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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The effects of both President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine on NATO have forced swift and potentially permanent changes in the alliance. Following last month’s announcement that the majority of NATO’s 32 members had agreed to increase defense spending to hit 5% of each nation’s GDP, Trump drew headlines after he drastically changed his tone and declared the alliance was no longer a “rip-off.” But his previously tough stance saw undeniable results in how the security group operates.  “Trump has changed the game,” Peter Doran, an expert on Russia, Ukraine, and transatlantic relations, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “[Then] there’s Vladimir Putin, who has clearly awakened the Europeans to the danger that Russia presents to them.”  Beginning in his first term, Trump made clear his resentment that only five NATO allies were meeting their 2% GDP defense spending pledges, and those criticisms rang loudly following his return to the campaign trail for the 2024 election amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.   Questions ran rampant over whether Trump would not only continue to provide strong U.S. support for Ukraine, but whether Washington would remain a reliable ally for Europe when confronted with the reality of a war-ready Russia.  RUSSIA SAYS NATO THREATENS WWIII IN LATEST DETERRENCE PLAN THAT COULD TAKE DOWN KALININGRAD ‘FASTER THAN EVER’ President Donald Trump held a press conference after the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in The Hague, Netherlands on June 25, 2025.  (Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images) Though an increasing number of NATO nations began upping their defense spending commitments following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, several allies began pushing for changes before Trump even re-entered the White House. Trump not only threatened to remove troops from Europe and divert them to positions in Asia, but he suggested he might not come to the defense of a NATO ally should they be attacked, infamously saying at a February 2024 campaign event, “You don’t pay your bills; you get no protection. It’s very simple.” “I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” he said in regard to the threat of a Russian attack on a NATO nation. But his tough rhetoric appeared to yield results.  NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — who has shared a good relationship with Trump — jokingly referred to Trump’s geopolitical tendencies for unconventional statesmanship, particularly after he used the f-word in a fiery rant about a breakdown in the Iran-Israel ceasefire during last month’s summit when he said, “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” President Donald Trump is greeted by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (right) and Netherland Prime Minister Dick Schoof (left) at the official welcoming ceremony for the 2025 NATO Summit at The Hague on June 25, 2025. (AP Images) “Donald Trump’s a real contrast to Joe Biden,” Peter Rough, a senior fellow and the director of the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia, told Fox News Digital. “Joe Biden, bear hugged the NATO allies to the point of smothering them with adoration, and that caused them, I think, to sit back and relax a little bit.  “Donald Trump, by contrast, exposes the allies to just enough hostile power to encourage them to do more, but it doesn’t expose them so much that it might invite a Russian attack,” he added. “And I think that’s the art of the deal, so to speak.” PUTIN MUM ON TRUMP’S 50-DAY ULTIMATUM, KREMLIN OFFICIALS CLAIM RUSSIA ‘DIDN’T CARE’ But while experts agree it is unlikely that NATO nations would have stepped up their spending on defense even more without the pressure Trump put on them, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in re-invigorating NATO cannot be ignored. Participants of a high-intensity training session, seen at the end of the exercise at the Nowa Deba training ground on May 6, 2023 in Nowa Deba, Poland. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images) “If Vladimir Putin and the Russians in the post-Cold War period had sought to engage Europe and chosen more of a democratic future, there might not be a NATO Alliance today,” Rough said. “But Putin has given NATO a real reason to exist, and President Trump has done his part by… cajoling, pushing, nudging the allies.” But not everyone is convinced that the changes NATO is undergoing are permanent.  RUSSIA THREATENS WEST WITH ‘PREEMPTIVE STRIKES’ AS NATO LOOKS TO DELIVER PATRIOTS ‘AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE’ Mike Ryan, who formally served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, told Fox News Digital he does not necessarily believe that the Trump and Putin presidencies have permanently changed the NATO alliance but said, “Both have energized and focused [the] allies.” “But that’s what happens in NATO when confronted with an external crisis,” he added.  Upon Trump’s re-election there was increased concern about how the U.S. would be perceived by its allies, whether it was still considered a trusted partner or if it was returning to isolationist tendencies not seen since the lead up to World War II. US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet during the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in The Hague, Netherlands on June 25, 2025.  (Getty Images) “The answer is very clearly no,” Doran argued. “If anything, Trump came back and did exactly the same thing he did in the first administration, and that was to remind the Europeans that they are chronically under-spending on defense. “If anything, Trump hasn’t changed at all. It’s the Europeans’ awareness that they need to spend more, and they have responded positively to that challenge, and that is very encouraging,” he added. Though Rough cautioned there is a balance to be maintained when putting such high pressure on U.S. allies.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “Donald Trump’s created a lot of anxiety in Europe, and it’s important to convert that anxiety into policy wins,” he said. “If that anxiety is allowed to

