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Last year, Vice President Mike Pence pledged support to Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities forced out of their homelands in Iraq by ISIS. Religious freedom advocates and groups in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq cheered the news. Then, the money didn’t come. Last week, the Trump administration announced a multimillion-dollar assistance plan to bring the total funding over the past year for religious minorities in Iraq to nearly $300 million. The money will be used to rebuild communities, preserve heritage sites, secure left-behind explosives, and empower survivors to seek justice. Those charged with administering the funds have their work cut for them. “From the time of the US invasion to now, you have seen a Christian church of over a million people that has been reduced to 100,000 people,” said Mindy Belz, senior editor at World Magazine, who has visited and reported from Iraq frequently over the past two decades. When Saddam Hussein’s regime was first toppled, Christians were hopeful, says Belz. But as the US stayed on, things got worse for the community. “When the US had troops on the ground and were essentially running the government to it, we were not paying attention to the minorities—the Christians, the Yazidis, the Shabak, the Turkmen. We were not looking out for them,” said Belz, who is also the author of They Say We Are Infidels. “They did not have sufficient political representation that would look out for them, and they were getting no favors from the Iraqi government so the jihadists were targeting them with impunity.” Belz joins associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss what went wrong with last year’s plan to send money to Iraq, how ISIS changed how Christians relate to their fellow religious minorities and their Muslim neighbors, and what life is like on the ground in Iraq right now for the church.

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Last week, the world’s leading climate scientists released a sobering report, which claimed that there are only a dozen years to keep the Earth’s climate from increasing by 1.5 degrees Celsius. If the planet fails to do so, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned, the risk of drought, floods, extreme heat, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people will massively increase. To avoid barreling toward this future, the entire world will have to make massive changes in the way it currently consumes energy. “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,” Debra Roberts, a scientist who worked on the report, told The Guardian. “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilizes people and dents the mood of complacency.” But upending the status quo is incredibly difficult work, says Peter Harris, cofounder of A Rocha, an international Christian nature organization. A former parish minister, Harris says he sees parallels between his conservation work and his life in church ministry. “I had to sit next to the bedside of a dying friend. It was good to be there. It was good for us to share the presence of God and the hope of the resurrection,” he said. “And sometimes we know when we’re potentially going to lose the conservation battle—and honestly I doubt if we will keep the temperature rise below two degrees within the next 15 years—what we have to do it out of is that the Lord will not abandon his creation. He’ll stir up his church worldwide.” Harris joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss UN report’s warnings and predictions, the human impact of climate change, and why a Christian response to this report must be rooted in a bigger vision than halting climate change.

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Last week, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He was never seen again. Now, Turkish officials believe Khashoggi, a longtime critic of the country, was murdered by Saudi officials. That same week, US officials visited the Saudi Arabian capital city of Riyadh and reported that the country seemed to be loosening some of its harsh religious laws, including reforming its religious police—once tasked with enforcing shari’ah law on the streets and in homes—and has instituted new government programs to quash extremism. Last fall, the 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans last October to modernize Saudi Arabia and return the restrictive Muslim country to “what we were before: a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.” And while the Crown Prince, whose often known by his nickname MSB, has made real strides in advancing freedom, including letting women drive, incidents like Khashoggi’s reported death, suggest that things may be more complicated than they seem. “Critics will say that MBS’ reforms are lip service, eye candy, it’s trying to fool the West into thinking that Saudi Arabia is changing when in reality it’s still the same old, repressive, authoritarian regime it’s always been,”said Robert Nicholson, the founder and executive director of the Philos Project, a leadership community dedicated to promoting positive Christian engagement in the Middle East. “I actually think both are true. Anytime a woman can drive in a country and she couldn’t drive the day before is good news. I’m not going to be picky about how many other things are left undone,” said Nicholson. “...I also think it’s true that Saudi Arabia is nowhere near being a beacon of human rights and has a long, long way to go.” Nicholson joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss how Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Iran matters, why the few Christians in the country are likely to be migrant workers, and how Christianity first arrived in that part of the world.

