Category: blaze media

NEW YORK CITY — Horse-drawn carriages have clopped through Central Park for over 160 years. This Thursday, the New York City Council is scheduled to vote on a bill that would bring the long-standing tradition to an end.

The legislation, known as Romanch’s Law, would ban horse-drawn carriage operations starting June 1, 2028. Both Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Democrat Council Speaker Julie Menin have publicly voiced their support for the phaseout.

‘It’s going to be a disaster for me, for my family. I cannot pay my bills.’

“They’re stealing my American dream from me,” Atakan Aktay, a Turkish immigrant who has worked in the Central Park carriage industry for 13 years, told Blaze News.

The bill follows the June death of 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan, an Indian tourist vacationing in New York with his family. During a carriage ride through Central Park, the driver stepped away to snap a photo of the family when the horse suddenly bolted, throwing Mahajan’s mother from the carriage. Mahajan jumped out after her, striking his head on the ground and suffering fatal injuries.

Supporters of the ban say eliminating the industry would protect both horses and the public. But for the drivers whose livelihoods depend on the carriages, the legislation threatens to dismantle everything they have spent decades building.

Aktay, who owns nine horses, two carriages, and multiple operating medallions, said he has invested his life savings in the business.

“It’s going to be a disaster for me, for my family. I cannot pay my bills,” he said. “You don’t just wipe out the whole industry because of an accident. You regulate, you modernize.”

RELATED: Man shot by ICE in the Bronx — Mamdani demands Trump end all operations in NYC

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The bill requires the city to develop a job transition program for displaced workers and consider compensating carriage owners but does not guarantee any financial payouts. Christina Hansen, a carriage driver of 20 years, said the help falls short.

“They want to put me to work at 22 bucks an hour doing something that I don’t want to do, like I’m some sort of plug-and-play widget,” she said.

Sam Uzun, a 27-year-old driver who also works as a data scientist, said he has another career to fall back on. Many of his colleagues do not.

“Some of the people are 60 years old, 65 years old. They like to do this job,” Uzun explained. “They are depending on this business, their family and their kids.”

Drivers also pushed back against allegations of animal cruelty. “We love our horses as much as a mother loves their kid,” Uzun said.

Hansen raised another unanswered question: What happens to the horses?

“There’s no funding set aside in the bill to pay for the long-term care of retiring carriage horses,” she said. “They want my horse to be homeless, to be a charity case.”

The bill bars selling or transferring the animals for slaughter or for use in another carriage business, but it does not require owners to give them up.

RELATED: Videos capture Palestinian activists screaming at Mamdani: ‘Opportunist piece of s**t!’

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Some New Yorkers see room for a middle path. Mickey Krisburg, an Upper East Side resident, described the carriages as “a great part of the culture of New York” and called for better oversight to ensure the horses are “well maintained, well cared for.”

Another resident, Jennifer Federer, suggested that replacing horse-drawn carriages with electric alternatives could preserve drivers’ jobs while addressing animal welfare concerns.

“I don’t want humans to have their jobs taken away from them and have to change their entire life,” she said. “That would be my compromise.”

For tourists, the allure of this quintessential Big Apple experience remains very much alive.

“We came to New York for my 13th birthday to see ‘Wicked’ and go on a horse and buggy ride,” said a 13-year-old girl from Michigan as she stepped off a carriage with her parents.

“The New York dream, right?” her mother added.

But with the city council vote just days away, that New York dream may soon become a thing of the past.

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​Central park, Politics, Zohran mamdani, Horse 

A Pennsylvania woman killed her 3-year-old son and husband at a popular family-friendly resort in the Pocono Mountains, according to authorities. Afterward the mother reportedly called 911 to help her commit suicide.

Around 3:13 p.m. last Monday, law enforcement responded to the Great Wolf Lodge in Scotrun for a report of a “distressed female,” according to a statement the Pocono Township Police Department released.

‘Every day, I work so hard to be the best person, the best mother, the best wife.’

“The female, identified as Metallica Rose Harrison of Towanda, Pennsylvania, advised the dispatcher that she needed help committing suicide,” the police statement read.

NBC News obtained the criminal complaint, in which Detective Earl Ackerman of the Pocono Township Police Department wrote that Harrison asked the dispatcher for help “to find the vein in her neck to stab” because she was attempting to commit suicide.

Police said officers discovered a deceased adult male and a 3-year-old male child in a room at the resort; they were later identified as the suspect’s husband, Charles Harrison, and the couple’s son, whose name has not been released.

According to the affidavit People magazine obtained, Metallica Harrison told the dispatcher she had knives and that “my husband and son are already gone in the bed in the living room.”

“They’re already gone, I’m sorry,” the 27-year-old told the dispatcher, police said.

The affidavit said Charles Harrison appeared to have suffered multiple stab wounds to his chest while the boy had a single stab wound to the chest.

Police said Metallica Harrison had injuries to her wrist and neck and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The affidavit indicates that during the ambulance ride to the hospital, she told first responders: “I f**ked up. I f**ked up. I just needed energy and strength.”

Police said she repeatedly made “statements that she wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“Every day, I work so hard to be the best person, the best mother, the best wife,” she said in the ambulance, according to the affidavit. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this. I was supposed to have my happy family. That’s what I envisioned since I was a child.”

Police said Metallica Harrison told officers while at the hospital that she was “suicidal, not stupid.”

WGAL-TV reported that investigators recovered two teal-handled knives, medication bottles, and containers of what law enforcement believes was blood.

Resort employees confirmed to police that the recovered knives were not the type kept at the Great Wolf Lodge.

Police executed a search warrant at the family’s home where they seized 10 teal knives, teal-colored scissors, nine sealed envelopes addressed to Metallica Harrison, four sealed envelopes addressed to Charles Harrison, two journals, a book, financial records, a laptop, a safe, and an envelope, according to WGAL.

Police said of the seized records, “It is common for individuals in these scenarios to document their homicidal and suicidal ideations via hand writings or electronics prior to, during, and after the act has taken place.”

Investigators found an electric utility shutoff notice posted on the front door of the home, the warrant stated.

Police said the Harrison family checked into Great Wolf Lodge on Sept. 21 and were scheduled to leave on Tuesday.

RELATED: Mom left ominous note at Las Vegas hotel before ‘very medicated’ cheerleader daughter found dead in murder-suicide: Coroner

Police records show investigators spoke with the slain father’s mother and sister, who told them Metallica Harrison was “dominant” and “controlling” and had isolated Charles Harrison and the boy from Charles’ family during the last three years.

WGAL reported, “The women also told investigators that Metallica appeared resentful toward her son and had said she never wanted to become pregnant, the documents stated.”

Charles Harrison’s mother, April Thetga, said money had been drawn from her son’s retirement account to pay for the three-week trip.

“It was definitely odd, but they’d taken their 401(k) out. … There was nothing we could do about that,” Thetga told the New York Post.

Metallica Harrison was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal homicide.

On Tuesday, Magisterial District Judge Daniel Kresge ordered Harrison held without bail, according to police.

Harrison is being detained at the Monroe County Correctional Facility.

Police characterized the incident as an “isolated domestic tragedy.”

“Our thoughts and deepest condolences go out to the family and loved ones affected by this tragedy,” police stated.

Police have not revealed a possible motive and said the investigation is ongoing.

The Great Wolf Lodge said in a statement, “We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by a tragic domestic incident that occurred yesterday in a guest room at our resort in the Pocono Mountains.”

“It was an isolated family incident, and we’re cooperating fully with local law enforcement as they conduct their investigation,” the resort’s statement continued. “Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of those affected.”

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​Mother, Son, Husband, Pennsylvania, Resort, Killings, Arrest, Criminal homicide, Stabbings, Suicidal, Crime 

Elon Musk has just made a big promise to the children of America — and they can expect it as soon as next year.

On Monday, Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, announced that he will be giving away shares of his company to kids in the United States.

‘You are an American treasure.’

“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk wrote on X.

Musk also hinted that this was only the beginning of his generosity, though he did not provide many more details. “This will be the first of many,” he added in the same post.

CNBC reported that Elon Musk currently owns 4.8 billion SpaceX shares, citing August SEC filings.

RELATED: Can you hear him now? Elon Musk is on the brink of revolutionizing yet another global industry

Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

There are approximately 72 million children in the United States, according to July 2025 census data.

If he holds to his promise, Musk would be giving away an estimated $10.7 billion, accounting for SpaceX’s opening stock price of $149.25 on Monday.

At the time of writing, Musk’s post reached 11.2 million views on X, with thousands of positive comments flooding in.

“You are an American treasure,” wrote Kari Lake of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Others urged Musk to extend this offer only to American children, rather than those of illegal aliens and “anchor babies.”

Blaze News reached out to SpaceX for more information but did not immediately receive a response.

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​America, Census data, Children, Elon musk, Generosity, Spacex, Politics 

A radical cult, a string of brutal killings, bizarre ideological beliefs, and alleged plots to murder witnesses — the Zizians sound like something out of a horror film.

But according to the author of “The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult,” the group is very real.

“On the surface, you’d think that the media would go absolutely crazy over this. You have a cult group that’s been linked to eight violent deaths across the United States and abroad. As part of the story, there are also suicides, violent attacks, cover-ups, fake deaths, money, vengeance, and yet this story was kryptonite to the legacy mainstream media for one very important reason,” author Andy Ngo explains.

