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A Christian reconciliation group in Israel and Palestine warned that war would come. Now the war threatens their relevance.

Just before sunrise on October 7, 2023, Salim Munayer’s wife, Kay, shook him awake at their apartment in Jerusalem. His cellphone was popping with alerts.

“WhatsApp is going crazy,” she said.

Munayer reached for his phone. His extended family was anxiously reporting hearing air raid sirens, not uncommon in Israel and often short-lived. But this time, the alarms kept blaring.

It didn’t take long to learn what had happened: Hamas militants from Gaza were launching thousands of rockets into Israel. On the ground, they had breached the border and were massacring hundreds of civilians. Munayer had awoken to the bloodiest terrorist attack in his country’s history.

He leapt from bed and ran to rouse his sons.

Daniel Munayer, Salim’s second oldest, remembers his father storming into his room and shouting, “Daniel, it’s happening,” adding, “It’s war.”

Daniel clutched his head. “Oh, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.”

Salim, 68, is the founder of Musalaha, a faith-based peacebuilding organization that works to restore relationships between Israelis and Palestinians using what it says are biblical principles of reconciliation. Daniel, 32, is the executive director.

Founded in 1990, Musalaha is the oldest and most well-known Christian peacemaking organization in Israel and Palestine. Its name means “reconciliation” in Arabic, and for more than three decades its faith-based approach has set it apart from secular peacebuilding groups.

Neither of the Munayers was shocked that Hamas attacked Israel, though they never foresaw the sophistication and brutality of a rampage that murdered about 1,200 Israelis or the devastation of Israel’s military response …

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Richard Dawkins’s cultural “Christianity” could hollow out our faith far more efficiently than straightforward attacks.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

One of the most notorious atheists has had a “come to Jesus” moment. He’s also figured out, at long last, a way to undermine the Christian religion he loathes. And, unlike his previous efforts, this one could actually work.

Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, was among the most recognized proponents of New Atheism, a movement to reject the existence of God that had its golden era 15 or 20 years ago. Indeed, he was one of the movement’s “four horsemen,” along with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

What was “new” about all of this was hardly the arguments, which were usually warmed-over Bertrand Russell. It was the fighting mood of it all. Audiences could feel a vicarious sense of “aren’t we naughty?” counterculturalism when they heard Hitchens ridiculing not just televangelists or abusive priests but Mother Teresa as a fraud. This theatricality eventually wore thin, until even fellow atheists seemed embarrassed by it.

But now Dawkins emerges again, this time in a viral video arguing for Christianity … kind of. He notes the plummeting of church attendance and Christian identification in his country, the United Kingdom, and says that, on one level, he’s glad to see it. Yet on the other hand, Dawkins continues, he’s “slightly horrified” to see the promotion of Ramadan in the UK. After all, he’s a Christian in a Christian country.

Lest anyone be confused, Dawkins made clear that he’s a “cultural Christian, … not a believer.” He loves the hymns and the Christmas carols and …

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The writer of the best-selling children’s book series The Wingfeather Saga hopes season 2 of the television adaptation “will be taken as a story first.”

Can a fantasy epic introduce the gospel to kids? That’s the hope behind The Wingfeather Saga, the children’s book series turned television show that’s just premiered its second season. (Episode 1 is available for viewing starting today, April 5, on www.angel.com; the remaining six episodes will be released weekly this spring.) The series tells the story of the three Igiby siblings—Janner, “Tink,” and Leeli—who live with their mother and grandfather in a world called Aerwiar. When the children learn that their family is at the center of a great mystery, their lives change forever.

Wingfeather came from the mind of award-winning author and musician Andrew Peterson. He recently spoke with J. D. Peabody, author of the children’s fantasy series The Inkwell Chronicles, about art, storytelling, and “making known the deeds of the Lord.” Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What can Wingfeather fans expect in season 2?

There’s a lot of world-building that took place in season 1. With season 2, you’re off to the races. It comes out of the gate fast!

That said, season 2 is also the first time that the kids in the story are separated from their parents. It’s where character development begins—they’re having to solve problems on their own.

We’re not making a cartoon; we’re trying to tell an epic story and using animation to do it. Hopefully the result is something that feels like a real world. The stakes are high, though. The problems that this family faces are earthy, gritty, and painful.

Part of the reason we chose the art style that we did [known as “paint motion,” which blends traditional 2D animation …

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The total eclipse is the latest of many apocalyptic expectations corrupting our view of Revelation.

Next week’s solar eclipse has stoked the flames of end-time speculations, once again whipping doomsday theorists into a frenzy.

As the April 8 event will take place primarily over North America, some in the US are anticipating a great Day of Judgment complete with terrorist attacks, biological warfare, and nuclear meltdowns. According to alt-right conspiracy theorists, including some fringe evangelical leaders, this war will usher in a new world order in which Christ will return and America (alongside Israel) will rule the nations.

