Died: Michael Knott, Christian Alternative Musician Who Helped Launch Tooth & Nail

Knott wrote rock operas, sang with honesty and conviction, called out hypocrites, and bucked the norms of the Christian music industry.

Michael Knott, whose music and influence helped cultivate the Christian alternative music scene of the 1990s and 2000s, died Tuesday at the age of 61. He is survived by his daughter, Stormie Fraser.

Knott was the founder of the label Blonde Vinyl and later collaborated with Brandon Ebel to launch the highly influential Tooth & Nail Records, known for bands like Underoath and MxPx.

His raw, innovative, and controversial music pushed against the norms of the industry and laid the groundwork for contemporary communities around Christian alt music.

“Knott helped prove that Christian music could be something legitimate, rather than running two to three years behind mainstream trends,” said Matt Crosslin, who runs the site Knottheads and has become an unofficial archivist of Knott’s work.

Even with his reputation for bucking standards, Knott’s sense of mission was earnest and singular.

“He wanted people to come to Jesus and be saved,” said Nathan Myrick, assistant professor of church music at Mercer University. “He seemed to offer a way of holding faith and raw authenticity in tension.”

Knott was born in Aurora, Illinois, and grew up with six sisters in what he described as a modern “von Trapp family.” They were constantly singing and immersed in music through their father, a folk singer, and their mother, a church organist.

When Knott was in second grade, his family moved to Southern California, where he began to take piano and guitar lessons at the YMCA. He started writing songs in his preteen years and would bury them in a folder in his backyard, convinced that nothing would ever come of his private creative life.

Despite his early shyness about his songwriting, Knott …

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The Witness of Women Is Written on the Walls

I needed female heroes, and I found them in ancient churches.

I grew up believing women could do it all. In rural South Dakota, I was surrounded by farm women, who are some of the toughest, most resilient people I have ever met. My mom could bake delicious chicken and also slaughter them.

South Dakota also frequently leads the nation in the percentage of women and mothers who work outside the home. So as a young girl, I never doubted that women could do whatever they wanted, that they were as equally capable as men. I could become president. I could be an astronaut. I could do whatever I set my mind on doing.

But as I prepared to do so, I discovered a gap between what I had always been told and what I now saw—and that gap was distinctly female-shaped. Despite the many women visible in the workforce in South Dakota, women felt largely invisible when it came to the work of theology. My home church had never had a female preacher. During seminary, I had one female professor. In my doctoral studies, I had two, but none in my religion classes.

I was confident that Scripture supported women in teaching and leading the church: Women were the first to proclaim the gospel (Luke 24:5–12), and Paul names women like Junia and Phoebe, who acted as apostles and deacons (Rom. 16:1, 7). But compared to the pages and pages dedicated to Peter and Paul, Augustine and Aquinas, Calvin and Luther, women often felt like names merely mentioned in the margins.

I wanted more than names. I wanted to see women leading. I wanted to see women teaching. I wanted to see their faces and hear their stories. I wanted exemplars I could imitate: women who, with Paul, could say, “Imitate me, just as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1, NLT).

I wanted heroes.

Eventually, on a trip to Italy, I found them. It …

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White Evangelicals Want Christian Influence, Not a ‘Christian Nation’

A new study finds white evangelicals are most eager to see their faith reflected more in the government, but very few say they support Christian nationalism.

In a country where 80 percent of adults believe religion’s influence is in decline, white evangelicals stand out as the group most likely to want to see their faith reflected in the US government.

According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, most white evangelicals want a president who reflects their religious beliefs, believe the Bible should have some influence on US laws, and see the retreat of religion as a bad thing.

Yet they oppose adopting Christianity as an official religion and very few (8%) have a “favorable” view of Christian nationalism.

Overall, nearly half of adults see the decline of religious influence in the country as a bad thing. White evangelicals are the most likely to see the trend negatively, at 76 percent. The majority of other Christians across traditions agree.

Most Americans want to see someone in the White House who stands up for their religious beliefs. Though few see either candidate in the 2024 race as particularly religious, more than two-thirds of white evangelicals believe Donald Trump comes to their defense.

Despite the increasing buzz around Christian nationalism from candidates on the stump or on social media, Pew found that most Americans (54%)—and most Christians—have not heard of the term at all.

“Even those who think the United States should be a Christian nation and the Bible should have a great deal of influence on the law, most of them are reluctant to say that they have a favorable view of Christian nationalism. So there seems to be some negative stigma with the term,” Michael Rotolo, lead author of the report, said.

While a plurality of Americans (44%) believe the government should promote Christian moral values, …

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Bad News May Be a Burning Bush

I understand frustration with media negativity. But bad news may be God’s invitation to work alongside him.

On a church mission trip in 2004, 65-year-old Ramon Billhimer looked out a bus window in Uganda and saw a little girl taking dirty, stagnant water from a muddy ditch. The water was for a garden, Ramon assumed, or maybe livestock. She snapped a picture and offhandedly commented to her translator that the children sure went a long way to get water for their animals.