“Trans ideology was very central to how this group was radicalized, and the people who joined were trans-identifying,” he says.

Ngo tells Gonzales that he began investigating the cult after hearing that a U.S. Border Patrol agent had died in a shooting incident in Vermont near the Canadian border.

When he learned the shooters were transgender, he dug deeper — especially being aware that the media would not.

“We saw how Canadian officials earlier this year really downplayed the trans aspect to the mass shooting that happened in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. So two people were alleged to be involved in that deadly ambush shooting, and both of them happened to identify as trans,” Ngo tells Gonzales.

“I kept digging and finding there’s more to this story than isolated incidents of homicides here and there across the U.S. And then once I actually found the writings of the cult leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, I was like this story has to be told,” he says.

Ngo describes the “Zizians” as “big AI doomer-type people” with “origins in Silicon Valley.”

“And a lot of their answers for how to improve society, maximize good, wasn’t actually about improving the welfare of humans at all,” he explains, but rather, they would study “how to improve the welfare of shrimps and insects.”

“So the Zizian ideology actually at its core, they’re militant extremist vegans, and they developed a belief system that was misanthropic, antihuman,” he says.

The Zizians also believed “it was completely fair game to kill people who eat meat.”

“And then on top of that, they pulled in radical trans ideology about being born in the wrong body and that if you go against them, you’re a transphobe,” Ngo explains.

Those in the group were “charged over the years in different jurisdictions,” and as the cases were ongoing, they “allegedly planned to assassinate one of the key witnesses” in an attempted murder trial.

“And one of them allegedly did it. There’s been a suspect arrested in the assassination of an 82-year-old man in Vallejo, California, last year. So the acts of violence that they enacted on their victims allegedly is very brutal,” Ngo tells Gonzales.

“I mean, using samurai swords, knives, hollow-point round execution type stuff to the head,” he continues.

The group also left behind secretive writings, where Ngo discovered that ”very central” to their worldview was a “sense of persecution.”

“Everybody’s a transphobe, society’s transphobic. We’re victims of a trans genocide,” he explains.

“And so, while Zizians indeed are an extreme radical example, you do see these parallels also in mainstream trans and left-wing movements in groups,” he says, noting that these transgenders are all on cross-sex hormones, which “people don’t like talking about.”

“In this book, I seek to answer what’s been the academic scientific research on how cross-sex hormone use affects mood and temperament and aggression. And actually, there is some research,” he adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Zizian cult, Andy ngo, Sara gonzales, Transgender, Leftism, Blazetv show 

France, which is currently on its fifth republic since 1792, is no stranger to revolt. It is, however, increasingly faced with revolts staged by strangers.

For instance, the race riots of June 2023 — which left 2,508 buildings and 12,031 vehicles smoldering, two dead and thousands wounded — started in migrant communities and often featured young men of Arab and African descent.

‘This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.’

The riots that swept France in May and left hundreds of police officers injured were, according to National Rally party president Jordan Bardella, largely the work of thugs who are “physically in France, but whose spirit and heart is elsewhere.”

In the company of domestic radicals, violent strangers waving foreign flags have once again taken over French streets, launched vicious assaults on police, gutted thousands of businesses, and destroyed historic sites such as Limoges’ iconic 143-year-old town hall.

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed in a speech on Sunday that the “French people” are to blame for the latest escalation in the rioting. Not all are convinced, however, that the Western European nation’s current problems are homegrown.

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and some European officials have argued instead that France is reaping the consequences of unchecked third-world immigration and failed assimilation.

Escalation

The riots underway grew out of mid-September “protests” in migrant-heavy suburbs, reportedly over the quality of the nation’s public high school education. In the weeks since, the rioters have added to their list of grievances and to their list of victims.

French conservative activist Thaïs d’Escufon told Blaze News that “what started as student protests, mainly led by the far left, has turned into ethnic riots that are spiraling out of control. Immigrants have become the street-level enforcers of the far left, spreading chaos, looting, vandalizing, stealing, and setting things on fire. It is an unholy alliance.”

D’Escufon noted further that the French are “no longer able to contain the consequences of 50 years of disastrous immigration policies. I believe that many immigrants and their descendants have not only failed to integrate, but that some seize every opportunity to express their hostility toward France.”

There was significant escalation in the violence on Saturday — an escalation that proved too much for police to handle in numerous cities.

RELATED: They’ll build a fire with your lovely oak door

According to the French Ministry of the Interior, around 550,000 people “demonstrated” across France on Saturday, and over 500 police officers, paramedics, and firefighters were injured in the riots.

“On the sidelines of these marches, vandals chose violence,” continued the ministry. “Across the entire territory, they targeted public buildings that serve citizens, such as town halls or prefectures, but also numerous businesses: They were attacked, ransacked, looted, and some even set on fire. Nothing justifies these acts!”

Alexandre Bompard, the head of the retail federation FCD, estimated that around 1,500 stores were “looted and ransacked across France.”

The mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Gregoire, said that the looting committed on Saturday was “intolerable” but also added that the public should not lose sight of the aspirations of the “very large majority of those who mobilize peacefully.”

While 60,000 cops and security personnel were mobilized across France on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez admitted that they were unable to restore order in “certain cities,” reported Reuters.

RELATED: UK admits rape almost guaranteed among inbound asylum-seekers — then cops lock down town to allow another shipload

Guillaume Saligot/AFP/Getty Images

Nunez submitted his resignation, stating that he was “responsible for everything that is happening.”

Macron did not accept Nunez’s resignation, though the president’s office has tasked the minister with figuring out a way to “put an end to the barricades and lootings,” as well as with ensuring “transparency regarding the failures in foresight and intelligence that led to the violence.”

Around 1,800 radicals were reportedly arrested on Saturday.

France’s ‘French’ problem

Macron addressed the wanton destruction on Sunday, stating, “Seditionists from far-left fringe groups, joined by many criminals, engaged in unbridled violence in our cities. Shops were looted. Public buildings, stores, and town halls were attacked, and some were destroyed. Several hundred police officers and gendarmes were injured,” according to a translation.

The president suggested that the antagonists were domestic, wondering, “How can French people do this to France? Why burn down the town hall in Limoges, the tourist office in Lyon, storm the town hall in Marseille, or attack the prefect’s residence in Bordeaux? How could they come to this?”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that the “French people” are not doing this to France.

Earlier this month, the American president concluded that “what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

On Sunday, Trump wrote, “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!”

“The migrants have taken over France,” added Trump.

‘They hate everything France represents.’

After radicals set the town hall of Limoges aflame, Vice President JD Vance tweeted, “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen.”

“I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn,” continued Vance. “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”

D’Escufon told Blaze News that Trump “is obviously right. You only have to look at the footage to see who the rioters are.”

“Of course, there are a few native French people who have been indoctrinated, who have undergone a sort of reverse assimilation,” continued d’Escufon. “But the overwhelming majority fit the same profile. You can hear it in their chants, you can see it when they spare Muslim-owned businesses. And you can see it in their graffiti, like at the Blanche metro station in Paris, where someone spray-painted: ‘France is not only white.’ We are used to these riots in France, although this time they have taken on a much larger scale, and the entire world is watching.”

As for Macron’s speech, d’Escufon noted, “The reality is precisely that these rioters are not French, and that is exactly why they behave this way. I believe they are driven by a desire for post-colonial revenge against us.”

“They hate everything France represents, including its institutions. That is why they attack the police. That is why they even attack firefighters, whose very purpose is to protect and save lives,” added d’Escufon. “Meanwhile, the media have continued to describe these events as student riots.”

Neither Macron’s office nor the National Rally immediately responded to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Some European officials have similarly acknowledged that the riots underway are the consequence, at least in part, of unchecked immigration.

Marine Le Pen, the deputy of the French National Assembly, told the Financial Times that France is “paying the price” for “decades of uncontrolled immigration.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar wrote, “In the face of this senseless destruction and unjustified violence, perhaps it is now clear to everyone why Hungary advocates the strictest possible approach to migration, and why we will not weaken our border protection or immigration policy under any pressure.”

“I am glad that the current EU summit has made it clear that the overwhelming majority of European countries have woken up and want to break with the permissive policies of the past,” added Magyar.

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​Emmanuel macron, Paris, France, Riots, Third world, Donald trump, Jd vance, Immigration, Politics 

If you have recently bought a new vehicle, replaced a laptop, or purchased a new phone, you have likely noticed that almost everything costs more to buy and to repair. Most people chalk this up to general inflation or bad luck. Behind the scenes, however, a hidden culprit is driving up prices and slowing modern conveniences: the tiny microchip.

That’s why Applied Materials’ recent announcement of the EPIC Center, a massive research facility designed to shorten chip development timelines by at least 30%, is so important. On paper, it sounds like just another corporate ribbon-cutting. In reality, it might be the only thing standing between American economic dominance and total technological obsolescence and between extortion of American citizens and reasonably priced products.

Faster microchips help keep food prices stable and grocery shelves full.

Most people treat microchips like clean socks. They notice them only when they run out or when they suddenly cost far more than they did last week. Yet almost every single aspect of your daily routine depends on these microscopic pieces of silicon. Your morning coffee maker uses them. The anti-lock brakes in your car use them. The hospital machine that monitors your heart rate depends on them entirely. If those chips stop improving, or if the supply line powering them breaks, the entire system grinds to a sudden halt.