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Last week, millions of Americans were caught up in the Senate’s Supreme Court hearings. There, psychologist Christine Blasey Ford testified that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually attacked her while the two were in high school. Several hours later, Kavanaugh emphatically refuted Blasey Ford’s allegations. The hearings came months after Justice Anthony Kennedy, long seen as a swing vote on the court, announced his retirement. This news prompted alarm from the pro-choice community who feared that the new balance in the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. Despite their fears, Kavanaugh’s confirmation seemed on track until Blasey Ford’s allegations went public. Shortly after the hearing, a book excerpt from Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, appeared in The New York Times. “Christians cannot pretend they can transcend politics and simply ‘preach the Gospel,’” he wrote in his latest book Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy. “Those who avoid all political discussions and engagement are essentially casting a vote for the social status quo. … To not be political is to be political.” But that doesn’t mean that Christians have to hold convictions about every moment of political life, said Keller. One example: knowing exactly who or what to believe about Kavanaugh and Ford: “Neither you nor I are decision makers at all. We’re not being asked to make a decision. If I was in a position where I had to make a decision—I had a vote or I had to do something about it—then I would be doing everything I could to get to the bottom of things,” Keller told CT. “I’m not sure why everyone on Twitter feels like they have to come to a position. That’s actually kind of new.” Keller joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss how he follows this news, where his political convictions come from, and just how great the stakes are of politics.

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Earlier this month, you couldn’t turn a television on without seeing footage of Hurricane Florence. As of recording, the storm has been blamed for the deaths of 42 people in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and costing billions of dollars of damage. Yet, in many ways, national attention has already moved on. That’s something that Puerto Rico knows too well. It’s been a year since the storm claimed 64 immediate deaths and catalyzed the exodus of thousands of Puerto Ricans from the island and a sense of hopelessness in the territory at large. The loss of community was especially hard for Puerto Ricans like Gadiel Ríos, a pastor in Arecibo, who stayed on the island. “Everyone lost their friends, everyone lost family,” said Ríos, who is also the founder of the ministry ReformaDos. “The main problem we are facing now is despair and then because of their despair people tend to [fall] into depression...People feel lonely and frustrated.” Ríos joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss how the church is ministering to the overwhelmed, how Mainlanders encouraged those on the island, and the state of Puerto Rico’s evangelical community.

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Several years ago, the Obama administration set a target of resettling more than 110,000 refugees for resettlement in fiscal year 2017, the highest goal since 1995. This week, the Trump administration set the ceiling on the number of refugees that can be resettled in the United States next year at 30,000. Even as the number of refugees allowed in America has dropped since Trump took office, the State Department has named international religious freedom as one of its primary goals. To some extent, these two policies work against each other, says Jenny Yang, who provides oversight for all advocacy initiatives and policy positions at World Relief. “The countries from which Christians are most persecuted are those that there are the most refugees from,” said Yang. Only 18 and 5 refugees from Iraq and Iran respectively—countries where many Christians have been persecuted in recent years—have been resettled in the US since the beginning of the year. “You have a lot of persecuted Christians who are refugees and become refugees because of their faith,” said Yang. Yang joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the US government’s rationale for the decline in numbers, what’s happening at a global level to solve the refugee crisis, and what Christians who care about refugees can do regardless of whether the communities settle in their countries.

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Last week, John MacArthur and a dozen other Christian leaders launched a website presenting The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel. In the statement, the signatories claim that the social justice movement endangers Christians with “an onslaught of dangerous and false teachings that threaten the gospel, misrepresent Scripture, and lead people away from the grace of God in Jesus Christ.” Over the course of 14 sections, the Statement addresses cultural narratives “currently undermining Scripture in the areas of race and ethnicity, manhood and womanhood, and human sexuality” and argues that a secular threat is infiltrating the evangelical church. At the time of this recording, the Statement has received around 7,000 signatures. The statement comes at a time when a series of blog posts and sermons attacking social justice from MacArthur, a popular California pastor and author, had sparked controversy in the evangelical community. The harsh reaction to MacArthur’s ideas was shaped by the events of the past four years, says Washington DC pastor and Gospel Coalition council member Thabiti Anyabwile. “They land in the midst of an evangelical movement that is already fraying and fracturing under the weight of the last five years, if I’m dating this back to the Mike Brown shooting and the fallout,” said Anyabwile. “Evangelicalism as a movement splintered instantly as to how they understood that issue and different quarters circled one another in suspicion and sometimes outright attack.” Further, the statement’s specific attacks on particular nomenclature have been troublesome because its drafters haven’t defined their terms, says Anyabwile. “They’re so imprecise in the terms that are used and defining those terms. What exactly is meant by social justice?” he said. “What are we talking about when we talking about reconciliation or intersectionality or critical race theory? These are things that are thrown out there that are red meat for one quarter of evangelicalism and might be acceptable parlance, depending on how you define it, in other quarters.” Anyabwile joined associate digital producer Morgan Lee and theology editor Caleb Lindgren to offer context about MacArthur’s remarks, explain how intersectionality shows up in the Bible, and what church unity (not uniformity) should look like.

