Explosive documents reveal that President Biden’s FBI snooped on GOP senators, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh uncovers shocking new details about the early prison release of a Kentucky killer, and America’s leading evangelical magazine takes seven-figure donations from one of the nation&#8217;s biggest abortion funders.
It’s Wednesday, October 8, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Revealed: Biden FBI Snooped On GOP Lawmakers</h2>
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Topline: As the government shutdown continues, Washington has been rocked by new revelations that the Biden DOJ snooped on several Republican Congress members as part of its January 6 probe.
This week, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released a document showing that President Joe Biden’s FBI obtained and analyzed phone metadata of eight sitting Republican senators and one Republican House member.
The move came as part of the DOJ’s previously undisclosed Arctic Frost investigation, which went after Republicans for alleged election meddling following the 2020 election. Grassley released a statement along with that document, where he said, “Based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate.”
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The Republican lawmakers targeted by the FBI were Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.
Democrats’ response: Democrats have sought to downplay the story, saying the FBI was simply doing its job to investigate election meddling — and reminding folks that agents were not listening in on phone calls, and were only looking at who they called, and when. 
That has done little to alleviate Republican outrage. Blackburn excoriated the FBI in an interview with Morning Wire: “It is a violation of our civil rights. It’s a violation of our privacy rights. No one can find a time when … the FBI has done this.”
What Republicans want: Republicans have demanded an investigation to determine the extent of the scheme and who was responsible for it.
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland would have had to approve the operation. Republicans want to know if President Biden was also involved. 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">The Most Violent ‘Nonviolent’ Convict Secures Parole</h2>
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Topline: More details are coming out about the early prison release of a Kentucky man convicted in the brutal slaying of a young boy. He has shockingly been deemed a nonviolent offender.
What happened: Ronald Exantus broke into a family’s home and stabbed multiple people with a kitchen knife, including a 6-year-old boy who later died from those injuries. These crimes occurred in Woodford County, Kentucky, located just west of Lexington.
Exantus was tried in 2018 and found not guilty of that murder by reason of insanity. He was convicted for the lesser charge of assault and sentenced to 20 years in prison, but he was released in early October – 13 years early – and placed on just eight months of supervised probation.
Hmmm: According to the parole board, Exantus qualifies as nonviolent under Kentucky state law. The board has faced major criticism over the release, but it says that its members repeatedly voted for Exantus to remain in prison. 
In a statement to The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, the board said, “Every time it had the opportunity, the Parole Board recommended Ronald Exantus stay in prison.”
After a review for parole on September 30, the board announced that it had issued a decision to keep the criminal in prison for the remainder of his sentence. The board added, “Despite this decision, Kentucky law required the Department of Corrections to release the inmate on Mandatory Reentry Supervision.”
In short, state law required Exantus to be released because he wasn’t convicted of a capital offense related to the killing of Logan Tipton. He was only convicted on lesser charges of second-degree assault for attacking Logan’s sibling and father.
What happens now: Exantus is not quite a free man. He enters a state of parole, which means that he must abide by conditions. Those exact terms are still unknown, but in most cases, if the conditions are broken, the parolee could be sent back to prison.
The case could also come under federal scrutiny, as the White House has weighed in on the issue. On Saturday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt highlighted one of Walsh’s social media posts and said that the administration is looking into the situation. The White House said it is “wholly unacceptable for a child killer to walk free after just several years in prison.” 
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Christianity Today Funded By Abortion Backer</h2>
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Topline: America’s most prominent evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, is under fire for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/evangelical-magazine-christianity-today-takes-over-1-million-from-abortion-funder">accepting</a> financial support from a major abortion funder. Readers also accuse the publication of softening its pro-life stance in recent years.
Since 2022, Christianity Today has received more than one million dollars from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. That includes $600,000 for election coverage.
What makes this controversial is Hewlett’s history. The foundation is the second-largest private funder of Planned Parenthood in the United States. It gave the abortion provider more than $100 million between 2000 and 2023. 
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Hewlett announced it was increasing its “reproductive equity” budget by 30% – essentially doubling down on supporting abortion access and securing Hewlett’s spot as one of the country’s largest abortion funders.
Influence on CT? Christianity Today has always maintained that it upholds a pro-life ethic. However, since Hewlett’s donations began, the magazine has started publishing articles that advocate for a broader definition of “pro-life.”
Instead of focusing solely on protecting unborn babies, these pieces have argued that the term should also include fighting racial injustice, supporting new federal entitlements like paid family leave, and supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Many pro-life leaders say that redefining the term in this way waters down its meaning. Seth Gruber, founder of the pro-life organization White Rose Resistance, told The Daily Wire that he believes leftists are deliberately working to redefine the term “pro-life” in an effort to advance progressive political priorities under its banner.
Also, in the run-up to the 2024 election, Christianity Today published articles arguing that the issue of abortion was not necessarily a good enough reason to vote and that Christians should consider sitting out. And their board chair took on the role of spokesperson for Evangelicals for Biden.
Step back: Christianity Today has become more reliant on grants and donations over the past five years. In 2020, only about 20 percent of its revenue came from grants. Today, it’s more than half. Over the past few years, it has also received $8 million from the Lilly Endowment, the foundation established by the Eli Lilly family, known for its pharmaceuticals.
Experts warn that when an outlet grows dependent on foundations with their own ideological agendas, it risks aligning with those priorities — even if that means softening its historic Christian commitments.
Part of why the controversy stings is that evangelist Billy Graham founded Christianity Today in 1956 to be a theologically conservative alternative to The Christian Century, which was considered liberal.
Critics have long contended that the outlet has drifted to the left in both tone and substance. The Hewlett Foundation’s funding, particularly the grants marked for “covering elections,” has struck many observers as confirmation of that gradual ideological shift.

