When corporate governance experts speak about "red flags," they are typically referring to information signaling a problem at a corporation that warrants additional oversight. As a related law firm memo on Delaware law notes: "The duty of oversight requires directors to ... take action to address red flags that indicate potential corporate wrongdoing."

Host Casey Harper is joined by Biblical Counselor Chris Yeager to talk about psychedelics. What was once considered a drug for hippies that fried your brain has become increasingly popular, but is it safe? Why is the Trump administration considering it for veterans? And can it open spiritual doors to darkness that we aren&rsquo;t ready for? Listen for more.

Host Casey Harper is joined by Biblical Counselor Chris Yeager to talk about psychedelics. What was once considered a drug for hippies that fried your brain has become increasingly popular, but is it safe? Why is the Trump administration considering it for veterans? And can it open spiritual doors to darkness that we aren't ready for? Listen for more.

Host Casey Harper is joined by The Washington Stand's Yoe Suarez to talk about the future of Cuba amid the economic and political crisis as well as the role of the church. They discuss questions like: Why is Cuba's energy grid collapsing, and why is it important? Why should American Christians care about Cuba right now? What is the role of the church in Cuba in this crisis?

Host Casey Harper is joined by The Washington Stand's Yoe Suarez to talk about the future of Cuba amid the economic and political crisis as well as the role of the church. They discuss questions like: Why is Cuba's energy grid collapsing, and why is it important? Why should American Christians care about Cuba right now? What is the role of the church in Cuba in this crisis?

Host Casey Harper is joined by Family Research Council's Arielle Del Turco and Brad Brandon, founder and CEO of Across Nigeria, to discuss the worsening persecution of Christians in Nigeria. They examine why many are calling the violence a genocide, the Nigerian government's response, inspiring stories of Muslims coming to faith in Christ, and what the Trump administration can do to help protect religious freedom.
Resources
<ul style="list-style-type: circle;">
<li><a href="https://www.acrossnigeria.org/home">Across Nigeria</a></li>
</ul>

Host Casey Harper is joined by Family Research Council's Arielle Del Turco and Brad Brandon, founder and CEO of Across Nigeria, to discuss the worsening persecution of Christians in Nigeria. They examine why many are calling the violence a genocide, the Nigerian government's response, inspiring stories of Muslims coming to faith in Christ, and what the Trump administration can do to help protect religious freedom.

From sea to shining sea, America has long been called an exceptional nation, but why? Family Research Council president, Tony Perkins joins host Casey Harper to look back on the last 250 years of American history and discuss the unique cultural moment we're living in today. Built on the ideals of freedom and liberty, America has always stood apart. But as we compare the nation's founding with where we are today, it's clear we've drifted from many of the Founding Fathers' principles. Harper and Perkins discuss the cultural changes happening across the country, why a nation rooted in God's word matters, and why moral courage is more important than ever.

From sea to shining sea, America has long been called an exceptional nation, but why? Family Research Council president, Tony Perkins joins host Casey Harper to look back on the last 250 years of American history and discuss the unique cultural moment we're living in today. Built on the ideals of freedom and liberty, America has always stood apart. But as we compare the nation's founding with where we are today, it's clear we've drifted from many of the Founding Fathers' principles. Harper and Perkins discuss the cultural changes happening across the country, why a nation rooted in God's word matters, and why moral courage is more important than ever.

One of my grandsons sheepishly came to me recently and handed back a birthday card we had given him earlier in the day and explained that, although he was a seventh grader, he couldn't read our note to him because he is unable to read cursive writing. To say my wife and I were shocked is a huge understatement. That experience prompted me to do some research on the issue of cursive writing instruction in America's public elementary schools, and what I discovered was another shock for this Baby Boomer who learned cursive handwriting in elementary "penmanship" class.

The likely Democratic nominee to challenge Kansas Senator Roger Marshall (R) is making headlines for unflattering parallels to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, James Talarico. Like Talarico, Pastor Adam Hamilton is adept at couching his progressive views in Christian language to make them appear more moderate. But the beliefs he holds - such as claiming the Bible is full of errors - are not compatible with orthodox Christianity.

