President, pastor join advocates at pro-life rally
The 47th annual March for Life Jan. 24 featured an unprecedented in-person appearance from the President of the United States, plus big news from Pastor David Platt of Virginia. Trump became the first sitting president to address the annual rally, and Platt, pastor of McLean Bible Church, announced he and his family will soon adopt a new child, after being inspired in part by last year’s March for Life.
The Christian Post highlighted those moments and more in their coverage of the march.
Greear urges church leaders: Put mission ahead of politics
“It’s not that Christians don’t have anything to say to Washington D.C.,” Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear said at a January meeting of Baptist leaders in the Midwest. “We do and we should. [It’s] just that when that becomes the focus of the church, our message is obscured.” Greear addressed the country’s hostile political climate, and the church’s place in it, at the Midwest Leadership Summit in Springfield, Ill.
Poll tests Americans’ knowledge of the Holocaust
A Pew Research Center poll found most Americans know when the genocidal campaign against Jews occurred, Religion News Service reports, but fewer know how many Jews were killed, or how Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The poll was released days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year also marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
More Americans identify as ‘born again’
A traditional Christian label is experiencing a resurgence, even as the number of people unaffiliated with a religion also continues to rise. “It almost seems counterintuitive,” Ryan Burge writes for Christianity Today. “While significant portions of the country jettison religion, others are increasingly identifying with a more devout expression of the faith.”
Born-again identity is trending upward across all Christian traditions, Burge adds, including Catholics and mainline Protestants.
Columnist reports from Sunday Service: “This was not ‘Kanye’s’ show”
Evangelical writer David French attended Kanye West’s recent Sunday Service in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where the rapper clearly wasn’t the main focus, French writes. “…there are times when the greatest ambassadors for the gospel are those people who’ve struggled and fallen and then risen again only by the grace of God: people like Kanye West,” French writes. “I don’t know the future, but I do know that moment in Pigeon Forge, and in that moment God was glorified, young people encountered Jesus, and my family was deeply encouraged.”
Sources: Christian Post, Illinois Baptist, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, The Dispatch