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Morning Brief: Biden’s GOP Spy Games, A Child Killer Set Free, & Christianity Today’s Abortion-Tied Donor

Abortion

Christianity Today

Chuck Grassley

Joe Biden

Kentucky

Marsha Blackburn

Media

Morning Wire

Politics

Beautiful White Baptist Church in Crawfordville, George built in 1889

Christian Media And The Money Men

Bible

Books

Christians

Church

US-POLITICS-OBAMA

Christianity Today Staff Made Extensive Campaign Donations Between 2015 And 2022…All Went To Democrats

‘Christianity Today’ Staff Made Extensive Campaign Donations Between 2015 and 2022. All Went to Democrats. 

Democrats

dona

<a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/christianity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anglican</a> ministers met in the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African</a> nation of Rwanda this week to issue a rebuke against the Church of England’s recent commitment to endorse so-called <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/homosexuality" target="_blank" rel="noopener">same-sex</a> marriages.
The Church of England’s General Synod approved a <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/prayers-gods-blessing-same-sex-couples-take-step-forward-after-synod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">motion</a> earlier this year to “publicly, unreservedly, and joyfully” welcome same-sex couples into their congregations, where they can “receive God’s blessing” after a civil marriage or civil partnership, even as ministers remain unable to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. Members of the General Synod also voted to “lament and repent” the Anglican Communion’s failure to “welcome LGBTQI+ people.”
Bishops and clergy members from the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, an alliance of conservative Anglican churches also known as GAFCON, assembled in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali this week and released a <a href="https://www.gafcon.org/news/gafcon-iv-the-kigali-commitment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> against the decision. They rejected Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the “first among equals” for bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion, a body rooted in the traditions of the English Reformation, which spread across the globe amid the spread of the British Empire.
“Since the Lord does not bless same-sex unions, it is pastorally deceptive and blasphemous to craft prayers that invoke blessing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” the document said. “Refusal to follow the biblical teaching that the only appropriate context for sexual activity is the exclusive lifelong union of a man and a woman in marriage violates the created order.”
GAFCON attendees also endorsed a previous <a href="https://twitter.com/GafconGBE/status/1627622610388324355" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, also known as the GSFA, which said that the Church of England has “disqualified herself” from serving as the Anglican Communion’s mother church.
“The Church of England has chosen to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith expressed in the Anglican formularies,” the statement read. “Our calling to be ‘a holy remnant’ does not allow us to be ‘in communion’ with those provinces that have departed from the historic faith and taken the path of false teaching.”
Christian self-identification in the United Kingdom and other European nations has declined over the past several decades as more residents profess agnostic or atheistic beliefs. Bishops who align with GAFCON and the GSFA now represent 85% of Anglicans across the world.
The secularization of the West has forced ministers in various denominations to clarify their stances on biblical sexual ethics. Pastors in the conservative evangelical Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA, narrowly approved a <a href="https://pcaga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Overture-15-Westminster-amend-BCO-7-self-identified-homosexuals.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">measure</a> last summer affirming that “identification as a ‘homosexual’ is sinful and against nature itself, is something God detests, and is not fitting for an officer of the Church of Christ” after some contended that one could self-identify as a homosexual and serve as a pastor while remaining celibate.
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Christians in some Western nations have meanwhile faced increasing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/christians-against-the-abuse-of-power-theologians-around-the-world-sign-statement-rejecting-government-lockdowns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">backlash</a> from government officials over their stances on homosexuality and transgenderism. Officials in Canada <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/revival-and-reformation-is-needed-canadian-pastors-sound-off-on-new-law-that-threatens-to-criminalize-evangelism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">enacted</a> a statute at the beginning of last year which called teaching on sexual ethics a “myth” and threatened pastors with up to five years of prison time if they called others to leave sexual lifestyle choices which conflict with biblical principles.

