First Baptist Dallas revealed plans on Sunday to rebuild its 134-year-old historic sanctuary, which was largely destroyed by fire this summer. The church also launched a $95 million giving campaign to help pay for it.
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Donald Trump's fans and critics alike have compared him to some of history's most famous rulers: Cyrus the Great, Adolf Hitler, King David and more. But a celebrity pastor named Jonathan Cahn wants his evangelical followers to think of the Republican candidate as a present-day manifestation of a far more obscure leader: the biblical king Jehu.
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Nearly all U.S. adults say it is important to have a president who lives a moral and ethical life, and almost half say it’s important for the president to have strong religious beliefs. Here’s a guide to this year’s presidential candidates, their religious affiliations and notable statements they’ve made about faith.
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(ANALYSIS) It was the rare Trump quote that caused groans as it rocketed through conservative media. But this soundbite came from an upcoming memoir from former first lady Melania Trump: “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy.”
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Now an issue involving a Pittsburgh church — Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church — is raising more questions about whether the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is going to follow its original vision. Beverly Heights is trying to leave the EPC following the stated process but has clashed repeatedly with the presbytery, culminating in a civil suit.
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(ANALYSIS) At University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, we decided to bring together our collective research on evangelicalism to develop a broader template to understand the dynamics of American evangelicalism.
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(ANALYSIS) I am not young, but I too have turned to Anglicanism. In fact, I did so many years ago. For me, it was a much longer journey than it has been for many of the young people Sarah Carter describes. It is a journey that, with your permission, I will describe here.
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Evangelicals may be bigger on cultural engagement in theory than in practice. They say they want to share biblical truth but don’t always take the opportunities in front of them. Some don’t even spend time regularly reading Scripture.
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Entering into the final months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, former President Trump holds a sizable lead over Vice President Kamala Harris among evangelicals. Likely voters with evangelical beliefs are twice as likely to plan to cast their ballot for Trump than Harris (61% to 31%), according to a study from Lifeway Research. Few say they are still undecided (5%) or supporting another candidate (3%).
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(ANALYSIS) In the bitterly divided evangelical world, any discussion of these issues — such as a confession signed by A-list evangelical Trump critics, as well as some doctrinal progressives — will automatically be framed by the rhetoric of the former president and his boldest supporters. Decades of rapier thrusts by late-night comedians, newsroom warriors and oppo researchers fade into the past.
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Giving is down among evangelical Christians, according to a new study by Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research. The study — called “The Giving Gap: Changes in Evangelical Generosity” — found that 61% of evangelicals say they gave to their church in the last 12 months. That is down 13 percentage points from 2021, when 74% reported giving to their local congregation.
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A report issued on Tuesday found that religious beliefs aren’t motivated by politics and that a series of “misconceptions” has left Americans polarized. More in Common, a nonpartisan research organization, released the report where more than 6,000 Americans were polled just two months before the presidential election.
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The new "Reagan" biopic focuses on Ronald Reagan's role in the Cold War and the fight against Soviet communism. But faith emerges as a major storyline in the 135-minute biopic.
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(ANALYSIS) Every once in a while I will get an email from someone who doesn’t really fit the mold. Let me be clear that the amount of communication I get from Bernie Sanders-supporting White evangelicals is not huge. The more common sentiment is a White evangelical who sees themselves as politically moderate or really pushed out by the modern MAGA Republican Party.
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(ANALYSIS) As a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, Father Stephen Noll felt a sense of loss when he learned he would need a smartphone app to attend baseball games. Noll calls himself a “digital dinosaur, perhaps from the Jurassic period.” What he didn't expect, after 50 years of priesthood, was for this digital divide to affect his ministry.
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During the Cold War, an oft overlooked battle for minds unfolded on the vast stage of Africa. As colonial powers withdrew and new African nations emerged, both the United States and the Soviet Union scrambled for alliances. Author Phil Dow’s new book, “Accidental Diplomats,” catalogs the influence of American evangelical missionaries in Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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(REVIEW) “Shepherds” is certainly a book that is stuffed with footnotes, each page linking to multiple articles and websites to back up her claims. It’s unfortunately a book many people will jump to either attack or support without actually looking up the sources themselves. But it is a book that requires just that to responsibly engage with it. To Basham’s credit, she provides the footnotes for people to check her work. For this review, I did not fact-check every source that Basham cited.
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(ANALYSIS) I guess there is a question that motivates this post but it’s about as simple as it’s going to get: How is Joe Biden doing among a bunch of different religious groups? Asking about presidential approval is about as straightforward as it gets, and the question was posed in the Fall of 2021, 2022, and 2023.
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(OPINION) Since 2016, in private conversations and in responses from newspaper readers, the question I’ve probably been asked more consistently than any other is: “How do you account for White evangelicals’ devotion to Donald Trump?” So I’ve taken stabs at answering that question. But more often than not I’ve ended up shrugging and saying, “I don’t know. I don’t get it, either.”
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(ANALYSIS) The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was as newsworthy as usual, but unusually significant. The Tennessean depicted the deliberations as “a turning point for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.” If so, will this turning turn out to be Southern Baptists’ migration toward neo-fundamentalism, a growing force within America’s complex evangelical movement?
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