Leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination on Wednesday said Scripture – and not words from the pope – determine what is true about marriage and sexuality.

Their comments came the same day news broke about a new documentary, Francesco, in which Pope Francis discussed homosexuality and same-sex civil unions.

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” he said, according to Catholic News Agency.

He added, “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”

Catholic News Agency (CNA) said the pope’s comments were not about same-sex marriage but instead about a legal recognition short of marriage that would grant benefits of marriage. Even so, it would be a first: “While Pope Francis has previously discussed civil unions, he has not explicitly endorsed the idea in public before,” CNA said.

“An endorsement of civil unions for same-sex couples is a very different approach for a pope, one that represents a departure from the position of his two immediate predecessors on the issue,” CNA said.

J.D. Greear, president of Southern Baptist Convention and the pastor of the Summit Church in North Carolina, urged Christians to look to the Bible for…

Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston has urged his fellow pastors to stand up against Australia’s COVID-19 restrictions, claiming Christians are being discriminated against as numbers at church services remain limited. 

In a series of social media posts, the Sydney, Australia-based pastor criticized the New South Wales government over restrictions on church service attendance while other coronavirus restrictions are being loosened.

“It’s time church leaders unite to take a stand. We are all committed to keeping people safe, but it seems churches are not even being considered for a steady easing of restrictions,” Houston wrote on Instagram.

Under the current NSW guidelines, church services may not have more than 100 attendees. In contrast, beginning this December, weddings can have up to 300 guests. Hospitality venues may host a maximum of 500 people seated at outdoor events, and thousands of fans can attend sporting events.

“Do you think people are not friendly at weddings? It is getting to the point where it is…

In a new video titled, “What About Abortion? Should this one issue determine how Christians vote?” pastor and author Skye Jethani explored whether or not abortion should be the main issue Christians vote on.

Jethani, who co-hosts the Holy Post podcast with VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, observed that in the past 5 decades, Christians have become ‘single-issue voters,’ as they are “willing to overlook everything else about a candidate as long as they’re against abortion.”

The typical argument that pro-life Christians have, says Jethani, is that “my vote determines the president, the president nominates justices to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court can overturn Roe v. Wade and overturning Roe will make abortion illegal and save babies.”

He then went on to challenge that notion in explaining that “your vote for president might not impact abortion the way you think.”

According to The Christian Post, Jethani addressed three common assumptions that pro-life Christian voters ascribe to, the first one being that a “Republican president will appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court to end abortion.”

He noted that in the last 50 years, 11 justices were appointed by Republican presidents to the Supreme Court – that number may soon become 12 if Justice Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed. Meanwhile,…

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee advanced on Thursday the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the full Senate, placing her one step away from becoming the newest member of the Supreme Court and filling the seat of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Judiciary Committee voted 12-0 to recommend her nomination, with Republicans supporting Barrett and Democrats boycotting the hearing and not voting.

Barrett, 48, currently is a member of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She would become the fifth woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the first mother of school-age children to do so. She would become the third nominee of President Trump to be confirmed – the most of any president in one term since President Nixon.

She also could help re-shape the court’s ideology. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Barrett would become the first woman appointed to the court who is personally pro-life.

“It’s OK to be a complete person and be on the Supreme Court. It’s OK to be pro-life. She embraces the pro-life cause in her personal life, but she understands that judging is not a cause – it’s a process. She embraces her faith, like millions of other Americans,” Graham said.

It’s a turning point, he said, for conservative women.

“This is why we all run,” he said. “It’s moments like this that make everything you go through matter….

A Christian Ministry that housed inmates in improved conditions if they were Christians was told to stop immediately. A judge deemed that the action ignored the constitutional rights of inmates subscribing to other faiths, The Christian Post reports.

The ruling comes after a lawsuit from Muslim prisoners who felt they were being treated unfairly by not having access to the same improved conditions the “Christian pod” or  “God’s Pod”, as it was dubbed, was given.

The lawsuit alleged that the jail sponsored the Christian pod and that it was exclusivist in nature, thereby depriving non-Christian prisoners of their rights under the Constitution.

Some of the features of the ‘God Pod’ include a microwave, better-bunking conditions, and the chance to stay in that pod where other prisoners could not enter.

The U.S. District Judge, Anthony Trenga, ruled “based on the undisputed facts, as a matter of law, Christianity was preferred at Riverside Regional Jail while the LLP was in effect in violation of Plaintiff’s constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the Virginia constitution.”