Consider what happened just a few years ago, when new-car lots sat empty across the country and used-car prices soared to absurd heights. That massive disruption didn’t happen because automakers ran out of steel, rubber, or glass, but because Asian factories couldn’t ship those tiny microchips. When chip designs stall or supply chains hit bottlenecks, companies aren’t the only ones to suffer. They pass extra costs straight on to consumers, adding to the price of everyday goods.

Creating a new generation of microchips used to be a relatively straightforward task. A few decade-defining breakthroughs could be sketched in a lab by a handful of brilliant, chain-smoking engineers. Today, advancing from a lab discovery to a mass-produced processor takes many years and requires enormous investment. Because chip design has become so slow and costly, technology upgrades have grown pricier; hardware improvements have begun to plateau.

The new $5 billion EPIC Center aims to break this bottleneck by bringing chipmakers, university researchers, and hardware engineers under one roof, letting them solve problems in parallel instead of waiting years to pass ideas back and forth. It’s a common-sense, America-first approach.

If the venture is successful, it means cheaper, more reliable consumer goods.

RELATED: Trump finally shut down this tech giant’s America-last hiring policy

gremlin/Getty Images

To begin with, faster chip development translates directly into stronger supply lines and lower manufacturing costs. When tech moves seamlessly from research labs to factory floors, the cost of building everything from smart washing machines to high-definition TVs drops. That keeps everyday household goods from jumping dramatically in price every year.

Second, it means devices with real battery life that lasts for years rather than months. Everyone knows the blood-boiling frustration of a phone battery dying by midafternoon or a laptop running slower than a DMV queue after 18 months of light use. Making electronics run faster without burning through power requires fundamental breakthroughs in microchip energy efficiency. Accelerating those hardware breakthroughs means your personal devices will run cooler and last longer on a single charge, potentially saving you thousands of dollars in upgrade costs.

Third, it accelerates lifesaving health care and medical treatment. Modern AI is often portrayed as nothing more than a tool for lazy college students or Silicon Valley tech bros. This is utter nonsense. It is also a form of super-powered pattern recognition. In modern hospitals, AI systems powered by specialized chips can analyze thousands of medical scans, blood samples, and diagnostic records in seconds, catching dangerous illnesses like cancer long before human eyes could spot them. Faster, more accessible microchips make this diagnostic equipment far cheaper and easier for local hospitals to deploy. This results in shorter wait times, earlier disease detection, and, perhaps most importantly, more accurate treatment for you and your family.

Finally, faster microchips help keep food prices stable and grocery shelves full. The elaborate shipping networks that deliver fresh produce from farms to your neighborhood supermarket rely on routing software. When shipping routes or trucking schedules run inefficiently, food spoils in transit. Deliveries arrive late, and grocery prices spike. Smarter chips power logistics networks that can predict weather delays and reroute delivery fleets in real time.

It is easy to completely tune out news about corporate mega-facilities or abstract headlines about the global technology race between the United States and China. Ultimately, though, microchips are the invisible, indispensable force powering every aspect of modern life. When chip development accelerates, the everyday technology you rely on becomes cheaper, safer, and far more dependable. And that $5 billion investment in California is a practical step toward making the average American’s daily life run more smoothly and the nation more secure.

​Artificial intelligence, Tech 

Chick-fil-A is living a lie by being closed on Sunday.

And let me cut you nicer-than-God folks off at the pass if you have a problem with that, because CEO Andrew Cathy is the one begging for approval from the pagans at NBC News, not me.

The more I ponder this, the more certain I am that Andrew Cathy’s performance might be the most pathetic interview I have seen all year that doesn’t include Candace, Tucker, or Talarico.

Last year, Chick-fil-A rang up nearly $24 billion in U.S. sales, up 5.2% from 2024. So times are neither hard nor getting harder, and Cathy isn’t in the difficult position of having to eat a journalist’s trash sandwich to save people’s jobs. The breadlines aren’t filling up with former peddlers of delicious chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. The lights are staying on at Casa del Cathy.

So what gives? I thought I was watching a replay from 2012 when I saw Cathy getting cross-examined last week by NBC’s “Today” illuminati. Why would Chick-fil-A’s chief possibly care what those gaslighters think about him in the year of our Lord 2026? Was this a throwback to Mitt Romney’s “not part of my campaign” dodge during the original Chick-fil-A fight? It is election season, after all. Time to replay some classics.

But no. This was Andrew Cathy, apparently having learned nothing from the humiliation rituals his father, Dan, endured almost a decade and a half ago. Since then, much of the cultural right has rejected Romney’s awkward and fake moral preening in favor of Trump’s mean tweets and actual results. Yet Andrew still squealed. Even R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor in “Full Metal Jacket” might be at a loss for words before such willful weakness.

How does Cathy not understand that we don’t have to do this any more? Unless he actually prefers the world’s feckless and flaccid approval to God’s. Whatever the case, can I get the name of Chick-fil-A’s PR firm so I can make sure nobody I know in the Christian conservative space ever hires it? Thanks.

Nobody asked for this. No crisis required it. Chick-fil-A voluntarily showed up on “Today” to be hazed by people who have hated the company for years.

A wise man once asked what good it does to gain the whole world but lose your soul. But if you aren’t living by what you hear at church on Sunday, you may as well open the chicken store for an extra day and sling some product! You aren’t going to embarrass yourself for free, are you?

I mean, you grew by only 5.2% last year. Maybe a robust 6% or 7% could have spared you the Soviet-style struggle session. But at a measly 5.2%, you’ve probably got to hedge your bets when you hear that “Did God really say?” whisper in your ear.

RELATED: Outrage ensues after Christian Chick-fil-A CEO invites LGBTQ+ activists to try CFA’s delicious chicken sandwiches

Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

My goodness. The more I ponder this, the more certain I am that Andrew Cathy’s performance might be the most pathetic interview I have seen all year that doesn’t include Candace, Tucker, or Talarico. I’m offended by it. I’m angry at it. I’m saddened by it.

It is the stuff of existential loserdom: a very comfortable “Christian” “man” going to the spirit of the age for repentance and absolution. That is blasphemy. That is an abomination. And since the salvation Cathy seeks from his enemies will never be granted, it is also just plain stupid.

Times really are hard for some of Chick-fil-A’s regular customers, but not for Cathy. And yet he signed up for this emasculation anyway.

What a waste of a platform. What a waste of a testimony.

​Andrew cathy, Boycott, Chick-fil-a, Church, Mitt romney, Nbc news, Opinion & analysis, Today show, Pagans, Christians, Conservatives, Blasphemy, Public relations 

Since 1950, the National Book Awards — now overseen by the National Book Foundation — has recognized the best in American literary talent, honoring the likes of Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and J.D. Salinger.

In recent years, however, the foundation’s judges appear to have prized politics over quality, at least in the category of nonfiction.

‘The National Book Award has become a DEI checklist.’

In 2023, for example, the award went to an Indian activist’s “retelling of U.S. history.” In 2024, the prize went to a book that the foundation said “holds the U.S. to account for its cruelty.” Last year, the foundation’s handpicked judges gave the nonfiction award to an Egyptian-born critic for his long-winded attack on the West.

Among the titles longlisted for this year’s award in the category of nonfiction is a work of agitprop about the supposed evils of white paint — a book which Steven Tucker, writing for the Federalist, noted was ironically printed on white paper.

Book publisher Simon & Schuster says in its description of “A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint” by Columbia University associate professor Wendy Walters:

As the default color of our built environment, [white paint] asks us to believe that it’s neutral — that it has no signifiers or, perhaps more troublingly, that what it does signify, whether it be calmness, cleanliness, blankness, or purity, is unassailable and value-free. In this expansive, impassioned examination, cultural critic Wendy S. Walters interrogates all that we have taken for granted about the substance that colors, or fails to color, the structures and objects that surround us.”

The race-obsessed author said in a 2021 video for Creative Capital — the outfit that gave her a grant to write the book — that her anti-white project “comes from a genuine and visceral dislike of white paint, a feeling that is at times overwhelming for me, and according to the estimations of others I know, a reaction that is possibly irrational.”

When probing her “possibly irrational” dislike of the color white and use of white paint, Walters supposedly “discovered numerous examples of the way that it figured into systems of erasure, exclusion, violence, and the masking of power in the social and natural world.”

RELATED: Three straight white guys walk into a poetry reading …

Derek Davis/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

Walters complained about an instance where white paint was allegedly used by supremacists to deface Houston’s Rothko Chapel and another instance where a rainbow crosswalk in Canada was painted over in white.

Ex-Washington Post book critic Ron Charles noted in his review of Walters’ book, “At times, it feels as though Walters selected the entire world and typed Command-F ‘white.'”

“Early on, she claims, ‘This is a book about white paint, not about whiteness,'” Charles continued. “But that’s like claiming Moby-Dick is about whales, not about obsession.”

Walters has a son with her white husband, author Dan Charnas, but she still managed to crowd around 350 white pages with justification for her hatred of white paint.

While this lengthy justification was panned in a New York Times book review on Thursday, it may ultimately be awarded next month by National Book Foundation judges.

Walters’ placement on the National Book Awards’ 2026 longlist is par for the course.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote in late September, “By my count, in the past decade, nine of the 10 winners of the National Book Award for fiction belonged to a minority group. In the nonfiction category, 10 of 10. Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a DEI checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics, and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning.”

