Thursday’s News & Ideas - 7/24/2025
- Church & brain rot
- British cult
- Funds to preserve Black history
- QAnon movement in mainstream
- Singing hymns & bears
- Finding a stranger
Church in a time of brain rot*
Christianity Today: Technologies that promised mutual understanding have instead fomented confusion and fraud. Can Christians model a better way?
The rise and fall of the British cult that hid in plain sight
The Guardian: Philippa Barnes was a child when her family joined the Jesus Fellowship. As an adult, she helped expose the shocking scale of abuse it had perpetrated
Churches, seminaries among US cultural sites awarded funds to preserve Black history
Religion News Service: The grants aim to support historical spaces of “Black American joy, resilience, innovation, and activism” in their preservation efforts, according to a news release.
How the QAnon movement entered mainstream politics — and why the silence on Epstein files matters
The Conversation: The Justice Department asked a federal court on July 18, 2025, to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case.
Singing hymns to warn the bears*
Christianity Today: On the outskirts of Anchorage, a Southern Baptist retired science education professor captures creation on her cameras.
The Spark
Thank you for finding me
As a teenager, I met a stranger who changed the course of my life. Twenty years later, I went looking for him, Lisa Romeo writes for Longreads.
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