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Iran’s foreign minister denied the Islamic Republic is trying to assassinate President Donald Trump and other top administration officials from his first term in an exclusive interview Monday on “Special Report.” Abbas Araghchi also denied that Iran wants to wipe Israel “off the map” and downplayed calls for “Death to America” in his first appearance on the network since the U.S. struck three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. “You know, we have always said, the supreme leader and other officials in Iran have always said that ‘Death to America’ is, in fact, death to the, you know, hegemonic policies of the United States, not to the people of the United States,” Araghchi claimed.  “Yes, there are some, perhaps, radicals, persons or groups here and there in different places, inside, outside of Iran, who may say something like what you said, but that has never been our policy, and they will never be our policy in the future.” The senior Iranian official told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier that it’s never been his country’s official position to try and assassinate Trump or previous administration officials following the 2020 killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds Force. TOP IRANIAN CLERIC CALLS FOR TRUMP’S EXECUTION “This is not our policy to kill anybody outside Iran, let alone the president of another country,” Araghchi said. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in November that the IRGC had tasked Afghan national Farhad Shakeri, 51, with surveilling and formulating a plan to kill then-President-elect Trump. Shakeri, who was believed to still be at large in Iran at the time the complaint was released, was charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and murder-for-hire, among other charges. Then President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on December 16, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) The DOJ also charged a member of the IRGC in 2022 with plotting to murder former Trump national security advisor John Bolton.  Trump said earlier this year that he’s left instructions for Iran to be “obliterated” should it succeed in any assassination attempt on his life.  “There won’t be anything left,” he told reporters. In response to questions about Iran’s role supporting its terror proxies and targeting Israel, Araghchi—who has served as Iran’s foreign minister for nearly a year—told “Special Report that it isn’t Tehran’s policy to eliminate Israel. US AIRSTRIKE ON NUCLEAR FACILITIES FOLLOWS YEARS OF IRANIAN PLOTS ON AMERICAN SOIL Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with nuclear scientists and personnel of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday, June 11.  (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Reuters ) “This has never been Iran’s policy to wipe out Israel from the map,” he claimed. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has referred to Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that will be “uprooted and destroyed.”  Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a “World without Zionism” conference in 2005, repeated a phrase from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, that Israel “must be wiped off the map.” Most recently, Iranian Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari said on state TV in June that Iran must “annihilate” Israel, according to a translation of the remarks by MEMRI TV, the media arm of the Middle East Media Research Institute. A map shows the location of Israel and Iran. (Fox News) Araghchi told “Special Report” that Iran remains open to indirect talks with the Trump administration following the strikes on Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, but cautioned that Iran will not give up nuclear enrichment in any potential deal.  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Ashley Carnahan is a writer at Fox News Digital. Read More

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The wife of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., slammed the media for invading her family’s privacy in a new podcast interview, saying the industry was rewarded for acting terribly. “My husband is a public figure, but I am a private citizen and journalists don’t seem to really care,” Gisele Fetterman told Meghan McCain in an upcoming episode of her podcast, “Citizen McCain.” Gisele Fetterman explained how her house was surrounded by media trucks after her husband checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center for depression weeks after he was sworn into the U.S. Senate in 2023. “They knew John wasn’t there. They were looking for me, and I was in the car,” she told McCain. “I went into the garage, but they were surrounding literally the whole outside [of] my house. National, local, and, you know, I am a private citizen.” Gisele Fetterman speaks on the “Citizen McCain” podcast. (Citizen McCain/2Way) DEMOCRAT JOHN FETTERMAN DECLARES SUPPORT FOR ICE, CONDEMNING ANY CALLS FOR ABOLITION AS ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ Gisele Fetterman said she wished she could protect her children from public scrutiny but admitted that she wouldn’t stop them from reading the reports about their father if they wanted to. John Fetterman’s health was a focal point during his Senate campaign for Pennsylvania after he suffered a stroke in May 2022. Though he won the race, the scrutiny over his health continued after he checked himself into Walter Reed