Blaze News did not immediately receive a response from Walters or her publisher.

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​Whiteness, Anti-white racism, Politics 

There are three high bars in the modern literary trade — writing a good novel, getting it published, and selling it to the public.

I’ve cleared the first two with my new political-thriller mystery, “The Camelot Trail,” which comes out November 17. Now I have to clear the third.

I committed another contemporary heresy in ‘Paper Tigers’: I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That last bar used to be lower once you cleared the first two. Publishers, even smaller ones, had a built-in promotional pipeline. They would set up radio interviews and nationwide book signings and send review galleys to genre-specific media like Analog for science fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for mysteries, and Romantic Times for, yes, romance novels.

But that was the 20th century, when reading was still commonplace and before the internet atomized audiences. The publishing business has changed in other ways too.

Heroes wanted

At the turn of the millennium, “Harry Potter” triggered a reading boom among young and old alike. J.K. Rowling established her fantasy universe with a strong male lead, and boys showed up in force. A 2006 Scholastic study found that 57% of boys ages 5 to 17 had read “Harry Potter,” compared with 51% of girls.

The best-seller lists of the 2000s were also thick with male-driven thrillers and mysteries from Lee Child, Dan Brown, Vince Flynn, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, and others. Their readership was hardly confined to men. Men and traditional women still appreciate alpha males.

Yet over the next decade, publishing and Hollywood increasingly came to regard the traditional male hero as something requiring correction.

I noted the latter tendency eight years ago in my first article for the American Spectator. Marking the 10th anniversary of the action-thriller hit “Taken,” I wrote that a film about a heroic white father rescuing his kidnapped daughter from Albanian sex traffickers would never be greenlit in 2018. Radical feminists would reject the original story as patriarchal toxic masculinity.

Their “Taken” remake, I joked, would depict the father as a cretin while the minority-race mother kicks white male ass to save their mixed-race gay son from a white-supremacist Christian cult. Whether the resulting movie would be laughed off the screen would matter less than the message.

Male jail

Consider Rachel Zegler explaining Disney’s new “Snow White”:

“She’s not going to be saved by the prince,” Zegler said. “And she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”

So get with the program, all you silly girls dreaming about true love and Prince Charming, and you useless boys with no hero to emulate or damsel to rescue.

They can still find both archetypes in books from independent publishers.

Publishing itself is overwhelmingly female. The Association of American Literary Agents’ 2023 membership survey found 82.1% of respondents identified as “cis women,” versus 14% as “cis men.” The organization’s DEI committee explicitly describes agents as “gatekeepers” and says part of its mission is to advance AALA as an “anti-racist organization.”

The AALA does not, of course, publish a sign reading STRAIGHT WHITE MALE HEROES NEED NOT APPLY. But if you are a straight white male writing novels about masculine heroes and sexy women, you can draw your own conclusions.

I did.

Heretic’s tale

I’ve written five books, including what I immodestly consider a Great American Novel, “Paper Tigers.” It’s about two copy aides at the Washington Post who discover that chemistry trumps ideology. My Christmas romantic fantasy, “The Christmas Spirit,” has become a Yuletide perennial among some readers.

So why haven’t you heard of either book?

Because they were put out by small independent publishers willing to offer readers things the majors increasingly seem embarrassed by — in my case, romantic tough guys and beautiful feminine women who appreciate the opposite sex.

By 2020, I had little expectation that those once-unremarkable elements would win me a top agent, let alone a mainstream publisher. And I committed another contemporary heresy in “Paper Tigers”: I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That’s rather important in a romantic comedy. It may also help explain why Hollywood has largely abandoned the kind of romantic comedy in which men and women are permitted to like one another.

The trade-off with boutique publishers is promotion. They simply don’t have the budgets and machinery of the majors.

RELATED: Hard-boiled detective fans should follow ‘The Washington Trail’

Lou Aguilar

The thrill is gone

Which brings me back to “The Camelot Trail.”

It is book two of my political-thriller mystery series featuring young Washington private detectives Mark Tristan and Neil Cork. In “The Washington Trail,” they tackle what begins as the simple case of a beautiful UNC co-ed dumped by her D.C.-based fiancé. The intrigue escalates into a deadly political conspiracy.

A political thriller has to be timely.

“The Washington Trail” came out in August 2024, and the story takes place in February of that year. But I wrote it in 2023, when Donald Trump had what appeared to be a likelier future as a prisoner than as president. I had to anticipate the political situation a year ahead, knowing that a single contrary development could derail months of work.

I submitted the manuscript that October. Aethon Books accepted it and offered me a contract for two more novels in the series.

By the time “The Washington Trail” appeared the following summer, its plot was still on the cutting edge.

Then real life started behaving like a political thriller.

I turned in the second book, “The Camelot Trail,” last June, in time for what I hoped would be a lucrative pre-Christmas release.

The Aethon editors balked. They apparently considered the book too political to have broad commercial appeal — which I understood to mean too politically incorrect — and gave me a choice: Soften the politics or take back full rights to the series, including de-publication of “The Washington Trail.”

Blazing a ‘Trail’

I had to weigh the two options carefully.

“The Camelot Trail” follows Tristan and Cork as they bodyguard an expatriate English literature professor forced to flee Britain in fear for his life. His Excalibur Movement, urging a return to Arthurian chivalry among young men, has drawn threats from Islamists, feminists, and a British government increasingly hostile to him. He finds refuge in America, but a massive Excalibur rally planned for the National Mall once again makes him a target.

Softening the politics would have required a full rewrite, with no chance of making the Christmas season.

Finding another publisher could cost me the same window.

I chose option two.

I contacted World Castle Publishing, the publisher of “The Christmas Spirit,” which has sold well for the company every Christmas. On the strength of that book, World Castle agreed to keep “The Camelot Trail” on the original schedule and republished “The Washington Trail” this summer.

“The Camelot Trail” comes out November 17.

Now I really have to clear that third bar.

​Aethon books, Culture, Entertainment, Heroes, Lifestyle, Lou aguilar, Male hero, Publishing, The camelot trail, The washington trail, Woke, Books 

In June, the Veterans of Foreign Wars celebrated the left-wing holy of holies: LGBTQIA+ month. They paid tribute to those who fall under the ever-expanding umbrella of sexual identities and genders.

Framed as a gesture of inclusivity, the decision instead placed the VFW squarely on the opposing side of the demographic it has served for more than 125 years.

Having the right to say something does not automatically make saying it a good strategic decision.

Much of my career has been centered on reputation management and communications strategy. A painful lesson to learn the hard way is that the quickest way to lose influence is to pick unnecessary fights with your allies.

If the fight isn’t in defense of your core mission or identity, why go there and risk losing your base?

Every organization has a God-given right to say what it wants, when it wants. But the VFW seems to have forgotten something important about its members. According to Pew Research, 63% of veteran voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 35% who support Democrats.

Veterans are Americans. They fought for freedom, including the freedom of people whose beliefs and identities are different from their own. That does not mean they have to enthusiastically embrace every cause associated with the modern Pride movement or accept being branded intolerant and backward for questioning its politics.

Many veterans have legitimate concerns about taxpayer-funded gender-transition procedures, ideological brainwashing in classrooms, and military policies that could affect national security. By wading into this controversy, the VFW risks alienating its membership and its most important public policy audience: the GOP.

That is a spectacularly unnecessary political gamble, especially in an election year. The VFW could end up paying dearly if more disillusioned veterans decide to tear up their membership cards.

The VFW does not have to embrace every socially conservative position, nor should it abandon veterans who are not a part of its conservative majority. It should recognize that picking sides in contentious cultural debates carries risks, particularly when its overriding responsibility is to secure practical benefits for veterans.

Unfortunately, the communications problems extend well beyond Pride Month.

The organization has also managed to find itself in an extraordinary confrontation with Republican lawmakers over the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, a sweeping legislative package combining more than 60 veterans-related measures.

The legislation would improve access to health care, expand support for caregivers, strengthen suicide prevention programs, and address longstanding problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

These are the exact issues the VFW exists to champion.

RELATED: The CDC is hiding the data on armed citizens

James Carroll/Getty Images

A Mission Roll Call survey found that approximately 71% of respondents supported TCAVA.

Its concerns are not entirely without merit. Veterans deserve fair compensation for service-connected conditions, and any proposal affecting future benefits warrants careful scrutiny. But why scuttle a sweeping package of potentially transformative reforms over provisions that could be amended?

Surely the sensible response is to fight for a better bill rather than risk throwing the whole thing onto the legislative scrap heap. Instead, the dispute has descended into a damaging public confrontation.

In July, Republican Representatives Mike Bost (Ill.) and Jack Bergman (Mich.) requested a Department of Veterans Affairs review of the VFW’s accreditation to assist veterans with benefits claims.

The VFW has every right to challenge politicians. Its independence is vital, and lawmakers should not threaten its accreditation simply because they dislike its position on legislation.

But having the right to say something does not automatically make saying it a good strategic decision. The VFW should be hammering out compromises, winning amendments, and building coalitions.

Instead, it is flying the flag of a movement many of its members oppose and getting involved in ugly public feuds with folks who are supposed to be on the same side. Who benefits from that? Certainly not the veterans waiting for better health care, improved benefits, and meaningful reform.