This isn’t the first time apocalyptic predictions were based on impending eclipses—the same thing happened in 2017. But end-of-world interest seems to have increased over the last few years, as things like the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas conflict has meant nearly every region of the globe has faced some sort of calamity. These and other recent tribulations have led many believers to conclude that the end is near. In fact, a Pew Research Center study found in 2022 that over 60 percent of evangelical Christians in the US believe we are living in the end times.

But while some passages in the Bible do link astronomical phenomena with “the end” (Matt. 24:29; Joel 2:31), doomsday prophets fail to explain why their biblical, global, and cosmic calculus often revolves around America. They further neglect the fact that an eclipse happens somewhere on Earth approximately every 18 months—and that these solar events have been associated with imminent doom for thousands of years without consequence.

And yet, based on the Book of Revelation, end-time conspiracists are correct in one aspect of their eschatology: We are …

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Christians should encourage doubters’ questions. They should also discern what those questions might be seeking.

Wrestling with Christian faith—questioning, doubting, reforming, and even falling away from it—has been part of the Christian tradition as long as there’s been a Christian tradition. Christianity asserts some big claims about the world, and a healthy faith can mean wrestling with these claims at some point along our faith journey. The result can be a more robust faith, even if it is a somewhat reformed faith.

But this is certainly not how it goes for everyone. Sometimes one can’t get past an objection that calls the truth of Christianity into question. Other times, living by ethical claims that run counter to current cultural norms proves too heavy a burden. Sometimes the sheer audacity of the claims of Christianity leads people to dismiss them as unbelievable and unserious. And then there’s the presence of scandal and abuse within the ranks of church leaders. With church-related trauma all too common these days, some people simply want out.

These experiences, often lived out on social media and other online channels, travel under the banner of faith deconstruction. Deconstruction is one of those terms that feels familiar, even if most people know little about its roots. While it began as a term of art with 20th-century postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida, I suspect most faith deconstructions aren’t being informed by a study in Derridean semantic theory! Today, deconstruction may refer to a wide variety of experiences.

To help with the confusion, Alisa Childers and Timothy Barnett offer their new book, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond. As their subtitle makes clear, Childers and Barnett take a critical stance toward the deconstruction …

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Leaders extend prayers and lament road safety after 45 were killed on the way to Zion Christian Church in South Africa.

Botswana will hold a national memorial service on Thursday for 45 people who died traveling to an Easter event in South Africa. An eight-year-old girl, Lauryn Siako, was the only survivor after a bus bound for Zion Christian Church crashed through barriers and fell 164 feet down a ledge last week.

In the days following the deadly accident, pastors in Botswana have appeared on national television to pray and to comfort the grieving.

“This tragedy calls us to come out of our sleeping moment and be ever praying and declaring the protection of God in any given situation,” said David Seithamo, the head of the Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana. “The nation should gather around to really support those that are grieving at this moment. When they mourn, we should mourn, but they should know that Christ remains our comfort.”

The pilgrims from Botswana were among millions who travel each Easter to Moria, a town in northeast South Africa and the headquarters for Zion Christian Church (ZCC, pronounced zed-c-c), one of the largest African-initiated churches in the region. ZCC has churches across Southern Africa, including Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, and Malawi.

The church has two branches, ZCC and St. Engenas ZCC. This year marks the 100th anniversary for the latter, and South African president Cyril Ramaphosa attended the celebration event. Though pilgrims also showed up at St. Engenas in 2023, this is the church’s first official pilgrimage event since the pandemic.

Given the number of tourists usually packing the roads over Holy Week, the South African government had previously checked the capacity of drivers and the safety of cars.

Siako told officials the bus was following two cars carrying …

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Mary Magdalene was a recipient of grace with a story to proclaim.

Save for Jesus Christ and his mother Mary, few biblical figures hold more prominence in the history of Christian art than Mary Magdalene. Paintings and sculptures favor depicting these two Marys not just because they appear frequently in the New Testament but because they play such pivotal roles in the life of Jesus.

Of course, Mary of Nazareth’s identity is uncontested. She is the young betrothed woman who conceived Jesus, God’s Son, and was present with her Son and his followers at various times throughout his earthly ministry, enduring to the end and beyond, when the Holy Spirit compelled the faithful to spread the news of his salvation.

However, the identity of Mary Magdalene has not been so clear. When we track her visual depictions across time, a richly complex and intriguing story emerges that ultimately raises a central question: Who was Mary Magdalene?

When Christian art directs our attention to this Mary, we quickly realize that there is no straight answer. As Diane Apostolos-Cappadona’s latest visual history reveals, Mary Magdalene has been many things to the church worldwide throughout the ages.