St Peter & St Pauls Parish Church

Conservative Anglicans Rebuke English Communion’s Approval Of Same-Sex Marriage

Africa

Homosexuality

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Grace Community Church lead pastor John MacArthur recently sat down to talk with The Daily Wire about his legal battle with Los Angeles officials, the media’s Covid fearmongering, and the response of most Christian churches to the virus — and the chances are none of them are going to like what he had to say.
To be honest, I found myself struggling to pay much attention to the old school praise and worship ensemble on the stage. While the band clearly had practiced hard to perform with excellence for that Sunday service, the truly captivating spectacle was in the pews.
The rows and rows of pews of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles that Sunday morning were packed with people — unmasked people, thousands of them — all there to hear an 81-year-old pastor offer his emphatically not “seeker friendly” biblical teaching.
If I had looked closely enough, perhaps I could have spotted the government auditors who had been attending the services for weeks to chronicle the church’s mounting Covid-19 health order infractions. While most of the rest of the country is now mostly open, Los Angeles is still in strict “lockdown” mode, including forbidding full in-door church assemblies — the type Grace has been defiantly hosting since August.
When Pastor John MacArthur finally took the stage, the most striking thing about him was that his demeanor was unchanged from two days earlier, when we’d met at the Daily Wire offices. There on the stage was the same man; no aura of special status or sense of self-importance. Rather, standing in front of the 7,000 congregants was a man who has spent decades delivering the same message in the same mode, warning of the consequences of rejecting God’s truth — and in many ways predicting the converging crises of which he was quite publicly now in the center.
MacArthur&#8217;s an even busier man these days than usual, adding regular appearances on Fox News and the courtroom to his already jam-packed schedule, so when we sat down on Friday we quickly got to the subject that’s been dominating the headlines for months. When I asked him if America is in the throes of the biggest media-pushed false narrative in the country’s history, MacArthur said without hesitation, “Oh yeah.&#8221;
“We all heard the same thing: give us two weeks and we’ll stop the hospitals from being overrun. But that never happened,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think that’s why people keep coming to Grace Church — because they just don’t believe the narrative.”
While he said he had understood historically something as seismic as this clampdown on individual freedom was possible, the swiftness and magnitude caught him off-guard.
“There was never even an attempt to do something like this before,” he said of the liberty-restricting and economy-crushing lockdowns. “There was never even a short-term act like this, let alone going on for six, seven months.”
“We all saw coming the ability of powerful people to control us in ways that had never been possible before. We’re dealing now with a whole pile of unintended consequences,&#8221; he said, citing the power of the internet in promoting fear. “The decision that Fauci made, they made a decision in a complete vacuum. They made a decision to do one thing and never considered the massive implications that would go all over the place, that were far worse than them doing that one thing. And they’re still beating that drum, and people are still acquiescing.”
“What we saw was the most graphic illustration in history of the fact you don’t need an army to conquer a nation, you just need fear — and it doesn’t have to be a real fear, and it can be completely deceptive,” he observed. “You have all these generations of people who gave their lives in war to get freedom for generations that they wouldn’t even know. They were sacrificing their lives for future generations. Now people will give up every freedom if you’ll protect them from a virus that won’t kill them.”
While the virus, of course, can be deadly, MacArthur said, the chance of dying of it — particularly for those under 65 without any co-morbidities — is a fraction of a percent. In a recent Sunday service, he even went so far as to declare “there is no pandemic.” As evidence, he cited the <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2020/09/cdc-did-not-admit-only-6-of-recorded-deaths-from-covid-19/">CDC report</a> that of the 200,000 people who have died in connection to the virus, “for 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.”
