Trump 'Jesus' post sparks outrage
en staff
Date posted: 13 Apr 2026
US President Donald Trump is attracting a torrent of outrage after posting a picture in which he apparently likened himself to Christ.
The picture - shared on social media network Truth Social - appeared to show Trump, as Jesus, healing a man, while surrounded by military and national symbols.
Reflecting theologically on war in the Middle East
Dave Burke
Date posted: 19 Mar 2026
It is rare that theology features in the decision making of great nations, but there are reports of US military commanders referencing the Biblical end-times narrative of writers such as Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsay. One officer is quoted by an NCO as saying, “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark His return to Earth.”
If you want to weigh up the rights and wrongs of the latest war in the Middle East you need to go further back than those writers or even the Victorian clergyman, John Nelson Derby, who inspired them with his dispensationalist theology. Great Christian thinkers like Augustine of Hippo and St Thomas Aquinas developed principles to restrain Christian princes from unnecessary military action. The intention to wage war was justified only if it passed certain tests. Here are three of them:
Comment USA
Prayer in schools?
Tony Bennett
Date posted: 26 Aug 2026
When I attended state schools in Derby from the mid-1950s to the late-1960s, every school day began with an act of Christian worship which included a hymn, a Bible reading, and prayers always concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. All this was a requirement of the 1944 Education Act. I gather things are somewhat different today. Most British schools don’t feel comfortable any more “doing God”, let alone Jesus.
That’s the reverse of what’s happened in the USA. It’s all very different over there where such things are decided not by legislation but by the Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court. Let’s start with the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” From the 1960s through to 2000, the Supreme Court interpreted that prohibition on a nationally-prescribed religion to declare unconstitutional a host of Christian practices in public (i.e. state-run) schools.
US commission critiques UK religious freedom
Emily Pollok
Date posted: 26 Aug 2026
The UK has “heavy-handed” policies affecting religious freedom, a US report claims.
The criticism comes from the Religious Liberty Commission, established by President Donald Trump last May, which has published a draft report, highlighting Britain and several other countries.
politics & policy
‘Why do the nations rage?’
Krish Kandiah
Date posted: 31 Jan 2026
On 3 January, as part of what was described as his New Year’s resolution to pursue world peace, President Donald Trump, from his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort, oversaw the invasion of Venezuela and the extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, to the United States on charges of drug trafficking.
This alarming event does not stand alone. It comes amid a steady accumulation of brazen assertions of power by leaders from multiple continents, each one adding to the sense of global instability. While many nations express ongoing concern about the number of migrants crossing their borders, a far more pressing anxiety is emerging – the prospect of aggressors doing the same. As the world watches on in growing unease, I am reminded of the psalmist’s question: “Why do the nations rage?”
Trump in Narnia
Date posted: 7 Jul 2026
Dear Editor,
I found Jon Kuhrt’s interpretation of C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle as a prophetic parable for contemporary geopolitics to be intriguing and compelling (en online, posted 17 April).
news in brief
Pakistan: Pressured to drop charges
A Christian family is being pressurised by neighbouring Muslims to drop charges against their relative, who sodomised their six-year-old daughter. The girl had been in the Muslim family’s home for a tutoring lesson by the attacker’s sister, having received lessons there for several months, before he assaulted her.
Students had been left with the accused man, who is in his early 20s, when his sister went to do jobs around the house. The girl’s father revealed to Morning Star News that he then allowed the other students to leave the home before raping her in another room.
now this...
Living in a hostile world
Ian Hamilton
Date posted: 4 Aug 2026
The Bible is full of remarkable statements. One of the most remarkable is 1 Peter 1v17. Peter is instructing Christians how to live in an essentially Godless, anti-Christian society. He writes: “Honour everyone. Love the brothers. Fear God. Honour the emperor”.
This is surely remarkable. Love the brothers and fear God we can readily understand; but honour “everyone” and especially “the emperor”? The emperor in question was probably Nero, the fanatically anti-Christian megalomaniac. Honour him? God’s Word can be deeply unsettling.
What on earth did Jesus mean by ‘judge not’?
Dave Burke
Date posted: 25 Jul 2026
When it was revealed that Donald Trump, in the first year of his second term, had increased his personal fortune by 2 billion dollars I posted my views on Facebook. Within minutes, I was firmly rebuked for criticising him. “The Lord told us not to judge people!” someone said. “Shame on you!” chimed in an irate supporter, “Pastors like you are ruining the church!”
The Lord’s command that we refrain from judging people is a sacred calling; an essential principle for every pastorally active Christian. We should refuse to judge when the answers seem easy to us, but impossible to those we try to support.