“Oh, that’s not for animals, Ramon,” the translator replied. “That’s her family’s drinking water.”

Ramon had already noticed, while visiting rural churches, how sick many Ugandan children were. She’d assumed they all had malaria, but soon learned at least half were chronically ill with dysentery and other consequences of drinking dirty water. The sight out the bus window became a turning point in Ramon’s life—the little girl with her jug, a burning bush.

For the rest of her time in Uganda, Ramon cried herself to sleep. A few days after the bus conversation, while visiting a Ugandan hospital, she met a little girl hooked up to IVs and lying quietly in bed. Ramon tried to engage the child and told her she’d come back to visit. A few days later, she made good on her promise, but the girl was gone. She was dead from dysentery.

As Ramon has told the story over the years, she went out into the hallway of the hospital and screamed, “God! Why don’t you do something!”

And she heard a response: Why don’t you?

So she did. She started by explaining to her husband, Bob, why she felt compelled—in the stage of life American society says should be devoted to rest and relaxation—to provide clean water to people nearly 9,000 miles away from their home in Midland, …

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Interview: Can Christian Colleges Make the Grade?

An experienced evangelical educator sees challenges ahead—but opportunities too.

Of the approximately 900 religiously affiliated colleges in the United States, over 200 maintain some sort of evangelical identity. In his memoir Academically Speaking: Lessons from a Life in Christian Higher Education, seasoned educator Rick Ostrander recounts his vocational journey while offering reflections on evangelical higher education. Nathan Finn, executive director of the Institute for Transformational Leadership at North Greenville University, spoke with Ostrander about the challenges and opportunities facing evangelical colleges.

You are still in the middle of your career in Christian higher education. Why write this memoir now?

I wanted to write about two topics. One is the world of Christian higher education, which I want both insiders and outsiders to better understand. The other is the importance of trusting God amid uncertainty. I have spent my entire adult life in Christian higher education, working in a variety of contexts. But there have also been some unexpected and even unwanted twists and turns. I’ve learned throughout that God is faithful and I can trust him.

Mark Noll published his seminal book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind 30 years ago. What, in your view, is the current state of the evangelical mind?

There were two fronts Noll and others wanted to address. One was advancing Christian voices within the academy. We have seen progress in the number of Christian academics, including tenured professors in non-Christian institutions.

I see less progress, though, on the second front: cultivating an evangelical mind in local churches. Evangelicalism is marked by an inherent populism, which can work against scholarly voices. And political polarization seems to have magnified these anti-intellectual …

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Tradwife Content Offers Fundamentalism Fit for Instagram

The latest influencer movement wants to “bring back” a narrow vision of biblical womanhood with pretty pictures, long dresses, and homemade bread.

Let’s bring back beauty,” begins the caption of a viral reel on Instagram.

The clip features Christian influencer Katie Calabrese in an airy long dress followed by a montage of images: flowers on an open Bible, a clothesline full of linen neutrals, a clean stairwell with wooden floors and shiplap walls, a faceless woman standing in front of a bowl of dough while holding a baby.

The caption lists other things she wants to bring back: “ladies who know how to whip up a delicious meal for unexpected guests,” going to church, having big families, and “loving your husband and singing his praises in front of others.”

Calabrese belongs to a cohort of online “tradwife” influencers, whose personas are built on the revival of various “traditional” expressions of femininity, marriage, homemaking, and family life. The thrust of their callback message rings familiar to those who grew up in fundamentalist Christian circles, though it’s uniquely packaged for Instagram and TikTok, where tradwife posts have grown substantially since 2020.

Tradwife content is unabashedly ahistorical, drawing on ideas and imagery from across time periods. Some tradwives build their brand with a 1950s June Cleaver persona, wearing lipstick and an A-line dress to do housework. Others evoke imagined versions of Little House on the Prairie: long dresses, rustic homemade bread, and rural homesteads. Some posts borrow painted images of Victorian households or Regency-era social gatherings.

Unlike other influencers who create content about homeschooling or homesteading, a tradwife influencer makes faithfulness to some aspect of “traditional” womanhood a central tenet of their online brand and …

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UK Christians Asked to Give Up Their Banks for Lent

Climate activists say finance is a justice issue and moving accounts can have a significant impact.

Rosie Venner has been talking a lot about banks. She thinks it matters—to God.

“We are called to be good stewards, to love our neighbors, to seek peace, to act justly. Surely this should shape how we relate to money and where we bank,” she said.

Venner is a British Christian climate change activist working on the Money Makes Change campaign with the JustMoney Movement, a group that aims to be “the go-to organisation for Christians and churches” applying the teachings of their faith and the biblical calls to justice to the way they handle their money. Which brings her to British banks, and the choices they make when investing the money deposited by Christians who are concerned about the negative environmental effects of burning fossil fuels.

Barclays, for example, which is considered by some experts to be a key corporation controlling global financial stability, was the biggest funder of the fossil fuel sector in Europe from 2016 to 2021, some years investing more than 23 billion pounds (about $30 billion US) and investing in oil extraction in the Arctic Circle and the Amazon rainforest.