In fact, the 2002 exhibit “In Search of Mary Magdalene,” curated by Apostolos-Cappadona, featured over 80 works of art and objects depicting Mary Magdalene. Repeated patterns within art history associate her with long hair, an anointing jar, and nudity. She is depicted as the epitome of a penitent sinner and reformed prostitute, renowned for her fervent love of Christ and humility before him. She is recognized for her place at the cross and at the tomb in the garden; she is also remembered for her courageous missionary journeys as an evangelist and preacher.

Mary Magdalene’s portrayal gives …

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Everything is different because Jesus rose again. But do we live as if we understand he is alive?

In the summer of 2022, I visited the charming Alpine town of Oberammergau, Germany. I wandered its leafy streets lined with mural-painted houses, their balconies overflowing with flower boxes.

After indulging in ice cream and shopping for the town’s famed woodcarvings, I settled in my seat for a five-and-a-half-hour performance of Jesus’ final week on earth. Since 1634, Oberammergau has put on a Passion play involving almost all its residents, first staged in thanksgiving for the end of a bubonic plague outbreak. Normally the performances take place in the first year of a new decade (2000, 2010, etc.), but the new plague of COVID-19 delayed 2020’s play by two years.

Scores of buses were depositing tourists from many foreign countries. Looking around, I saw groups from China, Japan, and Korea, in addition to many Europeans and Americans. That summer, almost half a million people would travel to secular Germany to sit through this presentation of Jesus’ passion, spoken and sung in a language that few in the crowd could understand.

What attracted them? I wondered. At one point, more than a thousand actors filled the stage, shouting in guttural German, “Kreuzige ihn!” (Crucify him!) The audience fell silent as Pilate’s soldiers tortured and mocked their prisoner.

Some in my tour group criticized the play for shortchanging the Resurrection; after all, only 3 of the libretto’s 132 pages focused on that seminal event. Yet the ratio reflects the Gospels’ accounts, which give far more attention to the ordeal of trials and crucifixion than to the triumphant conclusion. The criticism, however, raised a question: Would a tradition such as Oberammergau’s …

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Jesus’ lordship is not good news for those who want to use him to become kings themselves.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

If you’re one of the very-online white nationalists who decided during Holy Week to claim the hashtag “Christ is king” as an antisemitic troll, I’ve got what might seem to you to be both good news and bad news.

The good news: Christ is king. The bad news: He’s a Jew. The even worse news: He’s not the kind of king you think he is.

This week commentator Candace Owens, recently fired by The Daily Wire for anti-Jewish comments, made news as she used the slogan online, allegedly as a response to Daily Wire cofounder, Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish. The phrase was then amplified by so-called “Groypers,” the social media mob assembled around the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, whose singular mission seems to be to put the Mein back in Mein Kampf.

When some—such as on-air talent and executives at Owens’s previous media platform—criticized the use of the slogan, many of those using it pointed out that the words Christ is king represent basic Christian teaching. The words God and damn are, of course, perfectly good biblical words too, but most of us can see that context can change the meaning.

I’m less interested in the nationalist-on-nationalist social media controversy than I am in the much less recognized question behind it: Can “Christ is king” be antisemitic trolling? One could argue yes, and that the first time we find the words referenced as written down, they were just that.

The cross, after all, came with a label affixed to it. Above Jesus’ head were the words Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, written not just in Aramaic but in Greek and Latin too (John 19:19–22). …

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What Jesus’ midnight prayer in the garden tells us about cosmic conflict in the supernatural realm.

“Father, if it is your will, please heal your servant; yet not our will, but yours be done.” As a child, I recall hearing this kind of prayer and feeling deeply puzzled. If it is your will? I thought. Why wouldn’t it be God’s will to heal his servant?

Such prayers are not theologically incorrect—they echo the words of Christ himself and, rightly understood, believers ought to pray likewise. But wrongly understood, such prayers can be deeply confusing and troubling.

Imagine a young girl hearing people pray those words for her mother suffering with terminal cancer. What is she to think? Why wouldn’t God want to heal mommy—does he want her to suffer and die? Doesn’t God love mommy and me?

Even the most spiritually mature adults can struggle with the purpose and effect of their prayers—particularly when God seems absent or silent in their hour of greatest need, despite how faithfully and fervently they pray. If God is perfectly good, all-powerful, and knows our needs before we ask (as Jesus himself taught in Matthew 6:8), how could our prayers make any difference in God’s action? Wouldn’t God already know, will, and do whatever is preferable regardless of whether or how we pray?

These are not easy questions to answer, and they bring up sticky theological quandaries, such as how God’s sovereignty and human free will could possibly coexist. On this issue, Christians land on various parts of a spectrum, seeing it as some form of divine determinism, an optimistic vision of human partnership with God, or something else. Some see prayer primarily as a personal devotional practice that does not influence divine action, while others assume that unanswered prayers reflect …

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