When I asked him if his critics among the Lockdown Left would declare that he was selling false hope if he were to get infected and die, the pastor shrugged off such a claim.
“For me, to die is gain,” he replied, quoting the apostle Paul in the Book of Philippians. “That is not even a relevant thought to me. Far better to depart and be with Christ… The Lord’s in complete charge of my life. When it’s over, it’s over, and it’s up to him.”
While MacArthur dismissed cynical attempts to undermine the larger message about the freedom of religion, he said that he does not want to be “irresponsible” in his approach to coronavirus. “The good news is I haven’t pronounced that I can heal people,” he joked. But he also made a point of noting that no one has died of COVID-19 from going to his fully reopened church.
At its core, the pastor suggested, his battle with the county is about the battle for truth — about whether we live in a society that embraces it or rejects it. “Once truth breaks down, everything is lost, and all you can do is fight — all you can do is fight with the truth for the truth,” he said.
Teaching the truth is the mission of the church, but too many churches are failing to carry out that mission, he said.
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So how did it come to this — MacArthur against the world, a modern-day Athanasius at odds not just with the state but other church leaders?
In late July, MacArthur <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/compliance-would-be-disobedience-prominent-california-church-defies-state-lockdown-to-resume-in-person-assembly">announced</a> that he was reopening the doors of Grace Community Church in defiance of Los Angeles County’s ongoing restrictions imposed on houses of worship. Within days, the county issued a <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Ex.-5-1_Cease-and-Desist-Letter.pdf">cease and desist letter</a> threatening $1,000 daily fines and even imprisonment if MacArthur failed to comply with the county mandate. In response, the church filed a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/church-sues-california-after-being-threatened-with-fines-and-jail">lawsuit</a> against the county asking for a declaration and judgment that the health order is unconstitutional, both on face and as applied.
MacArthur’s team maintains that they simply cannot comply with an unconstitutional order. The county, on the other hand, says that the church’s legal arguments, based on the First Amendment, are a mere “sideshow” and have demanded exorbitant fees and possibly jail time. On Sept. 24, the L.A. Superior Court <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/macarthur-prevails-california-court-says-church-and-pastor-entitled-to-trial/?#more-12931">ruled</a> in MacArthur&#8217;s favor, agreeing that he is entitled to a full trial before the county can seek contempt against him.
The pastor made clear during our talk that he is not defying state orders lightly. The mission of his life, as it is for all believers, he said, is to spread the Gospel to the best of his ability and to responsibly carry out the ministry he’s been given during this brief stint on earth. And he certainly won’t fail to carry out his ministry for a law that flies in the face of the First Amendment.
For those who study the Bible, he said, much of this looks familiar. “Of course, as a Christian, we see in Scripture prophecy of the world eventually becoming global,” said MacArthur, pointing to the Book of Revelation. “One world government, one world economy, one world ruler. That is more possible now than it has ever been in human history, and you can see just how it lays out.”
But while he could see that there was “a prophetic picture that would unfold at some point,” he did not see “this level of capability of that being a reality.”
“The ramping up of the incessant media generating fear — and still doing it. It’s what P.T. Barnum said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’” said the preacher. “People can be deceived … How do you explain Nazi Germany? How do you explain Christian people in Christian Germany massacring millions and millions of people almost unconscionably? It’s amazing the power that can be exerted over people if you have enough fear or if you get them in enough depressed situations.”
The true crisis behind the crisis, he suggested, is that ours is now an era of lies. “Lying is so ubiquitous and everybody knows that everybody is lying,” he said. “Of course, Satan’s the author of lies, so this is his world. He is the ultimate force behind it all, supernaturally.”
