President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week that earmarks $50 million for religious freedom programs around the world.

CBN News reports that under the order, named Advancing International Religious Freedom, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will create action plans for countries to help eliminate religious persecution. The money will go to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative,” the order states. “Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom.”

The order comes as religious persecution, including against Christians worldwide, continues to rise. According to Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List, North Korea, Afghanistan and Somalia are the most dangerous countries for Christians.

USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa praised the executive order, saying the organization was “grateful for the President’s leadership in advancing religious freedom around the world.”

“Americans have always believed our first freedom is the freedom of religion, and it is a key component of our national security strategy,” Barsa wrote. “Whether in response to genocide committed against Christians and Yazidis in Northern Iraq, or the ethnic…

A pastor in Chicago led a peaceful protest earlier this week, calling for an end to police brutality and racism.

According to Religion News Service, Rev. Chris Harris, of Bright Star Church in Chicago, organized the peaceful demonstration in which other religious leaders also participated.

“We showed them we can do it peacefully in Chicago,” Harris said.

Across the nation, more religious leaders are stepping up to participate in protests. The demonstrations come after a black man in Minneapolis died after a white police officer pressed his knee into the man’s neck.

The march, led by Harris, traveled down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in a neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. The neighborhood, Bronzeville, was a long-standing home for Africans Americans between 1915 and 1970. 

“We expected Chicago to show up. And it did: South Side, West Side, North Side, everybody came, peaceful, no drama,” Harris told Religion News Service afterward.

“That’s what the church should represent. That’s what the temple should represent. That’s what the synagogue should represent. That’s what the mosque represents. That’s what the Baha’i temple represents. Chicago represents that, and we did it in the black metropolis, the great migration. That’s pretty amazing.”

Rev. James Meeks, of Salem Baptist Church, also participated in the march.

“It’s so important that people of faith put their faith on…

Denzel Washington was in the news recently for helping a homeless man in danger. This Christian celebrity did his best to be a good Samaritan to a man in need.

It happened around West Hollywood when the 65-year-old actor was driving around town. He saw a homeless man that was dangerously close to oncoming traffic, so Denzel pulled his car over to help the man get out of the street.

When the cops were called to the situation, Denzel remained by his side for the whole time. He even put his hand on the homeless man’s shoulder to show his support while the police did their job. Later, Denzel gave the man a sandwich and a face mask to help protect him from the coronavirus.

In addition to this act of kindness, Denzel and his wife have become known around Hollywood for their generosity. In the past, they have donated to many charities, including Fisher House, an organization that helps military families. Back in the early 2000s, Fisher House said that Denzel and his wife gave them one of the most substantial donations that they had ever received.

Denzel has also given $1 Million to the Wiley College debate team, which was the inspiration for his 2007 drama called The Great Debaters.

It is wonderful to see Christian celebrities being the hands and feet of Jesus. May we all strive to love our neighbors well and step in to help those in need.

Photo credit: Mail Online video…

Mike Fisher and wife Carrie Underwood reveal in a new video how three miscarriages tested their faith and how God revealed to them they would have another son.

Fisher and Underwood married in 2010 and had their first child, Isaiah, in 2015. They wanted another baby, but two straight miscarriages had them questioning their next steps.

“I was frustrated,” Fisher, an 18-year veteran of the National Hockey League, says in the video released by I Am Second. “What’s the future look like? … I was just kind of wrestling [with God] and probably the most honest I’ve been with God ever in my life. And I heard – not audibly – but I just heard, I just sensed God told me that we’re gonna have a son and his name’s Jacob.”

Underwood remembers the conversation well.

“Mike came to me one day and said, ‘We’re gonna have another baby, and it’s gonna be a boy, and his name’s gonna be Jacob,’” she says through tears in the video.

But Underwood’s next pregnancy ended with another miscarriage, her third one. 

“I was just like, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’” Underwood says of the baby boy she expected.

When Underwood became pregnant again – her fifth pregnancy after three miscarriages – she sensed she was going to miscarry a fourth time. Not wanting to be alone as Mike wasn’t home at the time, he crawled into bed one weekend night with Isaiah and cried out to…

Israeli researchers have made a breakthrough discovery about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, following an intense seven-year study.

