Here's what's happening on the church and culture front today...

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July 20, 2026

Pop culture’s ‘reverent irreverence': How artists blur irony, sincerity and religion

July 20, 2026

This mix of the absurd and sincere reflects a kind of artistic engagement with existential questions that is increasingly resonating with people, many of whom are disconnected from organized religion. Some scholars even have a name for it: “reverent irreverence.” (Fauria, AP News)

July 20, 2026

Takeaways from the AP-NORC poll of more than 1,000 Jewish Americans

July 20, 2026

The survey of 1,022 Jewish adults — including people who identify as Jewish by religion and religiously unaffiliated people who identify as Jewish through culture, ethnicity or family background — offers a rare detailed accounting of a key demographic that sits at the very center of some of the nation’s most divisive political debates. (Sanders, AP News)

July 20, 2026

Pastors Using AI to Help Write Sermons Grapple With Where to Draw the Line

July 20, 2026

Half of all pastors say they use AI for brainstorming or idea generation, according to the Barna Group, a firm that studies U.S. faith trends. And roughly a quarter use AI to help write their sermons, up from 12% in 2024. The trend has drawn theological pushback all the way to the Vatican. (Bhutani, The Wall Street Journal)

July 20, 2026

New study links ADHD symptoms in boys and addictive social media use

July 20, 2026

The adolescent boys indicated in the questionnaire that they found themselves frequently thinking about social media. They wanted to use it less often, but felt unable to stop. A year later, when their parents were asked about their children’s behavior, those same boys were more likely to demonstrate rising symptoms of ADHD. (Gibson, The Washington Post)

July 20, 2026

News Archive:

Featured

Pop culture’s ‘reverent irreverence': How artists blur irony, sincerity and religion

Many Christians in the UK worry that a recent proposal by their government could lead to the criminalization of consensual conversations about sexuality due to a vague definition of what constitutes conversion practices. (Thompson, Christianity Today)

If passed, the bill would give Americans an extra hour of sunshine in the evenings during the winter. But it would also push winter sunrises one hour later. That's of concern to Orthodox Jews, who pray three times a day, beginning with the Shacharit morning prayer service, which by tradition cannot begin in the dark. (Shimron, NPR)

Traditionalist Catholics have been coming to this tiny town 90 miles west of Kansas City for more than 40 years, drawn to the teachings of the global Society of St. Pius X, which embraces the Latin Mass and rejects other modernist changes of the Catholic Church. (Gowen & Faiola, The Washington Post)

In Luminate’s annual midyear report for 2026, a few key takeaways are apparent: R&B/hip-hop continues to lose ground, but remains the biggest streaming genre in the U.S.; dance/electronic music is on the come up; and the kids are loving CDs. (Robinson, Billboard)

The regulator said the two search engines were the primary way that children accessed adult websites and that their top results regularly featured sites without age-verification systems. (Titcomb, The Telegraph)

No decade can be summed up any more than a country can be summed up, but if we wrote an autobiography not of words but of works — books, music and art, ideas, dress and culture — these 25 would be among the most momentous. (The Washington Post)

An obscure and extremely powerful psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT is drawing intense interest from the pharmaceutical industry, where biotech companies are racing to turn it into a commercially available treatment for severe mental health disorders, like depression, anxiety and PTSD. (Ferdman, The Wall Street Journal)

Children are being arrested for sex offences in record numbers amid evidence of more abusive relationships, a government-backed report has revealed. Police data show that the number of children arrested for sexual offences in 2024-25 rose by nearly a fifth to 3,809, from 3,225 in the previous year. (Hymas, The Telegraph)

Sports betting is illegal in California, but prediction markets like Kalshi aren’t. That’s because users buy and sell contracts among themselves, instead of placing bets against a house. The distinction allows platforms to operate under federal rules for financial exchanges, rather than state gambling laws. (Mukheriee, Laist)

Since the days of Isaac Asimov in the 1950s, science fiction has tackled the question of whether artificial intelligences and the companies that create them can be held liable for crimes. With the rapid spread of AI chatbots and agents today, the debate has reached the real world. (De Vynck, The Washington Post)

The 2016 release has become the most watched movie on Disney+. Parents and experts explain why kids can’t get enough. (Bahr, The New York Times)

With antisemitism on the rise across Europe, Germany is at an inflection point. Since the end of the second World War, the memory of the Holocaust has been foundational to the country’s identity. But Holocaust survivors, who served as a living testament to the country’s crimes, are almost gone. (Benoit, The Wall Street Journal)

Believe the Hype About Teen Takeovers

The phrase teen takeover became popular several years ago, when they began taking place in Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa, and a few other cities. “Teen takeovers are plaguing Democrat-run cities across the country, including the nation’s capital,” reported The Daily Wire. (Worth, The Atlantic)

This week, Meta announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence image generator that allows anyone to create AI images based on your Instagram photos. And if you have a public Instagram account, Meta automatically opted you in — which means your photos could be manipulated into AI images by anyone. (Pineda, The Washington Post)

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research points to how Jewish adults’ attitudes toward their own personal safety have changed over a relatively short period as more Americans became critical of the United States’ close alliance with Israel. (Sanders & Thomson-Deveaux, AP News)

As legalized marijuana spreads, its growing use is showing up in drug tests at some of the highest rates in years, according to new data from Quest Diagnostics DGX -0.29%decrease; down pointing triangle, which conducted about eight million workforce drug tests in 2025. The share of urine tests that came back positive for the substance rose to 4.4% last year, up from 3.9% in 2021. (Bernhardt, The Wall Street Journal)