So what are we to do in a &#8220;world of lies&#8221;? There is but one recourse, MacArthur told me. “Once truth breaks down, everything is lost — and all you can do is fight,” he said. “All you can do is fight with the truth for the truth.”
And this is where the solemn biblical scholar offered a glimmer of hope. What he has seen in his church in the middle of a valley dominated by leftist politicians and activists is a thirst for the truth, particularly among young people.
Grace has seen about 100 new members a month for years, he said, and 90% are 30 and under. He&#8217;d thought that his congregation would get older as he aged and as his church consistently rejected the “seeker-friendly” approach. But the opposite has been true.
“Conservative millennials are truth-seekers — that’s what marks them, that’s their conservative character. They want the truth,” he explained. “They don’t want to be lied to. They have values. They have morals. They have convictions. &#8230; Liberal millennials just want to burn, tear down, destroy what exists. The separation is massive.”
When it comes to churches, he believes this year has been a “sifting time,” when “the weak” will fall away.
“There are churches that have been irrelevant, but it wasn’t obvious until crisis came and they don’t have any answers. You can’t make daisy chains when people are terrified — not so much terrified by the virus, but terrified that they’re losing the world they’ve always known; that the future is totally out of their hands and it’s not going to be good because people are lying to them. If people want anything, they want the truth.”
“One out of five churches are predicted to never come back,” he said. “That’s not all bad. Maybe they were getting away with sentimentalism and superficiality because there was no reason to fear things, to feel like you’ve lost everything.”
“I’ve watched guys who have commanded the Christian internet — nobody listens to them,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Because they’re woke, and if they’re woke, they won’t say a word. If they bought into being woke, if they bought into CRT [Critical Race Theory], if they bought into ‘systemic racism,’ if they bought into social justice, they can’t make a peep. Because they’ll be alienated. They picked sides, and from my standpoint, as a truth-seeker, they picked the wrong side.”
Some of his friends from other ministries will not speak to him anymore because he’s spoken out against the social justice and CRT agenda, said the pastor. “This is very positive: What’s coming out of this is stop with the nonsense and give me the truth.”
That&#8217;s why Grace is seeing more than 2 million sermon downloads a month, he asserted. “There’s only one common reality: they want to hear the truth.&#8221;
&#8220;And Christians need not fear offending people — indeed, they should embrace it when it comes to the gospel,&#8221; he advised. “There is built-in offense to the truth, and I don’t think we need to sneak up on them. We need to be up-front.&#8221; Speaking the “offensive truth” presents a “stark comparison” to the falsehoods people are hearing. They need to be “knocked off the comfort level of just buying into the narrative.”
That is, after all, what Jesus did, he noted. “Jesus said you hate me because I tell you you’re sinful. That’s why you hate me… That’s the most jarring thing you can say to people: You’re sinful, you need a Savior, you’re going to perish, you’re going to be judged, you’re going to eternal punishment. There&#8217;s no more jarring reality than that. In fact, it’s so jarring that the pragmatic megachurch will never say it.”
This, the pastor argued, is no time for pragmatic, self-help sophistry. It&#8217;s a time for a fearless, tireless commitment to countering the lies of the world with redemptive truth.
“We have the responsibility of proclaiming the most jarring message that’s ever been proclaimed — and it not only cost Jesus his life, it cost all the Apostles their lives, as well, and all the other Christians in the early church who were being slaughtered and martyred,” he said. &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t that they were offensive people. It was that they were traveling around telling everybody that there was only one redeemer, and it was Jesus Christ, and if you didn&#8217;t put your trust in him, you were going to hell.&#8221;
People will come to churches that preach that message unashamedly, said MacArthur. They will come because of this “strong desire to find out is the Gospel true — and what else is true.&#8221;

