Michael Campbell of Campbell County, Kentucky, now has his high school diploma.For almost all graduates this year, that would be a given. But Mr. Campbell’s certificate was withheld after he gave a vocal, evangelistic testimony to his faith in Christ during a graduation address, The Washington Times’ Victor Morton reports.
His departure from an approved text cost him an on-stage presentation, but the school relented five days later. The diploma flap, Mr. Campbell said, now has him thinking of a career in the ministry following a stint in the U.S. Air Force.
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Volunteer Christian chaplains in Carlsbad, California, can use any word for God they want in public prayers — except for Jesus, whose death and resurrection led to the birth of the Christian faith.
That’s the word from City Manager Scott Chadwick, who told father-son chaplaincy duo Denny and J.C. Cooper that praying “in Jesus’ name” was “considered harassment, created a hostile work environment and lifted one religion above another.”
Religious freedom law firm First Liberty Institute sent a letter to the city asking the mayor and city council to rescind Mr. Chadwick’s edict. The public interest firm said it would help Carlsbad draft a sensible policy, free of charge.
A nationwide bus tour aims to remind voters that the Biden administration has modified the government’s reading of Title IX — enacted 52 years ago to help women and girls in academics and sports — to include transgender individuals, and it started in a place close to the chief executive’s heart, The Times’ Valerie Richardson reports.
The “Take Back Title IX” bus tour from the Our Sports, Our Bodies coalition started in Mr. Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and will roll through a dozen states with the plea, “Keep Women’s Sports Female!”
The president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has disclosed the names of two officials cited anonymously in the recent federal indictment of Matt Queen, the school’s former interim provost and a longtime professor.
Heath Woolman, chief of staff at the school when a 2022 abuse case surfaced, is said to be the individual who told dean of women Terri Stovall to make her report on the incident “go away.” That conversation, which Mr. Queen allegedly witnessed, was key to the charge of obstructing justice leveled at Mr. Queen, who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The Vatican issued a speedy apology after word got out that Pope Francis — who has often championed acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in the Catholic Church — used a vulgar term for gay men in a closed-door meeting with Italian bishops.
“The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologizes to those who felt offended by the use of a term, as reported by others,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in the official apology.
What the world needs now is hope, says Pastor Allen Jackson of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That’s why he’s taking to the TBN airwaves next week to launch a weeknight interview show, “Allen Jackson NOW.”
The show will differ from the popular radio and TV sermons he broadcasts through the eponymous Allen Jackson Ministries, whose teachings reach an estimated 3 million people weekly.
Vision expanded. Columnist Billy Hallowell tells the story of renowned eye surgeon Dr. Ming Wang, who fled China during the Cultural Revolution. The doctor not only developed a revolutionary treatment that brought sight to some who had lost hope, but he also expanded his vision when he changed from atheism to embracing Christian faith.
“It was in a study of a human eye, at Harvard Medical School, I realized that my notion, my atheist worldview, was in crisis,” Dr. Wang said. His story is told in a new movie, “Sight” that’s in theaters now.
Appeasement. Kowtowing to Iran, President Biden is appeasing America’s enemies, writes Judge Phil Ginn of Southern Evangelical Seminary. The United States’ U.N. ambassador should not have stood in tribute to Iran’s late president, killed in a helicopter crash. The blame, he says, lies at Mr. Biden’s doorstep.
Avoiding top schools. Everett Piper, in his “Ask Dr. E” column, answers a reader from Norman, Oklahoma, who asks whether Mr. Piper is being “alarmist” when he counsels parents to avoid sending their children to the nation’s top schools.
Our columnist says no: “I am claiming that today’s universities are hopelessly muddled in a swamp of opinions, where the guy with the loudest voice, the most obnoxious attitude or the most prestigious diploma wins the day and controls the debate regardless of the veracity of his claims or the virtue he demonstrates in his life.”