Pray that the Lord would protect our neighbors a world away, especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). Pray that as God delivered Paul from the sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-10) he would deliver those who have entrusted their souls to him in faith by any means necessary. Pray that the Lord would wondrously convert the wicked (Acts 9:1-7) and if not, that he would restrain or destroy them for the sake of His bride, the church (Psalm 139:19).

I was sitting in Mr. Scott’s 10th grade English class when the principal’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker: “Attention teachers and students, I’ve just received word of a terrible accident at the World Trade Center in New York City.”  No doubt, many of you remember where you were on September 11, 2001, when you first heard the dreadful news. In the days and weeks that followed, America and her allies declared war against the al-Qaeda terror network responsible for the attack and the Taliban regime who harbored them in Afghanistan.
Now, 20 years later, our lives are being flooded again with unsettling images of people falling, not from burning buildings but from swarmed airplanes, men in truck beds toting AK-47s, and women and children running for their lives. In the wake of the withdrawal of remaining American troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban surged, retaking cities previously liberated from their barbaric tyranny. In just days, the capital city of Kabul fell and the country has since slipped back beneath the dark waters of fear and oppression. Only this time the Taliban are armed to the teeth with billions of dollars in American weapons left behind in the evacuation.
The situation is dire. Once again, women have been stripped of their humanity and civil rights, being required to veil themselves from head to toe and forbidden from pursuing education, employment, or leaving their homes alone. Once again, girls are being tortured, kidnapped, and sold into sexual slavery. Once again young men and boys are being conscripted into military service at gunpoint. And once again, our Christian brothers and sisters will be forced to choose: renounce Christ and live or confess him and die.
Even after the liberation in 2001, Christianity remained illegal in Afghanistan. But over the past twenty years, thousands have come to faith in Jesus Christ, worshipping secretly in their homes. Now, under the Taliban’s ruthless Sharia Law, conversion from Islam is a capital crime, punishable by death. We are already receiving disturbing reports from Afghan church leaders of soldiers gathering intelligence, checking the roles at local mosques, and going to the homes of suspected Christians. As footage of public beatings and executions surfaces, believers are being encouraged by their leaders to flee the country or remain hidden indoors. Unless the Lord intervenes with a mighty hand, the worst is yet to come for Afghan Christians.
In the face of such evil what can American Christians do? We can pray! Pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ facing persecution around the world knowing that the prayers of the righteous have “great power” in their working (James 5:16), not because the prayers of the righteous are great but because the one who has made them righteous and promised to hear them is great! Pray in light of Hebrews 13:3 “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you also are in the body.”
But how should we pray? Pray that the Lord would protect our neighbors a world away, especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). Pray that as God delivered Paul from the sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-10) he would deliver those who have entrusted their souls to him in faith by any means necessary. Pray that the Lord would wondrously convert the wicked (Acts 9:1-7) and if not, that he would restrain or destroy them for the sake of His bride, the church (Psalm 139:19). Pray that God would pour out the Holy Spirit upon his people to galvanize their faith and give them the right words in the crucial hour (Luke 12:12). Pray that, if God has sovereignly decreed the deaths of Afghan Christians, that they would face their end with courage, clinging to Christ, “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41). Pray that the blood of the martyrs would be the seed of a thriving Christian church in Afghanistan and spark a revival around the world. Pray that God would keep us ever mindful of and grateful for the delicate liberties we enjoy as Americans able to worship freely and without fear. Pray that the Lord would expand our capacity to sense the bigness of his kingdom and our union with Christians around the world, especially those facing persecution for the sake of his name. Pray that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:11).
Pray as those whose own souls depend upon the prayers of another, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, who “ever lives to make intercession” for us (Hebrews 7:25).
Jim McCarthy is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Senior Pastor of First PCA in Hattiesburg, Miss.

The more we learn about the dangers of so-called gender treatments, and the more we discover the lengths to which school officials will go to keep secrets from parents, the more urgent it becomes for lawmakers to act quickly to protect students and families.