The VFW’s history deserves respect. Generations of veterans have depended on its advocacy, and its influence in Washington once helped secure important victories for those who courageously served their country.

That makes its current predicament all the more frustrating.

With Republicans controlling Washington at the moment, there is a golden opportunity to secure meaningful legislative victories. The VFW needs to stop fighting unnecessary battles and concentrate its firepower on the issues that really matter.

​Democratic party, Identity politics, Republican party, Public policy, Veterans of foreign wars, Lgbtq, Pride, Gop, Take care of america’s veterans act, Veterans, Opinion & analysis 

Sometimes an issue’s best barometer is external to it. Such is the case for the climate-change agenda and the box-office bombing of Tom Cruise’s current movie, “Digger.” Both agenda and movie are losing their audiences.

By now everyone has heard of the dual drubbing Tom Cruise’s “Digger” is receiving. First, it was panned by critics. Now, it is being ignored by audiences. Together, these have garnered the movie negative box-office headlines and put it well on its way to making the list of all-time money-losers.

Although the canary may not be dead in climate change’s coal mine, it is no longer singing.

Both outcomes are surprising. Critics have been very kind in the past to Tom Cruise and his projects. And the public has been kinder still, making him one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars.

More surprising than either is the fact that one of the world’s biggest stars and one of the world’s most discussed issues would come together in such a pratfall.

Yes, there have been notable examples where the climate-change agenda seemed to show signs of wobbling. Bill Gates released a famous statement last year that said the “doomsday view of climate change” was “wrong.” Gates suggested acceptance and talked about working to address climate change’s impact (“to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies”) rather than continue seeking to reverse it.

This June, Jamie Dimon issued a warning to Europe, home of climate change’s greatest adherents and policy implementers, that these countries were killing themselves economically. As Dimon noted that Europe’s GDP had fallen from 90% of the U.S.’ to just 70%, the connection was unmistakable.

Not long ago too, the U.N. dropped the severest estimate of climate change’s potential impact from its impact projections.

All were telltale signs of shift, but they were easy to miss or dismiss, especially considering the enormous coverage that the climate change agenda has received and the huge financial resources committed (an estimated $1 trillion in the U.S. alone) to it.

RELATED: Don’t let anyone spoil ‘Digger’ for you

Image courtesy of Warner Brothers

It is safe to say that climate change has been the most consistently uninterrupted major issue for policymakers and the public alike for decades now. Everyone knew which way the wind was blowing, and almost everyone sought to burnish their green bona fides accordingly.

Overlooked, though, was the shift that was occurring beneath the headlines. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and especially since the Iranian conflict began, the focus has been on the price of oil, not its usage. Lost in this contemporary focus was any serious mention of getting away from oil. Neither was mention made that, from a climate-change devotee’s perspective, higher oil prices are a good thing.

The focus has all been on the negative impact of higher oil prices, on the need for getting them lower, and on the need for making oil supply routes more secure.

As important as all these underground indicators of the climate-change agenda’s retrenchment are, “Digger” may be an even more important one. The combined failure of one of Hollywood’s biggest studios, one of the world’s biggest stars, and one of the world’s (until recently, at least) biggest issues may be a signal that the public no longer cares so much. It has moved on.

“Digger” and climate change: a related occurrence in an unrelated area. It calls to mind another familiar analogy of the canary in the coal mine. Although the canary may not be dead in climate change’s coal mine, it is no longer singing.

​Audiences, Bill gates, Climate change agenda, Digger, Hollywood, Oil prices, Public, Public opinion, Tom cruise, Europe, Box office, Jamie dimon, Gdp, Green energy, Ukraine war, Canary, Opinion & analysis 

A mother’s grief is deeply personal — but a video of Christine Wells Wonsley twerking at a remembrance celebration for her 18-year-old son, Nolan Wells, is only conjuring more questions about her motives following his death.

“In late August, they celebrated his birthday and had a remembrance party, I believe, at her home or some home of a family member,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says. “And someone has leaked the video that we’re playing right now of her dancing and twerking and celebrating with, I don’t know, a dozen women or so.”

This video, he says, “does not look like a mother … mourning the death of her son.”

“This to me is not a good look,” he continues. “And I know a lot of people will say, ‘Hey … she can dance … that’s not disrespectful to the remembrance of her son.’ And I get the whole ‘everybody grieves differently’ crowd.”

“But your 18-year-old son drowns, you believe he was murdered, and you’re having a remembrance six, seven weeks later for his birthday and you’re twerking. It’s not a good look in my opinion. It’s significant, in my opinion,” he adds.

April Chapman agrees, noting that in the beginning, she had “wanted to give this woman the benefit of the doubt.”

“But very early on, I made it clear and apparent that connecting with Al Sharpton and Ben Crump and then looking at the race grievance cartel and the character of the people that are screaming justice for Nolan Wells, it told me a lot about the underlying character and disposition of who these people were,” she tells Whitlock.

“And then you see this video,” she adds.

The video, Chapman explains, was given to journalist Sarah Fields by someone who was at the party, “who is now seeing for themselves that this person is a fraud.”

“This woman is playing in our face. She is not grieving,” she says.

“Now, many of us really are grieving in the sense that Nolan Wells, by any stretch of the imagination, and from observation, seemed to be a very good kid,” she continues.

However, every mother whom Chapman has spoken to has said that she wouldn’t “be able to pick [herself] up off the floor.”

“‘I wouldn’t be able to do all these interviews. I would be in a state of depression and just grief because I’m trying to figure out what happened to my son,’” she recalls them saying.

“And then we see a video like this,” she adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Al sharpton, April chapman, Ben crump, Christine wells wonsley, Jason whitlock, Nolan wells, Blazetv show 

In our essay last month, we proposed that presumed incoming Alabama governor Tommy Tuberville (R) pursue an aggressive and innovative political strategy to stem the growth of Islam in his state. His challenge, however, is no longer confined to the spread of the so-called religion of peace.

Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, what had largely been an implicit alliance between Islamist activists and two predominant elements of American progressivism — gender anarchists and racial idolators — has increasingly declared itself in public.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles.

Consider the coalition behind Columbia University’s Gaza encampment in April 2024. Columbia University Apartheid Divest brought together 116 student organizations, including the Muslim Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Genderev, the Black Student Organization, and White Coats 4 Black Lives. Its members made common cause under the banner of fighting interconnected systems of oppression. That January, the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, representing organizations including CAIR and the Muslim American Society, partnered with the left-wing ANSWER Coalition to organize a massive demonstration in Washington.

Strained bedfellows

The alliance is mystifying, to say the least. These two progressive wings treat sex as a social construct and race as the master category of politics. Their Islamist allies adhere to religious traditions that condemn the progressives’ core sexual beliefs. What holds them together is a common enemy: the Western political and cultural order, whose foundations are deeply indebted to the Bible.

Classical liberalism and the freedoms associated with it did not emerge from a vacuum or from secular reason alone. The Declaration of Independence’s assertion of unalienable rights endowed by a Creator tracks the Bible’s claim that human beings bear the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–27). Equality before the law, the restraint of arbitrary power, and the distinction between divine and human authority draw on the Mosaic law’s limits on kings (Deut. 17:14–20) and the New Testament’s insistence that Caesar’s domain is not total (Matt. 22:21; Rom. 13:1–7).

Conscience, proportional justice, the dignity of the individual, and the possibility of ordered liberty under law are human applications, however imperfect, of Old and New Testament teaching. The progressive and Islamist camps challenge this inheritance from very different directions. Progressives increasingly reject biblical moral authority; Islamists seek a political order governed by their interpretation of divine law. Neither has much use for the classical liberal settlement that emerged in the Christian West.

No ‘queering’ the Quran

Gender idolatry begins by denying the created order stated in Genesis. Male and female are not optional social performances; they are the binary given in the text (Gen. 1:27; 2:18–24). The framework that elevates subjective identity over biological sex treats the Bible’s account as an oppressive artifact worthy of dismantling.

Here, traditional Islam and Christianity have considerably more in common with each other than either does with contemporary gender ideology. Both uphold a divinely established sexual order. Both condemn homosexual acts. Their theological foundations differ, but their moral prohibitions frequently overlap.

Traditional Islamic jurisprudence, however, has gone considerably further in the punishments it prescribes. The Quran condemns the conduct of the people of Lot (7:80–81; 26:165–166; 27:54–55; 29:28–29), while one hadith states: “If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.” Iranian law still prescribes the death penalty for certain acts of sodomy. Hamas’ record of repression in Gaza offers little comfort to those whose sexual freedom is celebrated in Western progressive salons.

Yet the alliance endures. At New York City’s 2024 Pride parade, pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route beneath a banner proclaiming, “No queer liberation without Palestinian liberation.” For these activists, solidarity against a common political adversary evidently outweighs profound differences over sexual morality.

‘Race’ to conquest

Racial idolatry performs parallel work. The New Testament’s declaration that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (Gal. 3:28) supplies an important theological root of the classical liberal rejection of inherited status as the basis of rights. Rights attach to the individual, not to the bloodline, race, or social strata a person is born into.

Intersectionality, as developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her 1989 essay “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” examines overlapping systems of discrimination associated with race, sex, and other categories. In contemporary progressive politics, this framework is frequently enlisted to sort political conflicts into hierarchies of oppressor and oppressed. Muslims, once treated as outsiders to the Western political order, now occupy a prominent place in the progressive hierarchy of victimhood.