While Kansas will not hold its primary until August 4, polls show Hamilton leading a sizable field by a healthy margin. For more than a decade, Hamilton has been the lead pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, the largest United Methodist Church in America and the 74th-largest church overall, with an attendance of 9,600 in 2025.

Strangely, however, Hamilton has not used his magnificent platform to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Quite the opposite, in a January 17, 2022 sermon, Hamilton devoted minutes to describing a conversation he had with a pastor who believed in inerrancy, and who had challenged him to a debate. The sermon was titled, "Is the Bible true?" Hamilton apparently concluded that it is not.

"We know the overarching message of Scripture is trustworthy, and God speaks through it," Hamilton allowed. "But, if you find one error, you're going to throw the whole thing away? That seems like a pretty shaky faith."

Hamilton claimed to know of "hundreds" of mistakes in the Bible. For illustration, he chose a single example, the Bible's answer to the question, "Where did Jesus ascend to heaven from?" Since Hamilton chose this out of an alleged hundreds of examples, he must believe the evidence or clarity of this example to be particularly compelling.

What is the mistake? Hamilton explained, "In Luke's gospel, Jesus ascends to heaven from the Mount of Olives by Jerusalem. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus ascends to heaven from Galilee. ... They can't both be right. So, one of them is wrong."

Hamilton argued that this discrepancy shook the inerrancy position a great deal, while it did not shake his own position at all. "I don't really care whether it happened in Jerusalem or in the Galilee. It just doesn't make any difference to me. It happened," he stated. "And, knowing that Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels 50 years after the time of Jesus, it doesn't surprise me that one of them thinks it happened in the Galilee, and one of them thinks it happened in Jerusalem. They may have had different traditions that were teaching them." Hamilton added, "It doesn't really matter because the important thing is that Jesus ascended to heaven, and before he did he promised to come back. And he gave the Great Commission before he left."

This rationalization reveals everything. Hamilton's admission that he doesn't "really care" about the details signals that he did not read the biblical text all that closely. By contrast, Christians committed to the inerrancy of Scripture must investigate Scripture closely to reconcile details that appear difficult.

In this case, the solution to an alleged "mistake" in Scripture is simple: Matthew never records Christ's ascension. He records Jesus teaching his disciples on a mountain in Galilee after his resurrection (Matthew 28:16-20), but Jesus had plenty of time in the 40 days between his resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3) to travel to Galilee and then return to Jerusalem. Why does Matthew choose to record this teaching instead of the ascension? For one thing, this is where Jesus gives the Great Commission, a fitting end to a biography of his life. For another, with the Sermon on the Mount, this mountainside teaching creates a bookend that presents Jesus as a new Moses, authoritatively delivering God's instructions to his people. But Hamilton seems to overlook these simple answers because he is more interested in searching for contradictions than for truth.

Furthermore, Hamilton's statement that it "doesn't make any difference" whether the gospel authors reliably recorded events as they happened suggests that it does not matter whether they are reliable eyewitnesses. In fact, his speculation that "they may have had different traditions that were teaching them" implies that the gospel authors were not eyewitnesses at all.

This creates a problem for Hamilton because he seeks to retain part of Scripture's testimony while he jettisons the rest. "The important thing is that Jesus ascended to heaven, and before he did he promised to come back. And he gave the Great Commission before he left." How do we know any of those things? Because they are recorded in the gospels. But if the gospels are unreliable histories, then how can we know that these things are true? In fact, how can we know that Jesus rose from the dead, that he was crucified, that he even existed?

Christianity is a historical religion, and these are the facts on which it is based. If the record of these events in the gospels is unreliable, then the whole religion is unreliable, and no one should put their faith in it. Hamilton likely does not realize that, by devoting so much time to undermining Scripture, he is inadvertently giving his hearers reason to doubt the faith he professes to teach.