CBN News reports that the study involved DNA samples taken from the ancient manuscripts. 

The results showed that some of them were written far off in the Qumran instead of the Dead Sea, where it is widely considered that they were composed by an ancient Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

The researchers made the discovery following a DNA analysis of the animal skin that the scrolls were written on.

“Almost all the scrolls we sampled were found to be made of sheep skin,” said Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Rechavi, who led the interdisciplinary team.

“And accordingly most of the effort was invested in the very challenging task of trying to piece together fragments made from the skin of particular sheep, and to separate these from fragments written on skins of different sheep that also share an almost identical genome,” Rechavi continued.

A notable find in the study revealed that two fragments of the book of Jeremiah were scripted on cowhide; which was not initially found in their location of discovery in the Judean desert.

“Cow husbandry requires grass and water, so it is very likely that cow hide was not processed in the desert but was brought to the Qumran caves from another place,” Rechavi noted.

Additionally, different renditions of the prophetic book were…

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death by a Minneapolis police officer, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick asserted that turning to God is needed to deal with racism and civil unrest.

The Lt. Governor told Fox News on Wednesday evening that the issue of racism across the country is ultimately an “issue of love,” adding that it boils down to loving God, which leads to loving one’s neighbor. 

“It’s loving God,” Patrick asserted. “If you cannot love your fellow man, if you don’t love God — and we have a country where we’ve been working really hard, particularly on the left, to kick God out.”

Patrick also added that the “culture of a country” cannot change until the “character of mankind” is changed first as it involves the transformation of the heart.

Furthermore, he asserted that the change of heart can only come in turning to God through His Son Jesus Christ.  

“And you can’t change that unless you change the heart, and for billions of us on the planet, we believe you can’t do that unless you accept Jesus Christ or unless you accept God”, Patrick said.

Fox News host Shannon Bream echoed his sentiment. 

“The Bible tells us it’s not optional,” she said. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

However, Patrick noted that “God has been left out of this equation through all of this and we need tremendous healing.” 

“We cannot heal through…

(RNS) — The Southern Baptist Convention will not hold its annual meeting as it regularly does each June. But issues its members have long grappled with — including race and the roles of women — continue to be points of controversy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

In December, Founders Ministries, a neo-Calvinist evangelical group made up primarily of Southern Baptists, premiered a documentary called “By What Standard?: God’s Word, God’s Rule.”

The film includes selective footage of discussions around last year’s meeting about whether women should preach, juxtaposed with Founders Ministries head Tom Ascol speaking of motherhood as “the highest calling.” Much of the almost two-hour film that has had some 60,000 views online chronicles the passage of resolutions at the 2019 meeting, from one on “the evil of sexual abuse” to another on “critical race theory and intersectionality.”

Two months after the film’s release, the Conservative Baptist Network was founded, calling itself an alternative for dissatisfied Southern Baptists who might otherwise leave the denomination or stay and remain silent.

“A significant number of Southern Baptists are concerned about the apparent emphasis on social justice, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and the redefining of biblical gender roles,” the network declared in its…

The pastor of a Chinese church says police last month secretly installed security cameras to monitor the congregation’s activities and to try and force him to stop preaching, according to a new report.

Pastor Ma Chao of the Guangfu house church in Guangdong province told China Aid he was heading to a prayer meeting in May when he noticed three cameras outside the church building, pointing toward the main entrance. 

He was told police had installed them to watch Ma and the church’s members.

The cameras were installed several days after police investigated three church members at the building. 

“Four police officers came, saying that they were investigating the church’s gathering. Two of them said we were not allowed to meet,” Ma said. “I was not present at the time, but pastor Wu, along with another pastor and elder were there.”

The church members asked the police for their identification and for the reason behind their visit, but were refused.

“A police said that his uniform is the ID,” Ma told China Aid. “They also took pictures of the church’s Bibles, hymnbooks, and said that this is where Ma Chao has his illegal gathering, so they came specifically for it.”

Police also investigated Ma in April. He believes the visits are “meant to threaten him and push him out of Guangzhou,” International Christian Concern reported. 

Although Ma’s church is an illegal,…