A UC Berkeley Christian student is facing demands to resign her student senate seat after speaking out against a transgender rights resolution.

But the student, Isabella Chow, says she won’t quit. 

“If I do, there will be no one else to represent the voices that are ignored and misunderstood on campus,” Chow told The San Francisco Chronicle. 

The controversy began when the student senate considered a resolution condemning the Trump administration for considering a change to the legal definition of gender. The new definition would define gender by a person’s sex at birth. The resolution also expressed support for “transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students.” 

Eighteen senators voted for the bill, and no senator voted against it. Chow abstained and then explained her vote, saying she opposes bullying and she loves all people, but could not support the resolution. 

“As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right and true,” she said, according to The Chronicle. “I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time, and designed sex for marriage between one man and one woman. For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur when, at the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that your choices are right or the best for…

Top U.S. bishops have admitted their disappointment and frustration as the Vatican has blocked immediate action on the child sex abuse scandal.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was preparing for its annual meeting in Baltimore on Monday when officials received a letter from the Vatican ordering a halt to any actions on the issue, until a global summit at the Holy See scheduled for February takes place.

“It makes it look like we don’t care,” said Bishop Thomas Daly, of Spokane, Washington, speaking of the delay.

“No reason is good enough for the laypeople who expect the bishops to act …. How are we going to explain this to the people back in our dioceses?” he asked, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the USCCB, echoed the frustrations at his opening remarks at the conference.

“We are not, ourselves, happy about this,” DiNardo said. “We’re disappointed, because we were moving along on this.”

The child sex abuse scandals have swept through Catholic countries around the world, including America. In August, a 1,300 page report by a Pennsylvania grand jury exposed systematic cover up of abuse by Catholic hierarchy…

While most of the discussions about securing our nation’s borders focus on threats from the south, a growing bevy of experts says the United States should be concerned about growing threats to the north.

Tom Quiggin, who worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Armed Forces and the United Nations Protection Force in Yugoslavia, believes Canada underestimates the threat to itself and the U.S. from extremists living within her borders. He said, “Canada is becoming a foundational sort of place for Islamists of all stripes including Iranians.”

Quiggin believes Canada’s leadership denies the severity of the issue and points to a debate in the Canadian parliament about how to handle Canadian citizens who joined ISIS and were returning to the country as evidence. He said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argued that “if you are opposed to ISIS fighters returning to Canada it is because you’re Islamophobic. In other words, it’s not them that’s the issue. It’s your opposing their return that makes you Islamophobic. It makes you racist.”

In a debate in the Canadian Parliament in 2017, the Prime Minister got into a shouting match with Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer over the issue. Trudeau said conservatives, “ran an election on snitch lines against Muslims. They ran an election on Islamophobia and division. And still they play…

A theologian has warned that the way believers use some popular Christian jargon today — including “broken,” “authentic” and “surrender” — is not very biblical but taken from secular culture.

Dan Doriani, who is vice president of strategic academic projects and professor of theology and ethics at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, said in The Gospel Coalition that some terms that many Christians use today either take on meanings that aren’t really biblical or are more tied with secular concepts.

“‘Broken’ is an interesting case. In my circles (perhaps not yours), certain pastors and teachers often tell their people they are broken or need to face their brokenness. Without completing a study of Hebrew and Greek terms, it may be enough to say that ‘broken’ typically appears between 100 and 200 times in standard English translations and that the sense is almost always negative, often sharply negative,” he pointed out.

Doriani noted that there are several issues with the modern use of the word in a church setting, however.

“We sometimes hear a person glorying in his brokenness: ‘I feel so broken.’ They seem to mean they grieve their sin, but it’s an odd way to say it and can have a prideful ring, as if one is glorying in his…

Over the past several years, much has been made about the decline of church attendance in the United States, even among those who self-identify as Christian.

“It’s no longer obvious to many people why church should play a significant role in their lives,” said Andrew Arndt, a teaching pastor at the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based New Life Church, in a recent “Essential Church” podcast episode.

Joining Arndt in the discussion on “why church?” were Daniel Grothe and Glenn Packiam, both of whom serve as associate senior pastors at New Life Church.

Among other things, the trio of pastors discussed reasons why many Christians in the United States seldom attend worship. Here, in no particular order, are four reasons covered by their conversation.

Consumerism

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Packiam noted that the consumerism of modern American Christianity may be impacting church attendance, as many Christians struggle with the many options for worship that are out there.

Those who don’t attend have cited such reasons as not having found a church they like or sermons they agree with.

“It didn’t used to be like that,” he explained. “It was ‘this is the neighborhood and we’re Lutherans, and there’s the Lutheran church and we’re going.'”

“Maybe,…

Christian and Actress Candace Cameron Bure shared a heartbreaking photo to Instagram on Sunday and asked her followers to pray for California amid raging wildfires.

Last week, six wildfires broke out across California killing at least 42 people, leaving over 200 missing and displacing some 250,000.

Bure, who lives in California, posted a photo to her Instagram that showed people fleeing from a massive cloud of smoke caused by the wildfires. Bure captioned the photo writing, “It’s no joke. Praying, praying, praying. Please pray with us. We need your prayers.”

The Fuller House actress also posted a video to her Instagram of her reading from the book of Psalm. She captioned it, “I needed this word today. Maybe you do to? -Psalm 139:1-12.”

According to CBN News, Bure told Faithwire that prayer is enough and that she feels for people who believe it is not. 

She said, “It bothers me and I feel sad for the people who write it, because the first thing I think is, ‘Well, they’ve never experienced the power of prayer. They just don’t know.'”

Bure continued, “Prayer, for me, is always where you start. That’s the start of your solution. Then, yes, you take action.”

She added, “If you don’t start with prayer there’s no power behind it because God’s the power,” she said. “God can do anything, change anything — change hearts….