Muslim scriptural and legal traditions often escape the scrutiny applied to Christian texts in progressive circles. Historical Islamic expansionism and the dhimmi (second-class citizen) system are viewed through the lens of Western imperialism rather than subjected to the same criticism directed at Christianity’s historical entanglements with political power. This produces a selective hierarchy of harms and victims: Islamic religious claims may receive deference even as the Bible’s moral authority is rejected.

RELATED: Is ‘Islamophobia’ irrational?

Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto/Getty Images

A common enemy

The gender and racial wings, therefore, share an enemy with Islamism that is more precise than “conservatism.” Their respective doctrines may be incompatible, but both challenge the Western liberal order, which places limits on the claims of political and religious authority over the individual. Consider Judith Butler’s description of the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians as “armed resistance” rather than terrorism. Butler acknowledged that the attacks were terrible but insisted that they be understood as resistance to oppression. The language makes it possible to place Hamas within a progressive account of political struggle despite the movement’s deeply illiberal religious commitments.

Anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman has documented the longer “red-green” pattern: leftist and Islamist actors finding common cause against Western institutions and Israel while maintaining incompatible doctrines on sex, apostasy, and religious authority. Historical precedents are hardly encouraging. Secular allies were pushed aside after the Iranian Revolution, demonstrating how quickly a revolutionary coalition can dissolve once the question of who will govern has been settled. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, and there is no reason to assume the next stanza will end differently.

American progressives appear confident that the alliance can be sustained indefinitely through the shared vocabulary of equity, anti-imperialism, and opposition to patriarchal power. Islamists, meanwhile, have learned to employ that vocabulary in Western academic and media institutions without abandoning their own religious commitments concerning women, homosexuals, or nonbelievers.

The net result is that the classical liberal inheritance, rooted in the Bible’s promises about the dignity of the individual and the limits of coercive state or ethnic power, remains their common obstacle. Our proposal that Alabama initiate a constitutional debate, insisting that the state’s history and tradition are not interchangeable with Islamic teaching, is one political means of defending that inheritance.

Progressives will always default to acting as though the obstacle is invisible as long as there are constituents who can claim status as victims. Thus, they hope that a shared basket of purported miseries will be sufficient to sustain what is otherwise a shallow alliance of convenience.

The progressives will discover, too late, that the doctrines they dismantled in the name of anarchy and equity were all that stood between them and the caliphate’s scimitar. They will also learn that a fungible hierarchy of victimization offers no sanctuary once the victors decide to rewrite the list.

​American muslim task force, Biblical foundations, Cair, Christianity, Classical liberalism, Gender ideology, Hamas attacks, Intersectionality, Islam, Islamophobia, Lifestyle, Faith 

The new trailer for Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” promises a dazzling sight: a world coming into being. Fans of C.S. Lewis will be watching Aslan and the White Witch. I’ll be watching Uncle Andrew. He may be the book’s most disturbing character because he teaches himself to deny what he knows.

Andrew’s talent for explaining away unwelcome truth raises an uncomfortable question about Gerwig’s adaptation. Will she allow Lewis to tell his Christian story, or will she explain its Christian meaning away?

God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at self-defense that he loses the ability to listen.

As a philosophy professor and Christian pastor, I recognize the temptation. Education can help us discover truth. It can also equip us with elaborate excuses for resisting it. An impressive vocabulary does not guarantee an honest mind.

Lewis introduces Uncle Andrew as a man convinced that intellectual distinction exempts him from ordinary duties. Keeping promises is for lesser people. Andrew knows the secrets of the occult, so he imagines he can send children into dangers he refuses to face himself. He calls his cowardice greatness.

The vice is familiar: Exceptional ability supposedly confers exceptional moral privileges. A radical professor who believes his political vision justifies tearing down inherited institutions uses Andrew’s logic. So does the politician who excuses the dangers of communism or socialism because a glorious future allegedly demands sacrifices now. The superior mind claims authority to break rules it imposes on everyone else.

Then Uncle Andrew meets Aslan.

At first, Andrew hears the Lion’s song as music. It stirs thoughts and feelings he does not want to entertain. He then tells himself that no lion could possibly sing. He must have heard roaring. The longer Aslan sings, the harder Andrew works to believe his own explanation. Eventually he hears only animal noises, even when Aslan speaks.

Lewis gives us the verdict: “Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”

Notice the order. Andrew recognizes something, resists it, and finally loses the ability to recognize it. His ignorance is learned. What looks like an intellectual limitation begins as a moral refusal.

RELATED: The lion, the witch, and the worldview war

Gisela Schober/Getty Images

That’s why I worry about the film. A director can admire Lewis’s portals, creatures, and cosmic song while rejecting the Creator who gives them meaning. She can retain the scenery and rewrite the moral order. The result may look like Narnia without being Lewis’ Narnia.

A story has more than recognizable characters and scenes. It tells us what is good, what has gone wrong, and what would make things right. For Lewis, creation has a good and authoritative Creator. Sin requires repentance. Redemption answers a need human beings cannot overcome by declaring themselves enlightened.

Could a filmmaker present that vision faithfully without sharing Lewis’ faith? Certainly. But she must first let the author challenge her own assumptions. If Gerwig turns his Christian account of creation into a comfortable endorsement of modern cultural priorities, she will have made Uncle Andrew’s mistake: hearing the song and insisting it is merely roaring.

The trailer cannot settle that question, and I will judge the finished film when it arrives. My concern is what Hollywood so often does to stories whose moral claims it finds inconvenient. An adaptation should not become an exercise in correcting the author.

RELATED: Netflix ‘adapts’ Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ — and Satan gets a sympathetic makeover

Emilio Madrid/Getty Images

Christians, however, should not congratulate themselves too quickly. Uncle Andrew is more than a stand-in for a leftist professor, a politician, or a Hollywood director. Lewis’ warning reaches the church as well.

In Romans 1, Paul writes of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God reveals himself through creation, but human beings refuse to honor him or give thanks. Their reasoning becomes futile, and their hearts grow dark. They claim wisdom as they become fools.

Paul does not describe every unbeliever as someone who merely lacks information. Our desires shape what we are willing to admit. We can demand more evidence while insulating ourselves from the implications of evidence already before us.

Christians can do this, too. We acknowledge God’s revelation in creation, then find reasons to disregard it. We know a biblical command, then use our intelligence to argue that our circumstances make us the exception. We defend Christian books without accepting their correction. Praising Lewis’ theology is easier than submitting to the God he confessed.

That is why Uncle Andrew belongs in a Christian reflection rather than merely a debate over a Netflix film. We should ask whether our explanations clarify the truth or protect us from it. Can we admit that our clever argument was an excuse? Will we confess when God’s Word confronts something we want to keep?

Christ offers forgiveness to sinners who have spent years defending their sins. His grace frees us to abandon our excuses instead of perfecting them.

I hope Gerwig gives Lewis a faithful hearing. The finished film will show us whether she has. Meanwhile, our own hearing deserves examination. God speaks through his Word, and Uncle Andrew shows how a person can become so skilled at defending himself that he loses the ability to listen.

​Aslan, Cs lewis, Education, Filmmaker, Greta gerwig, Moral order, Narnia, Occult, Hollywood, Lion, Netflix, Moral authority, Sin, Redemption, Faith, Christian, Scripture, Opinion & analysis 

My aunt recently passed away after a long, grueling battle with cancer. An incredibly decent woman, she spent her final years insisting that time is our only non-renewable asset and that the hands on the clock move faster every year you stay alive.

When I was younger, I dismissed this as little more than garden-variety elder sentimentality. Standing at her grave on a rainy Sunday morning, I finally understood what she meant.

We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

In the 19th century, a French philosopher named Paul Janet offered a mathematical explanation for the subjective acceleration of time. He argued that each passing year feels proportionally shorter for a very specific reason. To a 2-year-old child, twelve months equals 50% of all known reality. By the time a person hits 50, that same year accounts for a rather pathetic 2% of their personal timeline. Janet’s arithmetic offers an elegant explanation for why the years seem to shrink, though it doesn’t tell us much about what is happening inside our skulls.

Reeling in the years

A study published earlier this year offers a more complicated explanation. Researchers have long suggested that time seems to accelerate as we age because adulthood lacks the novelty of childhood and adolescence. When every day resembles the last, we have fewer distinctive memories to look back on, making entire years seem to disappear.

Researchers examined 120 adults, ranging in age from 20 to 91, and found no significant relationship between how quickly participants felt the previous decade had passed and either the number of personal memories they recalled or the importance they attached to those memories. Instead, the sensation of accelerating time was associated with poorer cognitive performance, particularly on a test of delayed memory recall.

The findings suggest that our ability to form new memories may help explain why time seems to speed up as we age. They also raise an uncomfortable question about how much of our lives we actually remember.

Wasted on the way

Consider the difference between stepping onto an airport shuttle in a strange city and making your daily commute to work. In the unfamiliar city, you notice everything: the smell of diesel, the strange angle of the streetlights, the driver’s odd accent, and the dodgy-looking individual eyeing your wallet. Decades later, you may still remember that seven-minute ride.

Contrast that with your daily commute. You have driven that specific stretch of road thousands of times. The route is so familiar that you barely need to think about it. You arrive at your desk with 40 minutes missing from your conscious existence, unable to recall much of what happened between your driveway and the office.

