Welcome to G3 Weekly—a summary of this week’s top news stories on Christianity and the public square.
This week, Fox News faced criticism for matching employee donations to the Satanic Temple and Planned Parenthood. A conservative local politician in the United Kingdom was suspended from his own political party after criticizing the LGBT movement. Meanwhile, a new survey of people around the world shows new patterns about adherence to Christianity.
Fox News Matches Employee Donations to Worrisome Groups
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
Employees at Fox News revealed that the media company was matching donations to leftist and occult entities but refused to do the same for prominent evangelical entities.
Fox News permitted employees to make donations to their favorite charities which the company would match for as much as $1,000 each year. Insiders at Fox News provided documentation to Blaze Media showing that they were able to make contributions to controversial organizations, such as the Satanic Temple, Planned Parenthood, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, but could not make donations to Samaritan’s Purse, the charity launched by Billy Graham.
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze Media but removed the Satanic Temple from the donation list and extended an invitation to Samaritan’s Purse.
The media outlet has long appealed to the conservative demographic in the United States but has faced controversy in recent years over a leftward shift. Fox News ran a segment last year positively portraying a child’s so-called gender transition and more recently fired anchor Tucker Carlson for characterizing the American political divide in loosely theological terms.
Local Politician Canceled after Opposing LGBT Movement
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).
King Lawal, a councilor in the United Kingdom, was suspended from the Conservative Party for denouncing the LGBT movement.
The official said in a social media post last month that “pride is not a virtue but a sin” and encouraged followers to “repent of their sins and turn to Jesus Christ.” He was afterward removed from the Conservative Party, the largest right-wing political party in Britain, and from seven other organizations in which he had been involved. Lawal was told he could be subject to a police investigation and received “a potentially illegal ultimatum by a local authority which said that he must resign from his own business or face a substantial contract being scrapped, according to a press release from Christian Concern.
The organization added that the repercussions against the official are “unprecedented” and demonstrate that “Christians who hold public office can no longer express their beliefs without having their careers and lives dismantled.”
Lawmakers across the Western world have faced similar backlash for expressing orthodox Christian beliefs: one member of the Finnish Parliament presently faces trial for “war crimes” and “ethnic agitation” for authoring a pamphlet and a tweet about biblical sexual ethics.
People in Formerly Christian Cultures Say Religion Does Not Define Them
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
Residents of nations which were once predominantly Christian largely say that their religion does not define them as a person, especially in comparison to those who reside in other nations, according to a recent survey from Ipsos.
The survey, which polled citizens of twenty-six nations, revealed that those in countries such as Hungary, Germany, Belgium, and Great Britain were least likely to say that religion defines their lives. Residents of India, Thailand, and Turkey, which are respectively Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic, were meanwhile the most likely to say that religion defines their lives.
In nations where more than 15% of the population identify as Protestant or evangelical, members of Generation Z are significantly less likely to identify as such than Baby Boomers, with the distance between cohorts exceeding 20% in Australia and Sweden.
In all of the nations where at least 2% of the population considers themselves Islamic, members of Generation Z are roughly 7% more likely than Baby Boomers to identify with the religion.