The ruling was shared online by controversial Muslim rights advocacy and legal defense group the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In a statement from CAIR, the group’s national litigation director Lena Masri wrote, “We welcome the…

China bulldozed the gravestones of 20 Swedish missionaries who shared the gospel with thousands of Chinese people almost a century ago, The Christian Post reports.

Thousands of Chinese people reportedly came to accept Christianity due to their sharing of the gospel message with them.

The gravestones, which were only recently erected, were deemed “illegal structures” and bulldozed by Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Additionally, according to Bitter Winter, a news agency that covers human rights abuses in China, the government also bulldozed a house used to give visiting believers a place to rest while visiting the graves. “Swedish missionaries bought a plot in Yuncheng’s Xiezhou town cemetery for themselves,” an elderly Christian told Bitter Winter. “This meant that they devoted their hearts, souls, and entire lives to China.”

The gravestones were commissioned earlier this year by the Church of Christ’s Family, a local house church that was established in 2008. The church also contacted one of the missionary’s granddaughters, Mick Lidbeck, who wrote about her grandfather’s work in the book Min farfar i Kina or, My Grandfather in China. The church also repaired an old four-room house near the cemetery to serve as a resting spot for visitors that also had information about the missionaries inside of it.

But the Chinese Communist Party…

Christian music star Kari Jobe is releasing a new album on Friday after releasing her single “The Blessing,” which quickly became popular in many churches across the globe.

Her album, which goes by the same name, is a live recording of songs that she wrote. “The Blessing” was the last song she wrote for the album and she says that she “felt compelled for it to be released quickly, which was a week before the pandemic hit. It’s just been such a journey,” she told The Christian Post in an interview.

The entire album was taped in her church, The Belonging Co., in Nashville, Tennessee.

One of the other singles off of the album released, titled “Your Nature” speaks to how Christians need to return to their first love, meaning Christ. “The heart of the song is also out of Revelation 2 where God says, ‘I want you to return to your first love.’ I love this line, He says, ‘Go back and do the things you did at first.’ If you think about when we first got saved, we didn’t worry, we were so grateful for mercy. We were so grateful for learning about forgiveness and learning that God cared and that God loved us,” she told The Christian Post.

The song, “Your Nature,” declares that God is good in every season. “The timing of ‘Your Nature’ on this new album, I’m just floored because we wrote it a year ago. I think had we released this song a few months ago, or even a year…

Robert Downey, Jr., defended fellow Avenger actor Chris Pratt on social media this week after Twitter users attacked Pratt for his assumed political and theological beliefs.

According to CBN News, after missing a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden, TV writer Amy Berg called Pratt out on Twitter. She posted a picture of Pratt with three other pictures of fellow Chrises—Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Chris Pine—with the caption “One has to go.” The post, which was intended as a light-hearted joke, snowballed into harsh backlash against the Guardians of the Galaxy star.

One has to go. pic.twitter.com/HUWnbQOA43

— Amy Berg (@bergopolis) October 17, 2020

Twitter users called Pratt a “conservative Trumper,” a “Bible pusher,” and the “worst Chris,” according to CBN.

His wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, came to his defense quickly, saying that “being mean is so yesterday. There’s enough room to love all these guys. Love is what we all need not meanness and bullying. Let’s try that.”

Fellow Marvel actors followed in response, including Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana. Director James Gun also came to Pratt’s defense.

“What a world…The ‘sinless’ are casting stones at my #brother, Chris Pratt …” Downey said referring to John 8:7. “A real #Christian who lives by #principle,…

Worship artist Sean Feucht, who has been leading worship events in dozens of cities across the country, noted the seemingly coincidental timing of his upcoming event in Washington, D.C., ahead of the full Senate vote to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He also insists that, contrary to Facebook’s assertions, his “Let Us Worship” movement is not in any way associated with a QAnon conspiracy.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Feucht explained that Facebook “dropped the hammer” on his initiative by censoring his posts and it linking with “Q” despite no involvement. 

“This is completely false,” Feucht said.

“The only conspiracy we are guilty of subscribing to is the one spelled out in the Gospels where God conspired to send His Son to earth to die on a cross to be raised from the dead to ascend to heaven so that we all might have eternal life through Him.”

He added: “Facebook can attack us, malign us, say all kinds of false things about us, but it won’t stop us from worshipping Him! God is on the move. Revival is coming. And despite all their best efforts…