Arkansas lawmakers delivered a clear message to parents of K-12 students this week: You have the right to know how your child is being treated in school.
Lawmakers in New Jersey, California, and hundreds of other school districts across the U.S. operating under policies that do the opposite and allow school officials to hide information about children from their parents should prepare to receive an influx of student-transfer requests.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday signed legislation, the Given Name Act, which says that school officials cannot call a student by a name that does not match the name listed on the student’s birth certificate without a parent’s permission. Likewise, educators cannot address a child by a pronoun that does not match the child’s sex.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Wayne Long, a Republican, explains that a teacher contacted him and said her conscience would not let her “affirm” a student confused about his or her sex. “This single mom was willing to lose her job rather than go against her Christian beliefs,” Long said via email.
That teacher is not alone.
A survey in March commissioned by Parents Defending Education found that 71% of voters favor legislation that requires schools to inform parents when their child wants to “assume” a different “gender” at school. A survey conducted for The Heritage Foundation in 2021 found nearly identical results among a nationally representative sample of parents. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
And lawmakers are responding.
In Kentucky, officials adopted a proposal earlier this year that said schools “shall not adopt policies or procedures with the intent of keeping any student information confidential from parents,” and state and school personnel cannot require educators to use pronouns that “do not conform to a student’s biological sex” as listed on his or her birth certificate. Utah lawmakers adopted a similar proposal this year, and legislators in Arizona, California, Florida, and Louisiana are currently considering proposals with those provisions.
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Bullivant’s new book stands out as not just about nones in general, but about those Americans who used to affiliate with a religion but no longer do. Usually, that means leaving evangelical Protestantism, mainline Protestantism, Mormonism, or Catholicism. Bullivant makes a solid case for the importance of such people for understanding American religion moving forward, and with Nonverts he has put another very fine book into the world. It is worth reading and pondering. 

Christianity in America is currently going through a watershed period as society and culture continue to secularize. Among younger adults, for every one person who goes from religiously unaffiliated to affiliating with a religion, there are five people who switch in the opposite direction, toward no religion. Having no religious affiliation is increasingly becoming normal, and even the expectation among certain enclaves of American life.
The United States is more ex-Christian and post-Christian than ever before in its history. How did this situation come about? And what does it mean for the nation? The key number concerning the frequently referenced “rise of the nones” is likely familiar to many: Roughly one-quarter of American adults, or 59 million people, are “nones”—that is, atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular when it comes to religion. The proportion of “nones” in the US population hovered between 5 and 9 percent throughout the 1970s and 80s, but right around the year 1990, the percentage of nones began to climb to its current highpoint.
Less known is that only 30 percent of nones in the United States report having been raised with no religious affiliation. The rest, totaling about 41 million American adults, identified with some kind of religion earlier in life, but eventually left it. This segment of the population therefore is pivotal for understanding the shifting American religious landscape over recent decades. And it is those Americans—along with the social and cultural forces that tend to influence them—who are the topic of sociologist and theologian Stephen Bullivant’s book, Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, recently published by Oxford University Press.
A Nation of “Nonverts”
Drawing from both survey data and interviews with a wide range of people, Bullivant provides a broad introduction to American adults who have thrown off their prior religious affiliations. The book is structured into nine chapters, which alternate between bigger-picture analysis/commentary and a series of “deep dives” into specific religious traditions. So, chapters 2, 4, 6, and 8 provide glimpses into disaffiliation from Mormonism, mainline Protestantism, evangelicalism, and Catholicism, respectively. Each of these tradition-specific chapters offers a helpful introduction to the character and troubles of each tradition. For anyone who wants to understand disaffiliation among one (or more) of those four traditions, these even-numbered chapters stand as quick and helpful overviews, brought to life by Bullivant’s skillful deployment of individual stories to represent larger themes.
Each of these chapters is, at the same time, broad and partial. They do not present findings that aim to be exhaustive or methodical. The chapters don’t analytically pick apart every conceivable reason that one might disaffiliate from a religion, the way past survey reports from Pew have done, for example. That’s not Bullivant’s purpose in writing. Instead, the chapter on “exvangelicals,” for instance, focuses on just three factors: purity culture, hypocrisy, and former President Trump. And readers hear about decades of sexual abuse scandals, devotional laxity, and simply not feeling it in various ways in the case of “recovering Catholics.”
As one would expect, Bullivant emphasizes that America’s “nonverts” are a diverse slice of the population on all sorts of metrics, such as age, race, and (to a limited degree) outlooks on politics. He also highlights that being religiously unaffiliated does not necessarily mean being entirely without faith of any kind, let alone an atheist. Only about 15 percent of nonverts are atheists, another 15 percent are agnostics, while 35 percent say they believe in a higher power of some kind (but not a personal God).
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