Should UK Christians go to Franklin Graham’s rallies?
Tony Bennett
Date posted: 2 Jul 2026
Charles Colson was a senior member of President Nixon’s White House Staff who was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up. But having come to saving faith in Christ, he tells in his autobiography of what he witnessed when he would bring visitors to meet Nixon.
Colson would gather guests in a room near the Oval Office, where they would talk about what they were going to tell the President when they were face to face with him. ‘But it was always the same,’ Colson writes. ‘In the reception room they would rehearse their angry lines.’ But once they were in the Oval Office, ‘it was as if they’d suddenly sniffed some intoxicating fragrance. For invariably, the lions of the waiting room became the meek lambs of the Oval Office. And none were more cowardly than the religious leaders.’
letter from Japan
Drawn to Jesus – but repelled by Trump
John Newton Webb
Date posted: 30 May 2026
In the space of ten days, three Japanese people have asked me about Donald Trump and Christianity.
A non-Christian academic, who said he is drawn to Christianity but that Christian nationalism keeps him from embracing it, a non-Christian lady who is attracted by the Christian faith but was worried that following Jesus would also mean supporting Trump, and a Christian who was troubled by Trump/Hegseth’s claim to be doing God’s will.
To save humanity, we must return to humility!
James Burnett
Date posted: 13 May 2026
Jesus says: "The meek shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5). But how realistic is this Sermon on the Mount prediction for the contemporary scene?
The stage-boards of world power creak under the hefty tread of “strong men” (Donald Trump AI-imaged himself as Jesus on Truth Social and later eschewed messianic similarities as fake news); the tech industry is supine to Elon Musk who is the richest person on earth with possibly a genius IQ and certainly a hedonistic outlook; while primary school children in the UK are taught the three “s's” of western success: self-interest, self-reliance, and self-promotion.
Franklin Graham says Pope should thank Trump
en staff
Date posted: 16 Apr 2026
Evangelist Franklin Graham says he hopes the Pope and Donald Trump will meet - and that the Pontiff should express his thanks to the President.
Writing on social media platform X, the son of the late Billy Graham said he was sharing "thoughts" having "received some questions about President Trump's recent posts".
What if aliens are real? A thought experiment
Russell Moore
Date posted: 13 Mar 2026
This is how strange our times are: recently, two United States presidents engaged the question of whether aliens are real, and it wasn’t even in the top 15 stories of the week. The debate was over not "aliens" as in migrants to a country but "aliens" as in extra-terrestrial, nonhuman beings.
Former president Barack Obama sparked the controversy by responding to a question about aliens in a podcast interview and saying that "they’re real" before assuring listeners that there are no underground bunkers studying aliens at Area 51. President Donald Trump then accused Obama of giving out "classified information" and then pledged to declassify government documents on what used to be called unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and are now referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).
Nigeria: Violence ongoing after strikes
Luke Randall
Date posted: 20 Feb 2026
Recent US airstrikes have “clearly had an impact” on the situation facing Christians in Nigeria, but religiously motivated violence continues, according to an Open Doors source.
Militant Islamist groups previously feared no punishment for their continual persecution of Christians across the nation’s northwest, but US intervention seems to have alerted them to stronger repercussions for their actions.
news in brief
Canada: Protesting pastor returned to jail
A pastor from Calgary, Canada has been arrested and accused of breaching the terms of his year-long house arrest after attending a protest ahead of his own court appeal. Derek Reimer had been charged with criminal harassment and breaching bail conditions following his participation at protests against drag storytime events at a library last year.
CBC News reports that Reimer was allowed to attend court hearings while serving his sentence, but is accused of exploiting this allowance by arriving at the court 90 minutes beforehand. His lawyer expressed concern that he has been “punished for going to court too early and saying the wrong thing”.
As one ‘rules-based order’ passes, another abides
John Stevens
Date posted: 4 Feb 2026
Events since the beginning of 2026 have suggested the collapse of the “rules-based world order” that has held sway since the end of the Second World War.
US president Donald Trump ordered the seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, threatened Columbia and Iran, and reasserted his determination to take control of Greenland. He has claimed American hegemony in Western Hemisphere, and seems prepared to allow other nations, including China and Russia, to have control over their own geographical spheres of influence. It feels as if the world is returning to the era of competing empires, with great powers forcing their will on smaller vassal nations. Britain feels especially vulnerable to this change because we are no longer the world power we were in 1945.
Is Donald Trump this C.S. Lewis Narnia character?
The Last Battle, the final instalment of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, is an unusual children’s book.
The plot involves all the main characters being killed, some in a train crash and others in battle, and the whole "Narnian world" coming to an end. It is literally apocalyptic.