Smartphones have given us another remarkably efficient way to make hours disappear. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions around the world spend their afternoons tapping on glass screens, watching short videos of strangers selling snake oil or arguing over trivial issues. The ultimate joke of the digital age involves paying hefty sums for a device that competes so relentlessly for our attention that we barely notice our own lives passing.

Even our attempts to preserve memories can interfere with forming them. In a 2014 study, psychologist Linda Henkel found that people who photographed objects during a museum tour subsequently remembered fewer details about them than people who simply observed them. The effect wasn’t universal — taking more focused photographs produced different results — but the finding raises an interesting possibility. A parent filming a child’s piano recital might come away with a beautiful MP4 file and surprisingly little memory of the performance itself.

RELATED: The Ireland I grew up in is gone

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Where the time goes

Family life has its own peculiar relationship with time. Raising kids feels like an endless march through tedious chores — changing diapers, insisting that Legos not be put in one’s mouth, packing lunch boxes, folding laundry, and driving to soccer practice. Yet parents, from Boston to Brisbane, are shocked by how quickly their toddlers turn into college freshmen.

Kids force constant novelty into a household through broken bones, lost teeth, spontaneous questions about death, and the unexpected introduction of garden creatures into the living area. Individual days can feel agonizingly long because every hour requires attention, yet the years somehow fly by in retrospect.

Modern society has, in many ways, made convenience the guiding principle of daily life. We tap an icon to order takeout. We stream movies dictated by predictive algorithms. We substitute memes and text messages for actual human voices. We built the effortless paradise our ancestors could only dream of, only to discover that it can make life feel like one long weekend.

And yet some of our most enduring memories come from doing the same things over and over again. Repeating specific holiday meals or annual camping trips may seem like a mindless, even pointless, routine to an outsider. It is not. Those moments become lasting markers in our memories. No one remembers a random Tuesday from six years ago, but everyone remembers the Thanksgiving when the oven exploded or the road trip when the radiator burst and Dad used some colorful language to convey his thoughts. Traditions give us memorable moments to return to as time moves on.

Now that my aunt is gone, I keep thinking about those Sundays at her house. I think of the roast dinners, the endless slices of cake, the hot tea, and her constant reminders to do something useful with my life.

At the time, I thought those Sundays would go on forever.

​Ancestors, Cognitive performance, Culture, Death, Family, First-person, Kids, Life, Lifestyle, Memories, Paul janet, Time, Memento mori 

On October 14, Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy sat down for an interview on NBC’s “Today” show with Craig Melvin.

Melvin pressed Cathy on the company’s past stance regarding LGBTQ issues. In 2012, Dan Cathy, Andrew’s father and former CEO, publicly supported the biblical definition of marriage, which triggered protests, boycotts, and controversy.

The company also faced criticism over past donations from its foundation to Christian groups, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Salvation Army, that some criticized as opposing LGBTQ rights. In 2019, Chick-fil-A redirected its charitable giving toward education, homelessness, and hunger.

When Melvin asked what Cathy would say to people who protested or boycotted because they felt Chick-fil-A didn’t “stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” Cathy said, “Well, for anybody that hadn’t tried us, we’d love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we’re known for. I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they’ll see that they’re welcome to come eat with us.”

When Melvin followed up by insinuating that Cathy “[didn’t] want to talk about that chapter in Chick-fil-A’s history,” Cathy replied that the company was “focused on serving everybody that come in and eat with us.”

Melvin then asked for “the company’s official position on equal rights.”

“We’re focused on hospitality, serving great-tasting food and great service,” Cathy replied.

LGBTQ advocates, progressive outlets, and even some celebrities criticized Cathy for what they interpreted as dodging the questions to avoid explicitly supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace has the same complaint but for the opposite reason. On this episode of the “Steve Deace show,” he rips into Cathy for selling out to the secular culture, despite the company’s increasing profitability.

“Last year, Chick-fil-A made almost $24 billion in revenue … up 5% from their revenue in 2024,” he says.

He shares these numbers to prove that Cathy’s evasive answer was not financially motivated.

“Whatever PR firm that convinced him that this was the right way, can that be publicized so I can make sure that everybody I know in the Christian conservative space or any media space at all never hires them ever again?” says Deace.

The entire interview, he argues, “accomplished nothing [and] was unnecessary.”

“Nobody asked for this. There was no moment that required it. There was no tension whatsoever,” he says.

Deace believes that Cathy agreed to this seemingly random interview with NBC because “a PR firm told him to do [it].”

“What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul in the entire process?” he asks. “Well, apparently $24 billion was worth baring your soul and having it stomped on and humiliated and put through a Soviet struggle session on the “Today” show.”

“That might be the most pathetic video I’ve seen in the year of our Lord 2026 right there. And I’m offended at it. I’m angry at it.”

Cathy’s cowardice, he argues, indicates that he’s “going to the spirit of the age for repentance and absolution.”

“You’re making $24 billion a year and you’re actually a business who’s increased in value while many other people can’t afford much else, so you called up Devil HQ and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if we come in and take a lashing?’” Deace rails.

“If you’re going to do that, then open up on Sundays. Your Sunday thing’s not legit then. It’s a crock. It’s performance. It’s virtue-signaling.”

To hear more of Deace’s scathing commentary, watch the episode above.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Chickfila, Steve deace, Blazetv show 

Glenn Beck’s sister recently decided to make a big change, and it has opened Glenn’s eyes to something that he didn’t realize existed in America anymore.

“My sister just moved to Idaho. And for her whole life, almost her whole life, she lived in the same neighborhood in a town called Bellingham, Washington, which is like Marxist central,” he explains.

“It’s a beautiful town. The water, politically, it’s as far left as America can get. And she wasn’t far-left. She’s not a Marxist. She’s not even a Democrat. And in a neighborhood where politics was kind of the, I don’t know, the membership card, decades on the same street meant she had very few friends,” he continues.

“And so she packs up, and she moves to a small town about 10 miles from mine, and it’s a very religious town,” he adds.

As Glenn drove around the area, he noticed families looking up from what they were doing to wave — despite having no idea who he was.

“Mom’s in the front yard with the three kids and a garden hose, and you drive by and they’re like, ‘Hi!’” Glenn says.

“Old couple on their knees, you know, with the tomatoes, and every single person looking up and waving at a car they don’t know,” he continues.

And then when his sister had a truckload of sod delivered to her house, what he witnessed was “bizarre,” in a good way.

“And so this sod is delivered and comes in the morning. Landscapers aren’t due until about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. So, all day she had a driveway full of rolled-up grass sitting in the sun and a street full of neighbors she had known about for about a week,” he explains.

“Five o’clock, the landscapers show up. But so did the neighbors. Nobody called them. Men still in their, you know, work boots and moms and a church youth group and a pack of teenagers who apparently had nothing better to do on a week night than unroll a stranger’s lawn,” he continues.

“This does not happen anywhere in America anymore. But it was great,” he adds.

The lawn was done within an hour, and the youth group was sitting on his sister’s lawn eating pizza.

“It was a town full of people that take their faith seriously, as seriously as anybody else in America,” Glenn says. “And the only membership they checked was, ‘Do you belong to the human family?’ She did. That’s enough.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​America, Christianity, Glenn beck, Marxist, Religious, Small town, Blazetv show 

Earlier this year, something startling happened: Leading technologists at the AI frontier turned fretfully for guidance to a devout Orthodox Christian. A Silicon Valley book club tackled Fyodor Dostoevsky’s notoriously daunting novel “Demons” (also translated as “The Possessed”). Then an anonymous writer published an extraordinarily long essay on the book’s premonitions of what happens when human beings fall into falsely illuminated fanaticism. The author saw in Dostoevsky a warning for the people building artificial intelligence.

Verily, I thought, an enormous can of worms had been opened.

Technique and intelligence, severed from the disciplined heart, become hollow and ultimately self-destructive.

Orthodox Christianity is, in essential ways, the opposite of the power-hungry posthumanism animating so much of tech’s increasingly overt spirituality. The posthumanist dreams of a disembodied intellect mastering existence. Orthodoxy calls us to put our embodied intellect to work cleansing the heart, that the Holy Spirit of the loving Master of existence might dwell there.

The anonymous writer stumbled over the Gospel account of the Gadarene swine. Christ casts out Legion, permitting the demons to enter a herd of pigs that rushes to its destruction. Rather than welcome the man’s deliverance, the townspeople beg Christ to leave as if nothing had ever happened. Yet the essay concludes that “demons are not external enemies but our own capacities turned against us” and that they “must possess us fully” before we can be healed.

Not a great start. The temptation to mislearn even the plainest lesson is strong among people unacquainted with the embodied practices through which Christians slowly and humbly welcome Christ. But self-mastery had become a keyword among tech leaders watching crackpot woo one-shot more employees and founders. Anyone earnestly seeking self-mastery will eventually collide with Christian asceticism. I took stock of the development in “The Dostoevskian Moment.”

Lo and behold, last weekend Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, published a sprawling 24-paragraph meditation on another Dostoevsky novel, “The Brothers Karamazov.” He confessed that he had not loved the book, but ended by asking how analyses of a nation’s soul ought to relate to its major novels and works of art. His post inadvertently exposed the limits of intellectual examination conducted at a distance from the quiet experience of the heart.