John MacArthur

MacArthur Against The World

California

COVID

Los Angeles

Christianity Today, long a periodical interested in the state of Christianity in America and beyond, chose as its first <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-february/hidden-cost-of-tax-exemption.html?share=W8WCpAicWdgbfvWBIB1OuZu7JODENqc4">cover story</a> of the new year an article entitled, “The Hidden Cost of Tax Exemption.” Noted historian Paul Matzko makes a case for why American churches may be better off by refusing the “governmental largesse” of tax exemption.
In truth, however, rather than make churches more ideologically faithful, the loss of tax exemption for churches would invade upon church autonomy and curb religious liberty.
The article portrays America as populated by those who “view churches as basically parasitical.” Pastors live large off the largesse that comes from tax exemption, feeding on the benefits their churches drain from their host community without returning much, if any, noticeable benefit. Tax exemption is appealing, according to this cover story, because of a historical desire of churches to propagate racism, as well as to further discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
This of course comes, we read, through another temptation: Political power. Ever since President Lyndon Johnson, churches have been hellbent on unshackling themselves from the government’s control in order to maintain political dominance. In short, the article suggests that tax exemption has led to the American church abandoning the sanctifying effects of the Gospel for the enticing sins of greed, gluttony, racism, and bigotry.
Any hope that the article would temper its criticisms against the intangible good churches supply is quickly dashed because, we are told, the exemption “is not available in any way to the irreligious” and may instead be “a massive government subsidy for religion.” Ecclesiastical charitable acts could, after all, be covered by others because &#8220;the tax-exempt status of churches isn’t a requirement for people of faith to do good works.&#8221;
It is a dim, if not cynical, view of the American church. Whether churches in Sod, West Virginia caring for a community bedeviled by an opioid crisis or churches in Gas City, Indiana caring for struggling farmers feel they have access to “political power” or “cultural privilege,” either now or in the past, appears immaterial. Reading the article, one almost feels the need to cheer on churches to voluntarily relinquish tax exemption and assuage their moral culpability.
Tax exemption is no mere privilege bestowed by a beneficent government upon a lesser entity it controls. It is a recognition that churches — and all houses of worship — maintain an independent autonomy to pursue their duty to a higher authority than government. That is what the exemption recognizes.
As James Madison famously said in his &#8220;Memorial and Remonstrance&#8221; of 1785, &#8220;what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.&#8221; Government may not interfere with that duty of man toward his Creator, but is instituted among men to protect the exercise of that duty of man toward his Creator.
That is why it is illegal for the city of Houston, Texas to use its power of eminent domain to seize property owned by <a href="https://firstliberty.org/cases/fifthward/">African-American churches in the Fifth Ward</a> in order to move in businesses that can then become taxable engines to fill the coffers of city hall. It is also why the city of Holly Springs, Mississippi cannot limit access to its town square to those who look like the rest of the community, rather than the growing black congregation, <a href="https://firstliberty.org/cases/opulent-life-church/">Opulent Life Church</a>.
Yet, according to this cover story: “It might not be such a bad thing to lose tax-exempt status. We should consider at the very least, the cost of maintaining this kind of cultural privilege. The true church of God, after all, is not reliant on its special status in the tax code. We can walk by faith and not by government largesse.”
It must hurt the average pastor in America to read this article. Do we really think that the pastors of those churches in the Fifth Ward and Holly Springs are not members of the “true church of God” because they are exempt from taxation? Do churches — and other houses of worship — really maintain their grip on “cultural privilege” because they crave the government’s “largesse” more than religious fidelity?
The “true church of God” is less a target to be taxed or a parasite to be crushed and more a quiet blessing upon a world in need of the peace they preach and acts of service they humbly perform. A local gathering of religious believers should be viewed as a human right of religious association and free exercise worthy of protection, rather than a potential stream of revenue.
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Jeremy Dys (<a href="https://twitter.com/jeremydys">@JeremyDys</a>) is Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications for First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Read more at <a href="https://firstliberty.org/">FirstLiberty.org</a>.

tax sign over coins and dollar bills

DYS: In Defense Of Church Tax Exemptions

Christianity

Taxes

In his continuing effort to solidify his Christian base, President Trump recently thanked his religious supporters for backing him despite his personal foibles while vowing to continue in the fight for religious freedom.
Speaking in Miami last Friday to commence the &#8220;Evangelicals for Trump&#8221; coalition, President Trump said he gets things done despite not being perfect.
“I may not be perfect, but I get things done,&#8221; Trump told the crowd, as reported by <a href="https://www.lifenews.com/2020/01/07/president-trump-thanks-christian-voters-for-their-support-i-may-not-be-perfect-but-i-get-things-done/">LifeNews</a>.
The president went to say that Christians “have never had a greater champion&#8221; in the White House — &#8220;not even close.&#8221;
&#8220;We’ve done things that nobody thought was possible,&#8221; President Trump asserted. &#8220;We’re not only defending our constitutional rights, we’re also defending religion itself, which is under siege.”
“America was not built by religion-hating socialists. America was built by churchgoing, God-worshiping, freedom-loving patriots,&#8221; the president continued. “Faith-based schools, charities, hospitals, adoption agencies, pastors were systematically targeted by federal bureaucrats and ordered to stop following their beliefs &#8230; The day I was sworn in, the federal government’s war on religion came to an abrupt end. My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith. We will restore the faith as the true foundation of American life.”
The president asserted that his administration will not allow Christians to be &#8220;bullied by the far Left,&#8221; whom he described as those “who say these sacred beliefs are outdated.
&#8220;Our traditions and our values are timeless and immortal. [The political Left doesn’t] know what they are missing. Our faith is needed now more than ever,&#8221; Trump said.
Citing his almost miraculous victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump said that he sometimes feels that support from evangelical Christians proves that God is on his side.
“In 2016, evangelical Christians went out and helped us in numbers never seen before… I really believe we have God on our side… or there would have been no way that we could have won,” Trump said. “People say, ‘How do you win? You don’t have the media. You have so many things against you.’ And we win. So there has to be something.”
President Trump launched the &#8220;Evangelicals for Trump&#8221; coalition shortly after Christianity Today published an op-ed calling for his removal from office in the wake of House Democrats filing articles of impeachment.
“The facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/christianity-today-editor-defends-op-ed-demanding-trumps-removal">Mark Galli wrote</a>. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
“The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration,” continued Galli. “He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies and slanders — is a near-perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”