to be treated for depression after taking office. He has been open in the years since about his cognitive and mental health struggles. McCain shared with Fetterman that the media coverage during her father John McCain’s battle with brain cancer intensified the situation and made it “one of the worst times in my entire life.” He died in 2018. McCain asked Fetterman if she felt the press had “learned any lessons” about treating people dealing with health issues with “kindness and compassion.” Gisele Fetterman speaks with Meghan McCain on the “Citizen McCain” podcast. (Citizen McCain / 2WAY) FETTERMAN LASHES OUT AT ‘HIT PIECE’ AFTER CONFRONTATION WITH REPORTER ABOUT HIS HEALTH “No,” Fetterman responded. “Definitely not.” She argued that the media profited from these stories so they were incentivized to report on personal matters. “I think they’re rewarded by clicks and how many people read the article,” she argued. “I think it’s rewarded, so the goal is to be more and more terrible.” Since taking office in 2023, John Fetterman has drawn criticism from progressives within his own party over his staunch support for Israel, immigration enforcement and occasional defense of President Donald Trump. LIBERALS WHO RALLIED BEHIND FETTERMAN POST-STROKE IN 2022 TURN ON PRO-ISRAEL SENATOR AFTER NY MAGAZINE REPORT U.S. Senator John Fetterman.  (Scott Eisen/Getty Images) Ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, Fetterman faced backlash for meeting with the then-president-elect at Mar-a-Lago. He called Trump “kind” and “cordial” during an appearance on “The View,” and said his New York criminal trial was “politically motivated.” Reports have emerged from Fetterman’s staffers describing erratic behavior behind the scenes since he took office. A New York Magazine article in May also revealed alleged tensions between Fetterman and his wife over his backing of Israel and its war in Gaza, and the senator dismissed the story as a “hit piece.”  CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP In the wide-ranging “Citizen McCain” interview airing Wednesday at noon ET on 2WAY’s “Citizen McCain,” Gisele Fetterman also revealed she had no interest in running for political office and confessed she wouldn’t be supportive of her husband running for president. Fox News Digital reached out to his office for comment.  Kristine Parks is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Read more. Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure. In a lengthy statement released Monday, the two living King children called their father’s case a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.” “As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” they wrote. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.” Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10. President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations. The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April. Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration’s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file. The King records, meanwhile, were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date. Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King’s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement. It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him. “He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” the King children said in their statement. “The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,” they continued. “These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.” Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat. King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice. James Earl Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Members of King’s family, and others, have questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, asked for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it “found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.” As an independent nonprofit, RNS believes everyone should have access to coverage of religion that is fair, thoughtful and inclusive. That’s why you will never hit a paywall on our site; you can read all the stories and columns you want, free of charge (and we hope you read a lot of them!) But, of course, producing this journalism carries a high cost, to support the reporters, editors, columnists, and the behind-the-scenes staff that keep this site up and running. That’s why we ask that if you can, you consider becoming one of our donors. Any amount helps, and because we’re a nonprofit, all of it goes to support our mission: To produce thoughtful, factual coverage of religion that helps you better understand the world. Thank you for reading and supporting RNS. Deborah Caldwell, CEO and Publisher Donate today Read More

(RNS) — Earlier this month, the IRS announced it would not seek to remove the tax exemption of houses of worship that endorse political candidates, thereby making an apparent exception to the so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision of the tax code that bars nonprofit organizations from engaging in political activity. The announcement came in the form of a consent decree proposed to a federal court in Texas in a lawsuit challenging the Johnson Amendment on religious liberty grounds. There’s no reason to think that the court will reject it. Why shouldn’t pastors, in obedience to their religious values, be able to tell their congregation whom to vote for (or against) with tax-liability impunity? Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued a predictable denunciation and was in turn pooh-poohed by the National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters as making much ado about nothing. Indeed, as the consent decree itself points out, the IRS has long made a practice of not enforcing the Johnson Amendment against houses of worship. To be sure, a law may be useful without having to be enforced. It cannot be doubted that clergy throughout the land have raised the threat of losing nonprofit status to silence calls for partisan pulpiteering. That they’ll no longer be able to do so may, as the Texas Monthly pointed out, serve to deepen political polarization in our religious life. Come what may, it’s important to recognize what the consent decree does and doesn’t do. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump seized upon the Johnson Amendment as a great evil and, in deference to the desires of a segment of his activist religious base, vowed to “totally destroy” it. Sure enough, during its mark-up of the 2017 tax-cut bill, the GOP-controlled House Ways and Means Committee exempted all nonprofits from the purview of the Johnson Amendment “solely because of the content of any statement” made in the “ordinary course of the organization’s regular and customary activities in carrying out its exempt purpose.” What this meant was that any nonprofit organization could support or oppose political candidates without losing its 501(c)(3) tax status, which allows individuals to make tax deductible contributions to nonprofits to support (or oppose) political candidates. The individual donors could even condition their support of a nonprofit on its support of (or opposition to) a particular candidate. Nonprofits do sometimes establish 501(c)(4) organizations to engage in such direct politicking, but any contributions to such organizations are not tax-deductible.  “No question it’s an end run about campaign finance reform,” the American Jewish Committee’s General Counsel Marc Stern told me at the time of the original Trump tax cut. “It will lead to all sorts of shenanigans.” Fortunately, the Senate refused to go along, and the Ways and Means Committee’s provision never made it into the final bill. The current consent decree limits a non-profit’s permissible political activity to “(b)ona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith.” (Italics mine.) Far from totally destroying the Johnson Amendment, the decree would interpret it in a way that maintains the ban on a house of worship publicly endorsing or opposing a candidate.  In fact, it would permit the IRS to do exactly what it did the last (and just about only) time it penalized a house of worship for violating the Johnson Amendment. That was four days before the 1992 election, when a non-denominational church in New York State, the Church at Pierce Creek, took out full-page ads in the Washington Times and USA Today opposing Bill Clinton’s candidacy for president of the United States. The IRS proceeded to lift the church’s tax exemption, a decision upheld by federal district and appeals courts in Washington. If the IRS did likewise in a similar case, would the current Supreme Court follow suit and uphold its decision? That, notwithstanding the consent decree, must still be considered an open question. As an independent nonprofit, RNS believes everyone should have access to coverage of religion that is fair, thoughtful and inclusive. That’s why you will never hit a paywall on our site; you can read all the stories and columns you want, free of charge (and we hope you read a lot of them!) But, of course, producing this journalism carries a high cost, to support the reporters, editors, columnists, and the behind-the-scenes staff that keep this site up and running. That’s why we ask that if you can, you consider becoming one of our donors. Any amount helps, and because we’re a nonprofit, all of it goes to support our mission: To produce thoughtful, factual coverage of religion that helps you better understand the world. Thank you for reading and supporting RNS. Deborah Caldwell, CEO and Publisher Donate today Read More

(RNS) — On our  podcast “Saved by the City,” launched back in 2021, my co-host Roxanne Stone and I had a lot to say about our evangelical Christian upbringings. We critiqued teachings we had heard growing up about purity and gender, and laughed about our teenage selves feeling compelled to prevent the goth kids in our youth group from going to hell. Our memories, and our process, which in evangelical circles is known as “deconstruction,” struck a chord. An early episode, “How We Survived the Great Evangelical Betrayal,” which was one of our most popular, covered the disorientation and sadness we felt on seeing much of the U.S. evangelical movement embrace a political leader who embodies the opposite of what we had been taught about Christianity. We interviewed popular former evangelicals who were deconstructing, some still within the faith, some beyond it. But after a season or two, Roxy and I realized we didn’t want to be another “deconstruction podcast.”  First, that’s a crowded market. According to a 2024 Barna survey, 2 in 5 American Christians say they have deconstructed, and to serve them there are deconstruction podcasts for every niche interest: politics, gender, race, theology, youth group culture and more. (Here are two lists of deconstruction or deconstruction-adjacent podcasts.) It sometimes seems as if for every media option tailored to mainstream evangelicals — about the Bible, marriage and family, leadership or an overt or covert social and political conservatism — five others examine or reject aspects of that world.  Beyond the gaze of the algorithm, deconstruction is a personal, often painful, process of re-examining elements of Christian teaching and upbringing. The process leads different people to different relationships with the faith. Some leave one church or denomination for another; some leave the institutional church altogether but still love Jesus and (although usually with a more complicated love) the Bible; and some move into a post-Christian spirituality.  