If Scripture were only the work of human authors, absolute inerrancy would be an impossibly high standard, since "Everyone utters lies to his neighbor" (Psalm 12:2). But, in fact, Scripture claims to be the word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), and "it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18). On its own terms, then, a single error would discredit Scripture's claim to divine authority. It would demote the Bible not just to the level of other great books, but even lower - since a core claim of Scripture would be proven false.

Hamilton explained his position more fully in a 2014 interview about his book, "Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today."

"Christians do not hold, as Muslims do, that our holy book was dictated by God," he began. Avoiding another heretical viewpoint is a sympathetic reason for a Christian to stumble into another erroneous position (e.g. Arius going to extremes to avoid Modalism), but it does not justify error. Divine inspiration is not a binary choice. Rejecting the dictation theory does not require affirming that the Bible is simply a collection of human perspectives.

"The biblical authors were people like us," Hamilton argues. "The biblical authors wrote in particular times, for particular audiences, out of a particular context. Part of rightly interpreting Scripture is reading it in the light of what we can know about its historical and cultural context, the author's purposes in writing and knowing something about the people they were writing to."

This is all true, as far as it goes. But we must also affirm that "no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Here, prophecy does not simply mean a prediction of the future, but a word received from God and transmitted to the intended audience. Thus, Peter intends his saying to apply to all of Scripture. This guidance (not dictation) of the Holy Spirit means that Christians can rightly name the words of Scripture as the words of God. In fact, the inspired author himself does so in Hebrews 3:7, "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says," followed by a lengthy quotation of Psalm 95:7-11.

Hamilton seems to overlook Peter's comment. He does cite 2 Timothy 3:16, but he claims that the word translated "God-breathed" (theopneustos) is an unexplained metaphor that should not be taken too far. He then appears to take his reasoning as a license to make the word mean whatever he wishes. "When I think of inspired, I think of God-influenced. This leaves open a variety of ways in which the biblical authors were influenced by God."

Yet words do not have infinite meaning. If, as Hamilton suggests, Paul coined this word for use on this one occasion, then Paul likely had one specific meaning in mind. And, given the connection between Scripture and the Spirit in other texts, it would be a mistake to overlook the conceptual connection in Greek between breath and Spirit (pneuma), just as the English words "inspired" and "Spirit" share a root. By claiming that a compound word combines the roots for God (theos) and Spirit has nothing to do with the Spirit of God, Hamilton is going out on quite an unsteady limb.

Hamilton seemed to interpret Scripture from a postmodern framework of socially determined morality. "My premise is that the Bible is the words of people who were influenced by God, and yet who were also shaped by the times in which they lived," he said. "The violence attributed to God in the Bible is a serious issue that Christians must address. It is inconsistent with the character of God described in many places in the Old Testament, and certainly inconsistent with the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ who calls his followers to love their enemies."

Unsurprisingly, this approach led him to explain away biblical morality on - the reader may have guessed already - marriage. Hamilton offers "two different arguments regarding homosexuality. First, he argues that condemnations of homosexual behavior by Moses and Paul were not intended to condemn homosexuality per se, but only homosexual behavior combined with other sins. "In the entire Old Testament we find only two expressions of same-sex intimacy: Gang rape and pagan temple prostitution," said Hamilton. The most obvious inference from this fact would be that homosexuality is an inherently perverted form of sexual expression. Hamilton prefers to infer - from an utter lack of evidence - that it is perfectly normal.

Second, Hamilton argues that "the Bible is complex and, while influenced by God, it is not dictated by God." He equates biblical condemnations of homosexuality to the Bible's lack of condemnation of slavery, reasoning that, since Christian convictions on slavery have evolved, so should Christian convictions on homosexuality.

Ultimately, both of these arguments are refuted by Jesus's pattern of biblical reasoning in Matthew 19. For the surest guide to moral questions of his day, Jesus reached back not to the code of Sinai but to the order of creation. There, God created every person in his image as male and female (Genesis 1:27) and ordained marriage as a one-flesh union of one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24). This teaching grounds the Christian opposition to same-sex marriage, just as the inherent equality of human dignity in creation grounds the Christian opposition to slavery.