Then another tech founder, Delphi’s José Maria Macedo, answered Collison with something beautiful. Father Zosima, he observed, teaches that love dreamed of can indulge fantasies of grandeur, while active love is “harsh and dreadful,” requiring labor and patience. Macedo finds that love in Alyosha, whose goodness persists through ordinary humiliations, cruelty, and grief.

RELATED: ‘Don’t be evil’ may be dead, but ‘don’t be Frankenstein’ is alive

Leontura/Getty Images

Collison’s reading, Macedo suggested, resembled Ivan Karamazov’s impulse to put life on trial before the intellect. Alyosha offers another way: a life that cannot be reached through rationality alone. Macedo cannot explain how God allows evil, including the suffering of children. Yet Dostoevsky makes him want to become more like the man who answers suffering with love. That, Macedo wrote, is why “The Brothers Karamazov” is his favorite novel.

Macedo has grasped something his fellow technologists desperately need. Technique and intelligence, severed from the disciplined heart, become hollow and ultimately self-destructive. Like the snake eating its own tail, they cannibalize life rather than return humbly to its inexhaustible wellspring.

At a moment when tech is increasingly transfixed by the desperate quest to “align” AIs with an all-too-human utopian agenda, Dostoevsky’s call to first align our own personal will with God’s grows steadily louder.

​Artificial intelligence, Demons, Evil, Heart, Intelligence, Orthodox christian, Posthumanism, Silicon valley, Children, Ai, Dostoevsky, Christ, Temptation, Big tech, Patrick collison, Gospel, Jose maria macedo, Opinion & analysis 

A friend from an Amish and Mennonite background who lives among those communities in Ohio told me she is frustrated by the reluctance of some people she knows to vote. When she asks why, she hears a familiar answer: “If it’s God’s will …”

Meaning: God will determine the outcome. Apparently, that settles their part.

If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.

The reluctance she described reaches well beyond Amish and Mennonite communities. Too many Christians sit out elections while maintaining a vigorous schedule of complaining about the results.

But the “God will handle it” explanation puzzles me because we do not apply that reasoning to the rest of life. Gracie would have a few questions.

I pray for Gracie before every operation. I still drive her to the hospital. After 40 years of caregiving, I have had plenty of occasions to trust God with things I could not control. I have also filled prescriptions, asked uncomfortable questions, and challenged decisions. In all of Gracie’s 98 operations, not one surgeon has said, “You prayed for God’s will? Good. I won’t need to scrub in.”

We understand responsibility quite well when something matters to us. Why does it become so mysterious when the subject is voting?

If you have a biblical conviction against casting a particular vote, that deserves a hearing. But “God will determine the outcome” explains why we can trust Him. It does not explain why we can excuse ourselves.

Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Those neighbors live under the officials we choose. Sheriffs, school boards, county commissioners, and legislators make decisions that reach into their homes and wallets. A widow reporting fraud needs officials who take her seriously. A family caring for a disabled child needs more than a sympathetic nod.

We can argue about which candidates will serve them best. But God’s sovereignty does not explain why loving our neighbor requires nothing from us.

Jeremiah 29:7 gives us an even less comfortable instruction. God told His people to seek the welfare of the city where He had sent them into exile and to pray for it.

The city was Babylon.

They had been carried away from home. If anyone had grounds to say, “This government is somebody else’s problem,” they did. God still assigned them work where they lived: Pray for the city. Seek its welfare.

We live here. Our children are growing up here. And unlike the exiles in Babylon, we have a voice in choosing our leaders. What exactly is our excuse?

Galatians 6:10 tells us, “as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone.” Voting gives us an opportunity to influence who exercises power over our neighbors. That makes a ballot something to use thoughtfully, not something to dismiss with a religious phrase.

Scripture does not contain instructions for an American polling place. It does contain instructions for people who have neighbors and opportunities.

RELATED: Billy Crystal no longer trusts God. Christians should listen.

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No candidate is going to usher in the kingdom of God. I would settle for one who understands the job, tells the truth, and remembers whose money he is spending. Expecting perfection is another convenient way to avoid making a choice.

Think about our brothers and sisters in countries where free elections are restricted or denied. Then imagine explaining to them that we leave our ballots unused because we trust God.

Passive citizens are ripe to become captive citizens.

Officials do not lose their authority because we lose interest. They continue making decisions, spending money, and exercising power. Our absence simply leaves the choosing to somebody else.

We are free to stay home. We should at least be honest about why. If we are indifferent, let’s call it indifference. If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.

I pray for Gracie. I still drive her to the hospital.

Pray for your country. Then do your part.

​Authority, Ballot, Christians, Elections, Love thy neighbor, Politics, Power, Voting, Country, Amish, Mennonite, Midterms, God, Scripture, Babylon, Opinion & analysis 

Megachurches are often the target of criticism. Common concerns focus on whether their size, production, and leadership models make deep discipleship, personal community, and accountability harder to sustain.

On this episode of “Live Free,” Josh Howerton, BlazeTV host and pastor of Lakepointe Church — a megachurch in Dallas, Texas, — speaks with fellow megachurch pastor Joby Martin of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida, to confront some of the biggest myths surrounding megachurches.

Myth #1: If the senior pastor doesn’t know you personally, he’s not really your pastor.

Some megachurch critics argue that true shepherding requires a pastor to know his congregants personally and be able to shake their hands, for example, but Howerton and Martin argue otherwise.

Martin points out that in the Greek, pastor and shepherd are the same word.

“Jesus says He is the good shepherd, and David says in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, so have you ever shaken Jesus’ hand?” he asks.

But there’s an important caveat. “Although I don’t personally shepherd all the people, all the people need to be shepherded,” says Martin, highlighting the crucial roles of supporting pastors, care teams, and other staff members.

“We accomplish the roles of the shepherd. We’re not caught up in the title of who gets the badge.”

Howerton notes how the apostle Peter in the first four books of Acts led a church of 5,000 strong. “We literally got a Bible verse that says the opposite of this,” he says.

Myth #2: Instead of getting bigger, large churches should be planting more churches.

Another common complaint about megachurches is that they grow bigger instead of planting more churches.

“Please don’t fall into the tyranny of the ‘or.’ God always works in the genius of the ‘and,’” says Martin, “because guess who all the church plants come to? The big churches.”

And the reality is, many megachurches are planting other churches.

“By the end of 2028, we will have planted 1,000 churches around the world. There are more people that attend the churches that we have planted today than how many people attend Eleven22,” Martin adds.

The same is true at Lakepointe Church, says Howerton. “We have literally personally funded, coached, and planted … over a hundred churches in the hardest-to-reach urban centers in North America by the end of this year.”

“News flash: When we plant a church, thousands of people don’t magically stop trying to come to my church,” he adds, emphasizing how church planting does not necessarily correlate to a megachurch’s numbers.

Myth #3: Because of their scale, megachurches are shallow in their discipleship.

Megachurch skeptics are quick to accuse large churches of compromising deep discipleship for numerical growth.

“I would love to introduce you to our thousand or so disciple group leaders and let you tell them that to their face,” Martin counters, noting that he’s currently preaching “verse by verse” through the book of Matthew.

“What else do you want me to do?” he asks, “and honestly, I don’t care what you want me to do. I’m not doing what you want me to do because I’m not trying to live my life for the approval of man but for the approval of Christ.”

“Galatians 1:10,” Howerton adds.

Myth #4: Megachurches are just big personality cults hyperfocused on the lead pastor.

Because megachurches are often pastored by widely known charismatic preachers, critics will accuse them of being personality cults.

Martin acknowledges that sometimes this is a real issue, but it’s not because of the size of the church but rather the failures of the pastor leading it.

“Are there some bad actors and some guys that have been terrible stewards of platforms that God has given them? Man, sadly the list is long,” he says.

“What you don’t know is the list is also long of churches that you’ve never heard of because they just don’t make the news,” he continues, “and like you’ve said a million times before, planes that land safely, they don’t make the news.”

After “[wrestling] through the parable of the talents,” Martin says he’s not sure if he’s a “two-talent guy or a five-talent guy,” but he’s certain he will not be a “a one-talent guy.”

“I got one and only life,” he says. “What do you want me to do? Preach less or tone it down or cap it?” he asks.

When people complain about the church getting too big, the question he asks is: “Who do you want me to un-invite?”

Martin notes that every time Jesus’ disciples tried to “cap it” by turning children away or attempting to control the size of the crowd, they “[got] in trouble.” But when they embraced the “feeding of the 5,000,” for example, they “[got] a high five from Jesus.”

Myth #5: Behind the scenes, megachurch pastors are greedy, abusive hypocrites.

One of the biggest accusations hurled at megachurches is that they’re pastored by men who are charismatic and engaging outwardly but greedy and abusive off the record.

“Can you go find some bad ones? Man, there’s no doubt. There’s no doubt about it. And man, it puts a blight on the name of the bride,” says Martin.

“And I fear for that man when he stands before the Lord,” adds Howerton.

However, both men, who know all the famous megachurch pastors, can also testify that the opposite is also true: often these pastors are different behind the scenes but in the best way possible.

Howerton says there are so many stories they’re “not allowed” to tell about sacrifices and generosity these megachurch pastors have demonstrated that would stun their biggest critics.

To hear the full episode, check out the video above.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH to get $20 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, Blazetv show