Altogether, according to the most recent data, banks pumped more than 733 billion pounds (about $942 billion US) into the fossil fuel industry per year.

Venner would like Christians to pull their money out of banks like that, because the Lord has shown us what is good and requires us to act justly (Micah 6:8).

JustMoney is partnering with a number of Christian climate organizations—Just Love, Operation Noah and Switch It Green—to encourage Christians to make financial changes during Lent. They’re calling it The Big Bank Switch. It’s an invitation for believers during the traditional period of …

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Indian State Moves to Criminalize Praying for the Sick

A proposed ban on “magical healing” is the latest government initiative targeting Christian practice and evangelism in Assam.

State lawmakers in India are seeking to curtail evangelism with a ban on “magical healing” that could penalize Christians who offer prayer or any “non-scientific” practices to comfort people who are sick.

Last month, the northeastern state of Assam introduced the bill, which Christian leaders say unfairly targets their community’s custom of praying for the sick. Though church healing meetings in India have drawn people to Christ, local Christians insist that prayer is a legitimate, universal spiritual practice and not an unethical tool for conversion, as Hindu nationalists claimed.

The proposed ban, which passed the 126-member state assembly on February 26, states that:

No person shall take any part in healing practices and magical healing propagation for treatment of any diseases, any disorder or any condition relating to the health of a person (relating to human body) directly or indirectly giving a false impression of treatment to cure diseases, pain or trouble to the human health.

Any first-time offender can face one to three years in prison, a fine of 50,000 rupees (about $600 USD), or both. A subsequent conviction may result in up to five years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of 100,000 rupees (about $1,200 USD).

The bill must be ratified by the president of India to become an act. Assembly leaders in Assam say that the healing ban does not target any particular religion, but they were clear about their aims to restrict evangelism and conversion.

“We want to curb evangelism in Assam, so in that direction, the banning of healing … will be a very, very important milestone,” said Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam. The state is governed by the Hindu nationalist …

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Five Books to Encourage Single Parents

Chosen by Anna Meade Harris, author of ‘God’s Grace for Every Family: Biblical Encouragement for Single Parent Families and the Churches That Seek to Love Them Well.’

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

Tish Harrison Warren

Overwhelmed single moms and dads will identify with Warren’s struggle to pray after multiple losses in her life. She found the words she needed in Compline, an ancient prayer that lifts our human vulnerability up to God. Single parents work, watch, and weep alone, standing guard over their defenseless children, often without much support. Warren offers a way back into prayerful conversation with the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Everything Sad Is Untrue: (a true story)

Daniel Nayeri

Nayeri relates his experience in a sixth-grade classroom in Oklahoma after fleeing Iran when his mom becomes a Christian. His father stays behind, his absence as formidable as his presence had been. The agonizing long-distance phone calls between father and son will be familiar to parents and children in the wake of divorce. Part memoir, part fiction, all masterful storytelling, this book attests to the enduring hope Daniel finds in his mother’s faith.

The Mockingbird Devotional: Good News for Today (and Every Day)

Edited by Ethan Richardson and Sean Norris

Single parents generally have little bandwidth for reading dense theology, but this 365-day devotional offers ample theological bang for the harried single parent’s quiet-time buck. Exploring key biblical doctrines through Scripture, plus story, music, and movie references, multiple contributors proclaim the gospel with clear-eyed realism about our brokenness, our need for a Savior, and the grace we have in Jesus.

The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Brennan Manning

For weary single parents who feel they never have enough time, energy, money, or patience, Manning …

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Fear, Grief, then Supernatural Peace: Myanmar Christians Process Draft

While many young people feel helpless over the news of the conscription law, believers see an opening for ministry.

When Kyaw Sone, a 27-year-old seminary student in Yangon, Myanmar, heard the news last month that the government was conscripting young men and women amid the country’s civil war, he felt “very, very sad.”

“These are our oppressors and now we have to fight for them,” he said of the military junta that overthrew the elected government in a coup three years ago. Since then, civilians—including many of Kyaw Sone’s Christian friends—have fled to the jungles to join resistance groups fighting the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military. “In my flesh, I [also] want to fight them,” Kyaw Sone added. (CT has agreed to pseudonyms for the Christians in Myanmar interviewed, for security.)

Kyaw Sone, who is part of the small Christian community in Rakhine State, has witnessed the brutality of the Tatmadaw firsthand. In 2017, the junta forcibly evicted the Muslim Rohingya people in Rakhine, killing thousands and forcing 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh. Since the coup, fighting between the well-funded military and an alliance of ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy forces has intensified, with the military bombing churches and destroying entire villages. The junta also cut off aid to Rakhine after Cyclone Mocha last year, leading to an unknown number of deaths.

Over and over Kyaw Sone prayed, “God, what should I do?” until he felt God touch his heart. “He has chosen me for ministry and the church,” he said. “While I am angry and I want to fight, through prayer I see God is using me for his kingdom, so I will stay and serve.”

News of the conscription law—which affects men ages 18 to 35 and women ages 18 to 27—has sent shock waves through the …

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