Ultimately, what Hamilton puts forward is not an innovative and persuasive new position on Scriptural authority that Christians should adopt, but a recycled position in plausible, new garb. It is "Christianese" draped over a framework of Critical Theory.

"Conservatives often suggest homosexuality is an issue of biblical authority. ... The issue is not authority, it is our assumptions about the Bible and the way we interpret it," Hamilton claims. But authority is the issue here. The issue is whether the Bible is the authoritative word of God to which all people must submit their thoughts and lives, or whether we should sit in authority over it, judging it as the error-pocked words of man.

Since Hamilton argued the Great Commission is still important, let's look there. The context of that command is Jesus's declaration, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18). This confidence provides hope and encouragement to the disciples Jesus sent out "as sheep in the midst of wolves" (Matthew 10:16).

Do we recognize the authority in Jesus's words? Do we acknowledge, as he told his disciples, "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms" (Luke 24:44). Do we submit to the "Spirit of Jesus" (Acts 16:7), who "opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" before his ascension (Luke 24:45)? Do we dare claim that Jesus's holy word is full of errors?

In 1959, socialism encountered a productive agricultural sector; today, it hands back an unproductive one to the Cuban people. It is often said that a socialist placed in the Sahara would cause a sand shortage; similarly, Castroism managed to turn fish into a luxury item on an island, cause salt to vanish from markets, and halt agricultural production on fertile land.

The blood of Christians is irrigating Africa's soil, with Nigeria as an epicenter. As a senior research analyst at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in that continent (ORFA), Steven Kefas has been following closely horrific stories of martyrdom.

Where can air conditioning get an apology? In June, Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar blamed American energy use for Europe's deadly heat wave. "As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing," Pulvar postured. "Your cities' '90% air-conditioned' are not unrelated to this. In Paris, we take responsibility." Days later, however, a paper by British and Spanish researchers suggested that the "responsibility" of enduring summer without modern conveniences might just be so much needless suffering.

When Donald Trump's pick to run the Justice Department promised to take action against the dark forces behind the abortion pill explosion, he probably didn't expect to start anytime soon. That all changed Thursday when Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) pulled back the curtain on a sinister underground network trying to pump mifepristone into all 50 states. Plan C, an under-the-radar organization that's coaching people to break the law, has been a one-stop shop, helping women (and predatory men) get their hands on a drug that seriously hurts almost 11% of the moms who take it. This criminal operation, Hawley demanded, needs to stop.

Editorial Director and Senior Writer, The Washington Stand

Sometimes a headline is flashier than the facts. On Monday, the Religion News Service ran a column by Ryan Burge and Rick Richardson titled "Half of Gen Z says Trump support keeps them out of church." The headline suggests that President Donald Trump is a devastating force of anti-evangelism for American churches. But a closer look at the data raises questions and, if not red flags, at least yellow ones.

Senior Writer, The Washington Stand

Following the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) enactment of a far-reaching new law on July 1 that purports to increase "ethnic unity" by mandating the teaching of communist ideology in schools and homes and holding individuals and organizations outside China liable for "undermining ethnic unity," human rights advocates say that incidents of transnational repression committed by the communist regime have been increasing in the U.S. and Taiwan.

Senior Editor, The Washington Stand

These days, it's no picnic to sit in front of the Senate as a close ally of Donald Trump's. Todd Blanche, who took a turn in the hot seat last week to win the job as Pam Bondi's successor, spent hours sweating it out as leaders on both sides grilled him on his personal work for the president and his record during the two-month head start he had as acting attorney general. And while Blanche tried to repel the attacks on everything from the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files to the controversial (and now deep-sixed) anti-weaponization fund, there was one issue that grabbed a surprising amount of attention: chemical abortion.

After reports emerged Tuesday that hundreds of noncitizens illegally voted in elections and thousands more were improperly registered to vote in New Jersey, experts say that Democratic officials in the state are continuing an alarming pattern of nationwide apathy and purposeful negligence in the Democratic Party toward securing voter rolls and maintaining election integrity.

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