Trump Campaign Launches “Evangelicals For Trump” Coalition In Miami

Trump Vows To Fight For Christians: ‘I May Not Be Perfect, But I Get Things Done’

Donald Trump

The editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote an editorial calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
In my view, this editorial only serves to confirm one of the sadder realizations of my life: that religious conviction guarantees neither moral clarity nor common sense.
The gist of the editorial — and of most religious and conservative opposition to President Trump — is that any good the president has done is dwarfed by his character defects.
This is an amoral view that says more about Galli than it does about the president. He and the people who share his opinion are making the following statement: No matter how much good this president does, it is less important than his character flaws.
Why is this wrong?
First, because it devalues policies that benefit millions of people.
And second, because it is a simplistic view of character.
I do not know how to assess a person&#8217;s character — including my own — outside of how one&#8217;s actions affect others. Since I agree with almost all of President Trump&#8217;s actions as president and believe they have positively affected millions of people, I have to conclude that as president, Trump thus far has been a man of particularly good character.
Of course, if you think his policies have harmed millions of people, you will assess his character negatively. But that is not what never-Trump conservatives or Christians such as the Christianity Today editor-in-chief argue. They argue that his policies have indeed helped America (and even the world), but this fact is far less significant than his character.
In the words of Galli: &#8220;(I)t&#8217;s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.&#8221;
This rhetorical sleight of hand reflects poorly on Galli&#8217;s intellectual and moral honesty.
Galli and every other Christian and conservative opponent of the president believe their concerns are moral, and that the president&#8217;s Christian and other conservative supporters are political.
This is simply wrong.
I and every other supporter of the president I know support him for moral reasons, not to win a &#8220;political poker game.&#8221; Galli&#8217;s view is purely self-serving; he&#8217;s saying, &#8220;We Christian and other conservative opponents of the president think in moral terms, while Christian and other conservative supporters of the president think in political terms.&#8221;
So, permit me to inform Galli and all the other people who consider themselves conservative and/or Christian that our support for the president is entirely moral.
— To us, putting pressure on the Iranian regime — one of the most evil and dangerous regimes on Earth — by getting out of the Iran nuclear deal made by former President Barack Obama is a moral issue. Even New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who loathes Trump, has written how important the president&#8217;s rejection of the Obama-Iran agreement has been.
— To us, enabling millions of black Americans to find work — resulting in the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded — is a moral issue.
— To us, more Americans than ever being employed and almost 4 million Americans freed from reliance on food stamps is a moral issue.
— To us, appointing more conservative judges than any president in history — over the same period of time — is a moral issue. That whether the courts, including the Supreme Court, are dominated by the left or by conservatives is dismissed by Galli as &#8220;political poker&#8221; makes one question not only Galli&#8217;s moral thinking but also his moral theology.
— To us, moving the American embassy to Israel&#8217;s capital city, Jerusalem — something promised by almost every presidential candidate — is a moral issue, not to mention profoundly courageous. And courage is a moral virtue.
— To us, increasing the U.S. military budget — after the severe cuts of the previous eight years — is a moral issue. As conservatives see it, the American military is the world&#8217;s greatest guarantor of world peace.
Yet, none of these things matter to Galli and other misguided Christians and conservatives. What matters more to them is Trump&#8217;s occasional crude language and intemperate tweets, what he said about women in a private conversation and his having committed adultery.
Regarding adultery, that sin is for spouses and God to judge. There is no connection between marital sexual fidelity and moral leadership. I wish there were. And as regards the &#8220;Access Hollywood&#8221; tape, every religious person, indeed every thinking person, should understand that there is no connection between what people say privately and their ability to be a moral leader. That&#8217;s why I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal 20 years ago defending Hillary Clinton when she was charged with having privately expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.
That the editor of Christianity Today thinks the president&#8217;s personal flaws, whatever they might be, are more important than all the good he has done for conservatives, for Christians, for Jews, for blacks and for America tells us a lot &#8230; about Galli and the decline of Christian moral thought.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Hand on Bible.