In the past few years, though, deconstruction has become more than a personal process: it’s a brand. In a crowded digital media market, it’s a way for content creators to identify their niche and reach a growing audience. Look up the hashtags #deconstruction or #exvangelical, and you’ll get a feel for what I’m trying to describe. In 2020, in a highly popular episode of their video-recorded podcast, “Ear Biscuits,” Rhett and Link (Rhett MacLaughlin and Charles ‘Link’ Neal) shared their stories of leaving Christianity. This February, they shared a five-year update.  When I say “brand,” I don’t mean to say that people writing or talking about deconstruction haven’t genuinely done the work. Many of them have, at great cost. Nor am I saying that people working in this world are only or primarily in it for a platform boost and financial gain.  But I am saying that internet culture and consumer culture undeniably shape, and misshape, how religion and spirituality are practiced today. Just as evangelicalism has become a brand — a media matrix of books, podcasts, conferences and TikTok reels meant to be consumed to provide clear answers or shore up a consumer’s evangelical identity — so has much of the exvangelical world. Daniel Vaca, a religious historian at Brown, wrote a great book on this, called “Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America,” that I found helpful for my own book on celebrity. “Evangelicalism exemplifies what I describe as ‘commercial religion,’” he writes. “Religion that takes shape through the ideas, activities, and strategies that typify commercial capitalism.” That is, one way we can understand evangelicalism is as a consumer marketplace. One way evangelicals practice faith is through buying, selling and consuming content tailored to their felt needs.  In this way, it seems to me that the deconstruction world is at risk of becoming like the very thing it’s rejecting. The content may be different, but in many cases, the form — easy, and easily shareable, answers from experts (some credentialed, others less so) — remain the same.  When genuine faith experiences are translated into the world of hashtags, search engine optimization and soundbites, it can cheapen the experience of deconstruction, or any spiritual pursuit. Writing starts to sound like marketing copy. And for those of us who care about good writing and thinking, we might start seeing ourselves rely on shorthands and easy answers — because they “work” to retain an audience in a crowded space. Let’s say a MAGA-fried (a term I just came up with) pastor somewhere outside Dallas posts a video saying something awful about immigrants or trans people, and the responses start coming in: The Bible doesn’t justify hate. Jesus identified with the powerless, not the power-hungry. If your faith causes you to hate your neighbor, you’re doing it wrong. Jesus was a Jewish socialist from Palestine. And so on. It’s not that these statements aren’t true (although the Jesus-was-basically-Bernie-Sanders one feels like a stretch to me), but their slogan-y form saps the statements of their power. This feels like years ago now, but the night in June when we learned that the U.S. military had deployed strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran and that the country may be going to war — a night of great uncertainty and fear for many — someone I follow on X shared a link to T-shirts and other wares that feature a slogan about peace. And while the slogan was true, and while the proceeds go to a peace-building organization and not to the creator, my first thought that night was, Too soon.  There should be moments, and experiences, that are off-limits to quickly produced Internet content. Yes, we do need people speaking truth to power and calling out unrighteousness in high places and pointing out the hypocrisy of religious leaders. We need people naming the ways that bad teaching has harmed precious image bearers and created a mockery of the Christian faith. We also need people who can be still and silent, who know when to speak and when to listen, who are working out their relationship

(RNS) — The executive committee and board of the largest teachers’ union in the country announced late last week that it would not cut its ties to the Anti-Defamation League, despite a resolution by its members to do so. The National Education Association assembly in Portland, Oregon, earlier this month passed a measure to bar its members from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the Anti-Defamation League, the antisemitism watchdog that offers K-12 schools a self-directed, student-led program on countering different forms of hate. The boycott vote from among more than 6,000 members of the teachers’ union came amid growing criticism of the ADL for its staunch pro-Israel advocacy at a time when the country is engaged in a prolonged and brutal war in the Gaza Strip that some groups are likening to a genocide of Palestinians. But the executive committee and board, which must approve boycott proposals, said Friday (July 18), that the NEA does not have any formal partnership with the ADL — schools decide on their own whether to use its curricula — so a boycott would have “constituted a forward-looking declaration.” It also made clear its decision was not a statement of support for the ADL. “Not adopting this proposal is in no way an endorsement of the ADL’s full body of work,” said NEA President Becky Pringle in a statement. “We are calling on the ADL to support the free speech and association rights of all students and educators.” RELATED: National teachers’ union votes to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League The union vote faced backlash from Jewish establishment institutions. Some 400 Jewish organizations across the country, including the leadership of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements, condemned the boycott resolution. They quickly issued a statement welcoming the executive committee decision. “We welcome the NEA Executive Committee and Board of Directors’ decision to reject this misguided resolution that is rooted in exclusion and othering, and promoted for political reasons,” a joint statement from Jewish organizations said. The ADL has been accused of inflating its antisemitic incident statistics by counting anti-Israel speech in its reports and calling defenses of Palestinian rights “hate speech.” Some Jewish groups have also taken issue with the ADL’s position. J Street, the liberal American Jewish organization that seeks a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opposed the teachers’ union vote to boycott the ADL while saying that “charges of antisemitism must not be wielded to quash legitimate criticism of Israeli policy.” And earlier this month, a group of Boston-based Jewish educators recommended that the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism reject draft findings for K-12 education in Massachusetts, in part because the draft relied on the ADL’s “unreliable data about antisemitism,” the group said.  The ADL partners with K-12 schools primarily through No Place for Hate, its self-directed, student-led program that allows students to survey their school’s climate, sign a petition and implement other activities to challenge bias and bullying. The ADL’s website says the program has reached more than 2,000 schools and 1.8 million students. Over the past two years, the ADL eliminated its signature anti-bias education program, A World of Difference. RELATED: The ADL quietly eliminated its anti-bias educational program As an independent nonprofit, RNS believes everyone should have access to coverage of religion that is fair, thoughtful and inclusive. That’s why you will never hit a paywall on our site; you can read all the stories and columns you want, free of charge (and we hope you read a lot of them!) But, of course, producing this journalism carries a high cost, to support the reporters, editors, columnists, and the behind-the-scenes staff that keep this site up and running. That’s why we ask that if you can, you consider becoming one of our donors. Any amount helps, and because we’re a nonprofit, all of it goes to support our mission: To produce thoughtful, factual coverage of religion that helps you better understand the world. Thank you for reading and supporting RNS. Deborah Caldwell, CEO and Publisher Donate today Read More

(RNS and NPR) —  On any given Sunday, churchgoers settle into pews as a clergy person takes an ancient holy text and figures out what it has to say about our lives today. But how would worshippers feel if they found out that sermon was written by Artificial Intelligence?  While it’s hard to measure how widespread faith leaders’ use of the technology is, in an online survey of senior Protestant clergy by Barna Group last year, 12% described being comfortable using AI to write sermons, and 43% said they saw its merits in sermon preparation and research.  “It’s like a mini research paper you have to prepare every week,” said Naomi Sease Carriker, pastor at Messiah of the Mountains, a Lutheran church in Burnsville, North Carolina. “And some weeks … life is just a lot.”  Carriker said clergy tend to talk about AI in hushed tones. But recently, during one of those busy weeks, she opened up ChatGPT. She plugged in the Bible reading for the week, along with a few blog posts on the passages she particularly admired. Pastor Naomi Sease Carriker. (Photo courtesy Messiah of the Mountains) “And boom. Literally within not even 30 seconds, I had a 900-word sermon. And I read through it and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really good,’” she recalled. But she also thought, this feels wrong. It’s an ethical question with which clergy across the country are wrestling. The goal of a sermon is to tell a story that can break open the hearts of people to a holy message. The question is whether it matters where that comes from. Some denominations have issued general guidelines urging thought and caution regarding AI, but they typically don’t give specific rules. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention advises to “develop, maintain, regulate, and use these technologies with the utmost care and discernment, upholding the unique nature of humanity.” The Vatican urges careful use of AI, “not only mitigating risks and preventing harm but also ensuring that its applications are used to promote human progress and the common good.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints probably comes the closest to addressing sermon writing, saying that AI content could be used with attribution.  However, clergy are often left to figure out the intricacies for themselves. While Carriker decided not to preach the AI sermon, she said she does use the technology to get her draft started or wrap up what she’s written with a nice conclusion.  “Why not, why can’t, and why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit work through AI?” Carriker asked. But some say there are reasons not to use AI for sermons. Brad East, who teaches theology at Abilene Christian University in West Texas, argued against it in an op-ed in Christianity Today entitled “AI Has No Place in the Pulpit.”  Brad East. (Photo by Lindsay Boone Photography) “ The church thinks in millennia — not in minutes, hours or days or weeks or years,” East said. “And if it turns out that all of our doomer worries are wrong, then we can start using these in two generations. I don’t need to be an early adopter before I know the full systemic implications.” Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies religion and AI and assistant professor in digital religion(s) at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, said the full picture is nuanced. “ When you look at the history of all religions, they’ve always engaged with different forms of automation, different forms of technological advancement,” Singler said. “The printing press was put to work, first of all, for religious texts, in the European context.” East acknowledged that AI makes sermon-writing easier but said he doesn’t necessarily want all the struggles surrounding it to be relieved, because that’s part of the vocation. “To me, the drudgery is part of the point,” East said. “I do not want pastors preaching sermons out of Scripture who themselves do not read or study Scripture. I just don’t. It is missing the point of what we are trying to do there.” But some clergy point out using AI isn’t just about avoiding the grind or scholarship, instead arguing it can draw upon far more sources than any one human could access. It can also free up time for pastoral care, allowing clergy to prioritize providing counsel or sitting at a bedside of someone who’s dying. However, some argue sermons are part of those relationships. “Does AI know the stories of your people? Do they know about the miscarriage? Do they know about the divorce? Do they know about the abuse? How can an algorithm comprehend lived human experience?” Paul Hoffman, pastor of Evangelical Friends Church in Middletown, Rhode Island, and author of the book “AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep,” said in an interview.  Much of the debate involves grappling with the question of whether AI is being used as a replacement for a sacred human project or whether it’s a tool in the service of that project.  In addition to questions of religious ethics, there are other real problems with AI. It can be unreliable, fabricating entire biblical quotations. And many of the clergy RNS and NPR spoke with pointed to the huge environmental impact. It’s also hard to answer questions about what could be gained or lost by using AI because the technology is changing so quickly.  “But the core elements of what it means to be a human being have never changed,” said Rabbi Daniel Bogard, rabbi of Central Reform Synagogue in St. Louis. “It has always been about what does it mean to live only a handful of days? What does it mean to be in relationship with difficult human beings? And what does it mean to be a sibling or a child or a parent, and how do we navigate the messiness of life?” Bogard has been teaching other rabbis how to use AI, noting that he can “sit and argue with AI over a text and understand it differently and better than

Download Full Size Image“> “To Be”, a new book by Arleen Warnock, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. To Be is a guide for those seeking their true purpose in life. Arleen Warnock’s life experiences have helped her to broaden her outlook toward many of her aspirations. Her views and achievements are based on the lessons she has learned from books that are recommended within this writing. Their wisdom and insights are valuable in our journey to enlightenment and in learning To Be. About the Author Arleen Warnock was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She had two parents who were devoted to their three girls and to each other. Arleen has always found great enjoyment in caring for younger children and thought of pursuing a career in teaching. But first came marriage and children. Her plans changed when her father had a stroke. She and her sisters shared the role of caretaker for his many needs. This is when she became interested in working with special needs children. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Manhattan College of Human Services before working for the Helen Keller Services for the Blind for many years and then for the NYC Early Intervention Program. Arleen raised four children who are her pride and joy. She is now retired but keeps busy volunteering in her community and teaching Sunday School class for special needs children. Her spirit is at peace as she continues to learn to be. “To Be” is a 52-page paperback with a retail price of $12.00 (eBook $7.00). The ISBN is 979-8-88812-461-1. Published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For members of the press, to request a review copy or author interview, please visit https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/pages/media-requests or to buy the book, visit our online bookstore at https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/products/to-be Read More

Download Full Size Image“> “Fortunate Me”, a new book by Heather L. Gendall, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. The United States is overflowing with wonderful places to see and explore. Every summer during her childhood, Heather Gendall and her family camped in a tent throughout the US. In this book, she writes about their adventures, the beautiful places they visited, and the ups and downs of tent camping. She was very fortunate, as most people barely leave their home state. Gendall hopes that her adventures will inspire interest in nature, traveling, visiting new sights, and meeting new people. The US has so much to offer when you go off the beaten path and out of your comfort zone. About the Author Heather L. Gendall is an old soul. She enjoys knitting, DIY projects, woodworking, and many other types of creative projects. She has always enjoyed being outside. Nature is her sanctuary. The vacations she went on as a child made her who she is today. Gendall also enjoys history and environmental science. Every summer, she and her two sons go tent camping. They get excited for each vacation because they get to check off more states that they have visited. “Fortunate Me” is a 94-page paperback with a retail price of $29.00 (eBook $24.00). The ISBN is 979-8-89341-015-0. Published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For members of the press, to request a review copy or author interview, please visit https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/pages/media-requests or to buy the book, visit our online bookstore at https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/products/fortunate-me Read More