(RNS) — Grammy Award-winning artist Michael W. Smith hopes to share the secrets of his success with students at Liberty University this coming fall.

He’ll be joined by Kevin Jonas, the father and original manager of the Jonas Brothers, the megapopular sibling rock trio.

Both will play key roles at the new Michael W. Smith Center for Commercial Music, which opens Aug. 1 at Liberty, a conservative evangelical Christian university based in Virginia.

Smith, a Christian artist with crossover success, will direct the center.

Jonas’ role is still being defined but will involve working with Liberty students to record and promote their work and connecting with mainstream artists interested in signing with the new music label it plans to launch alongside the center.

The school hopes the center and label — working name: Liberty Music Group — not only will give students experience recording an album but also will attract artists — both mainstream and Christian — from across the country, according to Vernon M. Whaley, dean of the School of Music.

“Our mission for the university is training and equipping champions for Christ,” Whaley said. “What I tell my students is it doesn’t matter what kind of music you’re going to go into, God’s called you to take worship to the nations.”

Liberty’s School of Music has about 980 resident…

A former advisor to President Obama says the Democratic presidential candidates are “out of step” with Americans and even Democratic voters on abortion and must moderate their views if they are to defeat President Trump.

“President Trump’s best chance for re-election lies in getting Democrats to approach complicated, tender issues with a tone-deaf, incoherent stridency that approaches his own. Unfortunately, he may be well on his way to doing just that,” Michael Wear, an advisor to Obama and a part of Obama’s faith-based initiative, wrote in The New York Times. 

Wear’s column was titled, “Democrats Shouldn’t Be So Certain About Abortion.” 

During the first Democratic presidential debate, he noted, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was unable to think of any abortion restriction she supported. Wear also bemoaned the party’s ridiculing of Joe Biden for his previous support of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits most taxpayer funding of abortion.

“And yet a Politico/Morning Consult poll from June showed that slightly more Democratic women support the Hyde Amendment (at 41 percent) than oppose it (at 39 percent),” Wear wrote. “Overall, 49 percent of registered voters support Hyde, compared with 32 percent who oppose it. It is not so much that Mr. Biden was out of step with the Democratic electorate, but that the 2020 Democratic candidates…

A weekend tweet from President Donald Trump in which he targeted “progressive Democrat congresswomen” by telling them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” has drawn backlash within the Christian community.

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

“Whew. Racists love that ‘go back to Africa’ line even though many of us have been here for 5+ generations. Then turn around and want sympathy because their…

Rev. Franklin Graham is voicing opposition to pushes by the LGBT community for the passage of the Equality Act.

According to Life Site News, Graham said the Equality Act will have what he called “catastrophic consequences” for women and religious groups.

The Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include “sex, sexual orientation and gender identity” in the “non-discrimination” categories for public accommodations. The change would also require employers with 15 or more employees to recognize an employee’s chosen gender identity.

“If the Senate majority changes or if enough Republican senators change their position, it would be up to the president to veto the bill,” Graham said in the July-August issue of the Billy Graham Association magazine Decision. “And if that office were to change hands in 2020, I have little doubt this would become the law of the land.”

In May, the House of Representatives, which is predominantly Democrat, voted to pass the bill.

Graham said Christian employers “would lose all protections to hire people who adhere to their biblical statements of faith.

“Christians will be persecuted for their sincerely held beliefs as never before. The clear teachings of the Bible on the sins of homosexuality and abortion will no doubt be considered ‘hate speech.’ It will be a…