PRAGER: A Response To The Editor Of Christianity Today

On Sunday, after nationwide controversy erupted over their editorial last Thursday from their editor-in-chief calling for the removal of President Trump, Christianity Today doubled down on its criticism of President Trump in <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-evangelicals-editorial-christianity-today-president.html">another editorial</a>, this time from the magazine’s president, Timothy Dalrymple.
In a piece titled, “The Flag in the Whirlwind: An Update from CT’s President: Why our editor in chief spoke out against Trump, and why the conversation must continue,&#8221; Dalrymple commenced by adumbrating the disparate responses to the original editorial, including those who read the editorial “with tears in their eyes, sharing it with children who have wandered from the faith, rejoicing that at last someone was articulating what they felt in their hearts … Stay strong, they told us, knowing we were about to reap the whirlwind,” and those who “felt incensed and insulted. These readers felt the editorial engaged in character assassination, or maligned a broad swath of our fellow evangelicals, or revealed that we prefer the Democrats to a President who has done a lot of good for causes we all care about.”
In the original editorial, titled, &#8220;Trump Should Be Removed From Office,” Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote, “None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.” Franklin Graham, the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, who founded the magazine, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/magazine-billy-graham-founded-calls-for-trumps-removal-franklin-graham-denounces-them">slammed the magazine</a>, writing, “For Christianity Today to side with the Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United States is unfathomable. The President has been a staunch defender of religious freedom at home and around the world—and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that? Also the President has appointed conservative judges in record number—and Christianity today wants us to ignore that?  … Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade. The spade is this—Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda. It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism.”
Graham was joined by toughly 200 evangelical leaders who denounced the editorial, writing a <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/nearly-200-evangelical-leaders-slam-christianity-today-for-questioning-their-christian-witness.html">letter</a> which stated, “Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.”
Dalrymple wrote, “Of course, we appreciate the support and listen humbly to the criticisms. But at the end of the day, we write for a readership of One. God is our Tower. Let the whirlwind come.”
Dalrymple protested that Trump’s characterization of the magazine as “far left” and others’ belief that the magazine’s staff were not Bible-believing Christians were inaccurate, adding, “Neither is true. Christianity Today is theologically conservative. We are pro-life and pro-family. We are firm supporters of religious liberties and economic opportunity for men and women to exercise their gifts and create value in the world. We believe in the authority of Scripture.”
He opined, “We at Christianity Today believe we need to relearn the art of balancing two things: having a firm opinion and inviting free discussion. We need, in other words, both a flag and a table.”
Dalrymple defended editor-in-chief Mark Galli, then continued, “Christianity Today has no interest in partisan politics. It does not endorse candidates. We aim to bring biblical wisdom and beautiful storytelling both to the church and from the church to the world.”
Then he segued to Trump, writing, “Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters.”
Dalrymple posited that the issue at hand was that “we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more.”
Dalrymple championed the idea of dialogue, noting, “Deeply aware of our own sinfulness and limitations, we are going to invite supporters and critics alike to produce essays agreeing or disagreeing with our stated views. It is time for evangelicals to have a serious discussion about how our identity as Christians shapes our activity as citizens. We will invite authors who represent a variety of viewpoints in a thoughtful and charitable manner. We will publish those essays in mid-January. We hope we can come together in convicted humility and learn from one another.”
He concluded, “The flag is planted. The table is set. We invite you to join us at either one.”
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Businessman clenching fists, cropped

Christianity Today Doubles Down, Issues ANOTHER Editorial Slamming Trump

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