Americans have never been so divided on their attitudes to gay marriages and relationships. While 68 per cent of Americans agree same-sex marriages should be legally recognised, there has been a drop-off in Republican support, which peaked at 55 per cent in 2021 and has since dropped to 41 per cent. There has been a similar shift on relationships. (Davies, The Times)
Read MoreConstruction of new religious buildings is on the rise, even as many churches in the U.S. close their doors each year. Church-building broadly waned for two decades starting in the early 2000s, reflecting a decline in Americans’ religious participation, changing donation habits and a shift away from the construction of huge megachurches. (Torry, The Wall Street Journal)
Read MoreSince the landslide victory of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the western Indian state of Maharashtra in November 2024, attacks against Christians have surged. So far this year, the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s Religious Liberty Commission documented 11 cases of violence against Christians in the region. (Mukka, Christianity Today)
Read MoreJames Dobson, author and child psychologist who told millions of evangelicals how to raise children and order their families, died on August 21 at the age of 89. Dobson believed in strict-but-loving discipline and obedience, which he held out as the antidote to America’s cultural permissiveness and slide toward moral chaos and social disorder. (Silliman, Christianity Today)
Read More“We’re two years away from something we could lose control over,” Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and the president of the Future of Life Institute, told me, and AI companies “still have no plan” to stop it from happening. His institute recently gave every frontier AI lab a “D” or “F” grade for their preparations for preventing the most existential threats posed by AI. (Wong, The Atlantic)
Read MoreThe leader of a Church of England ‘sex cult’ has been convicted three decades after its collapse. Why did the Church fail to learn lessons from the scandal? (O’Neill & Bradley, The Times UK)
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