexei Mihailovich Lidov, a world-renowned scholar of Byzantine art and architecture. The path to that friendship began in 1999, when our family traveled to Turkey for the first time.
Read MoreAleksei Mihailovich Lidov was one of the world’s most distinguished art historians. A scholar of deep intellect and quiet defiance, Lidov came of age in the late Soviet era, navigating a world split between official ideology and private truth. He died on May 29 at the age of 66. In this 2017 interview, Lidov looks back at his life, his family and what made him into an art historian.
Read MoreThe Trinity Broadcasting Network was sued by a media company started by TV personality Phil McGraw, whose eponymous talk show “Dr. Phil” captivated 10 million U.S. viewers weekly during 21 seasons on TV. The lawsuit claims TBN saddled McGraw’s enterprises with more than $100 million in financial obligations while not delivering on production and distribution services.
Read MoreThe bodies of seven evangelical Christians and a relative were found July 1 in a shallow grave in the Guaviare province in south-central Colombia. The six men and two women had been reported missing since April.
Read MoreA former California assistant pastor has been sentenced to two years in state prison for stealing funds from a church while its founding pastor lay dying, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office announced.
Read More(EXCERPT) Could the flourishing history of journalism provide clues for enabling it to flourish in future? Why is society’s watchdog, the press, with its long and often honorable pedigree, going feral? Failing to bark at misrepresentation and fraud, while snarling at truth? Why does journalism have the privileged position it does?
Read More(OPINION) There’s been much academic and journalistic attention paid in recent years to the documentable benefits of treating a host of mental disorders with psychedelics. “This Is Your Priest on Drugs” looks at a published study in which researchers administered psilocybin to clergy from various religious traditions.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Throughout his career, you see the outlines of a man burdened by the myth he helped build. A man who stared down America’s worst tendencies and tried to warn us, only to watch them metastasize. And in that exhaustion, there’s something quietly Christlike — not in purity, but in genuine suffering.
Read MoreChristians in this central Texas community are working to help after catastrophic flooding claimed at least 89 lives and left an unknown number of others still missing over the holiday weekend. A tractor-trailer rig from the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort in Nashville, Tennessee — nearly 1,000 miles away — arrived at the Riverside Church of Christ in Kerrville on Sunday afternoon.
Read More(ANALYSIS) With the increasing secularization of America, there’s far more freedom for Hollywood writers to tell stories about the afterlife that are in conflict with Christian narratives. There’s less cultural pressure to conform to Christian norms, so filmmakers are now freer explore alternative or ambiguous views of the afterlife.
Read MoreCamp Mystic says it is “grieving the loss” of 27 campers and counselors as the search continued Monday for victims of catastrophic Texas flooding over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Read More“In a time when so many teenagers and young adults are drifting from faith, grandparents are needed now more than ever,” says Tim Curtis , whose Legacy Coalition help foster multigenerational relationships.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The Bible Society recently published a report claiming that church attendance in England and Wales increased by more than half between 2018 and 2024. The revival was especially striking among young men, with reported church attendance jumping from 4% to 21% over this short period.
Read MoreA recent Lifeway Research study examining the rate at which evangelical and Black Protestant pastors leave the ministry also asked pastors about their experience with counseling, both in their ministry preparation and practice.
Read MoreIt was during a June 22 service, a jihadi — Syria blamed the Islamic State group — entered with a rifle and began firing. As worshippers tackled him, he detonated an explosive vest. In seconds the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch had more names to add to its two millennia of saints and martyrs.
Read MoreAt a time when the Trump administration has renewed a travel ban on various Muslim majority countries in Africa and across the Middle East, the Quran owned by John Adams is but one indication that our nation’s founders regarded Islam — as well as other, non-Western, non-Christian faiths — as worthy of respect and protection under the law.
Read MoreTapio Luoma’s words were the latest in a series of apologies through which the former state churches in Scandinavia have sought to reset their relations with the Indigenous population of Sápmi, the natural and cultural area of Sámi people. Today, the region is divided between Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia.
Read More(OPINION) We know that the Holy Spirit convicts the world (unbelievers) of sin (John 16:8). But he also convicts believers of our sins. I have never again felt the weight of conviction as I did that time in 1979. But I am thankful how God cleared my conscience through the work of his Holy Spirit.
Read More(ANALYSIS) On June 21, 2025, Alex Sobel, a member of the U.K. Parliament, delivered a letter to Pope Leo XIV after a special audience for members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in the Hall of Benediction, the Vatican, calling upon him to stand up for Jimmy Lai, who has been imprisoned by Hong Kong authorities since December 2020.
Read MoreRussia continued to persecute pastors and shutter churches within its borders and in territories it occupies in Ukraine, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in an updated report. The government has imprisoned, tortured and levied monetary fines against many religious leaders, including Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Church of Ukraine and others.
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