The public square is increasingly hostile to religion. But don’t be surprised when Olympic athletes overflow with thanks to God.

The opening ceremonies of the Olympics are extravagant celebrations of national glories and global unity. But if you watch past this week’s opener to the Games themselves, you’ll notice an unusual pattern: Athletes are always talking about God.

If you caught last month’s Olympic trials, you’ll have noticed the same thing. Athletes of every kind continuously gave God the credit, often in explicitly Christian terms. It was almost like a competition within the competition to see who could outdo the others in redirecting praise heavenward.

For my money, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won. After breaking the world record (again) for women’s 400-meter hurdles, she answered a reporter’s question this way: “Honestly—praise God. I was not expecting that, but he can do anything. Anything is possible in Christ. I’m just amazed, baffled, and in shock.” The reporter laughed nervously and moved on to the next qualifier.

It’s not news that athletes thank the Lord for their success. But watching these public displays of piety made me wonder: Why is this still normal? The Oscars couldn’t be mistaken for church. Neither could large gatherings of writers, journalists, musicians, venture capitalists, or politicians. Sporting events appear to be the last refuge of “acceptable” public faith in our secular culture.

After all, almost no one slams McLaughlin-Levrone and other publicly Christian athletes for their praise. It’s allowed. Reporters may find it quirky or even bizarre, but athletes generally aren’t punished for religiosity. And even if they were, it’s clear they wouldn’t care. In a time when belief ...

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Extreme political rhetoric stokes fear and encourages apathy. Christians can offer a productive counterpart.

This is the most important election of our lifetime.” I’ve heard this said every presidential election in my lifetime, but, this time, the stakes are being raised even higher. The 2024 election is not just the most important—the consequences of it are existential.

At a fundraiser in February, President Joe Biden called Donald Trump the “one existential threat,” and he has also written on X to constituents: “In this election, your freedom, your democracy, and America itself is at stake.” Vice President Harris said at an event this month, “This is the one. The most existential, consequential, and important election of our lifetime.”

Former president Trump has used this line of argument as well: At the Faith and Freedom Coalition last month, he said that “this will be the most important election in the history of our country” and “our one chance to save America.” Back in March, he responded to the claim that he was a “threat to democracy” with, “I’m not a threat. I’m the one that’s ending the threat to democracy.”

These talking points might be effective campaigning, but they make for a toxic political culture.

In college, I competed in policy debate tournaments—a form of debate that focuses more on detailed (and fast-paced) presentation of evidence than rhetoric or performance. We created elaborate argumentative chains, showing how one policy change (subsidies for offshore wind turbines or the legalization of online gambling) could cause a cascading chain of events that nearly always ended in global nuclear war. It was a way of beating the other team: Sure, your proposal might lower inflation or decrease ...

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Young, evangelical, and African American churchgoers ask the most.

When churchgoers show up to their church’s worship service, they’re often hoping to have a guest with them.

A Lifeway Research study of US Protestant churchgoers finds 3 in 5 (60%) say they have extended at least one invitation in the past six months for someone to attend their church, including 19 percent who have made one invitation, 21 percent with two invitations and 20 percent with three or more invitations.

A third of churchgoers say they haven’t invited anyone to a worship service at their church in the past six months, while 7 percent say they aren’t sure how many invitations they’ve made.

“Churchgoers were not asked the typical net promoter score question of whether they recommend their church. They were asked if they’ve actually invited someone in the last six months,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “For most churchgoers, invitations are not just an aspiration but a current practice.”

Extending invites

Compared to a similar Lifeway Research study six years ago, a similar percentage of churchgoers say they haven’t invited anyone recently—33 percent now versus 29 percent in 2017. Fewer churchgoers, however, are making three or more invitations. In 2017, 1 in 4 said they’d extended at least three invitations for someone to visit their church in the previous six months. Currently, 20 percent say the same.

“It’s not surprising the proportion of churchgoers extending invites is not growing, since the proactive nature of inviting people to church is counter-cultural,” said McConnell. “People in America are not being more relational, but an invitation to church is an invitation to join you in activities ...

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The candidate's "unburdened by what has been" and "coconut tree" lines push her party toward a troubling partisan divide over the past itself.

President Joe Biden is out of the 2024 race, and Vice President Kamala Harris is angling to lead her party’s ticket. In the surge of interest in her revised candidacy this past week, online attention has focused on two of her turns of phrase. One is a line Harris has apparently been repeating for many years, returning to it so often that a four-minute clip of her saying it dozens of times is trending on social media.

That line—a call to envision and work toward “what can be, unburdened by what has been”—has been widely placed in tension with the other phrase in which Harris, quoting her mother, scoffs at those who “think [they] just fell out of a coconut tree.” No, she says, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Such a tension would be interesting—if it existed. It’d suggest a thoughtful balancing of progressive and conservative impulses, of aspiration for benevolent advancement and respect for wise tradition, of acknowledgment of the real ills of history alongside a quest for the careful preservation of its goods.

Unfortunately, this supposed tension is not evidenced. The contradiction is not within the vice president’s thinking but across the partisan divide, as Harris looks likely to lead Democrats toward a simplistic condemnation of bygone times while the GOP just as simplistically embraces a nostalgia so rosy it is sometimes false.

Listen to the coconut comment in context, as the line itself suggests we should, and you’ll find Harris isn’t speaking about respect for prior generations or retrieval of the virtues of the past. She’s accounting for the evils and woes of history so as to better progress ...

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Meet Olympians who love God from around the world.

Many Olympics lovers learn that their favorite athletes love Jesus through social media posts or postgame interviews following their success on the field, court, or track or in the pool. But the overwhelming majority of Christians competing in the Games won’t end up on the podium.

For many, simply arriving at the Games will be a testament to overcoming injuries, mental health challenges, or grief due to the loss of loved ones. Below are the stories of Christian athletes from 13 sports and 20 nations, all eager to make their countries—and their Lord—proud.

With reporting by Annie Meldrum, Isabel Ong, Angela Lu Fulton, Franco Iacomini, Mariana Albuquerque, and Morgan Lee.

Badminton

Anthony Sinisuka Ginting (Indonesia)

Known as badminton’s “Giant Killer” for defeating the sport’s greatest stars, Anthony Sinisuka Ginting took home the bronze medal for men’s badminton singles in Tokyo. This year, he’s headed back to the Olympics with fellow Indonesian and Christian badminton player Jonathan Christie.

Ginting was born in Cimahi in West Java and is of Karo ethnicity, a people group from North Sumatra where Christians make up 70 percent of the population. His father introduced him to badminton when he was five, and he started competing at age nine. Since then, he has medaled or won in numerous competitions.

On his Instagram account, Ginting isn’t shy about his faith. In a post from March, he noted finishing second to Christie at the All England Open, writing, “Thank you Jesus for your goodness. It was all beyond my expectation.” In response, Christie commented, “We made history together that we never ...

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