Facing the “masculinity crisis”

Stephen Lee, a Lutheran chaplain indicted in Georgia for visiting an election worker’s home, avoided jail time and returned to church after a Christian advocacy group set up a fund to cover his bail.

In a new survey, Brazilian teens are more drawn to Jesus and more committed to their faith than members of Gen Z across Latin America.

In Jordan, as well as much of the Middle East, adoption is prohibited. Christians there are wrestling with challenging the current laws.

In facing the “masculinity crisis,” the church can’t compete with “manosphere” influencers. But it has something much deeper to offer.

Author Tara Isabella Burton talks about our culture of self-making and image cultivating.

Behind the story

At Christianity Today, two of our biggest focus areas looking forward are the global church and the next generation of Christians. A story out this week captures both with a look at the engaged faith of Gen Z in Brazil.

In his first story for CT, Carlos Segundo reported from the South American country, where the number of churches has grown by 543 percent over the past 30 years and young people are twice as likely to consider themselves committed Christians than the global average.

Morgan Lee, global managing editor, said, “This piece personally encourages me because it was written by a Brazilian reporter based out of Recife, a city in the northeast. I was impressed with both his ability to write so fluidly in his second language and also his hard work in making the charts for this piece.”

While the story reported on survey results, sources testified to the faithfulness captured in the numbers. One leader said, “I can see in my ministry how true the numbers that were presented in the survey are. I know teenagers aged 13, 14, and 15 who have made a real difference in their communities.”

In other news

The pastor of one of the victims of a racist shooting in Florida said that he “wept in church today like a baby because my heart is tired.”

Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a Catholic, said he would imprison any Catholics who “worship poverty.”

The Jonas Brothers offer their take on Switchfoot’s “A Beautiful Letdown” for an upcoming compilation in honor of the song’s 20th anniversary.