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This spring, California assemblyman Evan Low introduced legislation that would have designated paid “conversion therapy” services as a fraudulent business practice. Until last week, Low’s measure seemed set to pass. It moved through both of California’s legislative chambers and governor Jerry Brown had shown no sign of opposition. But last Friday, Low quashed his own legislation after meeting with Christian leaders who had expressed concerns about how the bill might affect their ability to minister to those in the LGBT community. “Some would say this is crazy,” Low, who is gay and the chairman of the legislative LGBTQ caucus, told The Los Angeles Times. “Why would you pause when you don’t need to, when you’re in the driver’s seat?” One answer was Low’s relationship with Kevin Mannoia, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a leader in the Free Methodist Church. Over the course of the summer, Mannoia met with and developed a relationship with Low. Last week, Mannoia wrote an op-ed for The Orange County Register expressing his opposition to the bill—and to reparative therapy. Low dropped the bill the next day. In his years working as an evangelical leader, Mannoia has learned to build relationships with those with whom he may disagree. So what does it take? “Being willing to commit to them as people … and what we believe to be right and appropriate in reflecting Christ well,” said Mannoia. “Not primarily driven by the political agenda, nor even the possibility that we may be used or manipulated, but simply doing what is right because it’s right.” Mannoia joined Morgan Lee, associate digital media producer, and Richard Clark, director of editorial development for SmallGroups.com and PreachingToday.com, to discuss how this story unfolded and what it says about the future of relationships between evangelicals and the LGBT community in one of the country’s most progressive states.

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The Catholic world is reeling after a devastating month of sexual abuse revelations. At the beginning of August, a Pennsylvania grand jury reported that hundreds of priests abused at least 1,000 children since the 1940s and that dozens of church officials covered it up. Then, this past week, a prominent archbishop claimed that Pope Francis knew about—and covered up—the actions of Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal who has been accused of sexually harassing adult seminarians and abusing a child. For lay Catholics, the litany of sex abuse stories has been devastating. “The ultimate source of authority and power that the normal Catholic needs week to week is their priest,” said John Armstrong, the president of ACT3 Network, an organization which works to foster Christian unity. “It’s not the Vatican, not the structure of the Vatican, not even the Pope, though he’s the Holy Father to Catholics.” Because of this close relationship, the church betraying their trust can feel even more intense. “When the priest is an abuser, it breaks all confidence and trust in the authority of the church, which extends all the way to the Vatican because this priest would not be ordained if had not gone up the chain of command and has ultimately the blessing of the Holy Father who is the pastor of pastors and the shepherd of the whole church,” he said. Armstrong joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the nature and extent of the abuse in the Catholic church, the Vatican’s historically contentious relationship with the media, the politics affecting the whole situation, and how it affects evangelical churches.

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Check out this headlines from the past decade: “Why Don’t Most Men Go to Church?” Christian Century, October 2011 “Why Men Still Hate Going to Church” CT Pastors, Summer 2012 “7 Actions to Engage Men in Your Church” Pastors.com, March 2014 “Why Do Men Hate Church and What Can Be Done About It?” The Tennessean, Jan 2015 Mending Men’s Ministry, Christianity Today, June 2018 And then there’s a newsletter, The Masculinist, which reflects on a monthly basis on the factors driving men men from church. Aaron Renn, The Masculinist’s author and creator, said the idea for his project came both from the knowledge that church attendance skewed female and the realization a number of non-Christian writers, authors, and cultural commentators were grabbing this group’s attention. “What is it that all of these people are reaching men with essentially a secular self-help message and the [church’s message] isn’t working?” said Renn. “...When I became a Christian I maybe naively took everything in. I felt like the teachings that I was getting about how to be a man and how to interact with women and things of that nature frankly were just not working.” His unhappiness with his church’s teachings led Renn to ask a lot of questions and ultimately “reformulate” himself as a man. Renn joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why how churches can still be unwelcoming to men despite the fact that men still hold most church pastoral positions, whether this reality of fewer men at church is true when factored by class, race, or education level, and how Christian piety became gendered.

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