Here's what's happening on the church and culture front today...

Featured

Feb 21, 2025

OpenAI tops 400 million users despite DeepSeek’s emergence

Feb 21, 2025

Lightcap pointed to the “natural progression” of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader group of people. “People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it.” (Rooney, CNBC)

Feb 21, 2025

Pilgrims make offerings to Hindu deities at a biennial festival in southern India

Feb 21, 2025

The pilgrimage is believed to have originated in the 16th century — before the temple was built on the huge rock that gave the pilgrimage its name Peddagattu, or “large rock” in the local Telugu language. Devotees, who arrived from faraway places, cooked their sacrificed animals on open fires outside their tents on the grounds surrounding the temple. (Kumar & Bhatia, AP News)

Feb 21, 2025

Almost 10% of Americans identify as LGBTQ+, largely bisexual

Feb 21, 2025

Newly released figures for 2024 show it's now 9.3%. The rise is largely driven by younger adults increasingly identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, with the higher numbers of people calling themselves bisexual. (Weise, USA Today)

Feb 21, 2025

The Pope marks a week in hospital - as cardinal suggests he could resign in case of 'serious difficulties'

Feb 21, 2025

A cardinal suggests some circumstances under which Pope Francis, who has spent a week in hospital, might choose to retire. But he stresses the pontiff has a tendency to fight and wants to see out the Jubilee Year. (Sky News)

Feb 21, 2025

News Archive:

Featured

OpenAI tops 400 million users despite DeepSeek’s emergence

How Deep Is Your Lore?

Lore is valuable online currency these days. A finalist for Oxford Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year (it lost to “brain rot”), this Old English word for knowledge has become slang for dramatic, and often traumatic, details that define a person’s existence. Driven by the impulse to self-mythologize and spin yarns, young people are enshrining even the most minor incidents as essential public knowledge. (Wong, The Wall Street Journal)

The perspective and vantage point of most Christians is limited. We can often only see how God is moving and working in our local congregations and among those around us. Depending on the circumstances, that can be discouraging. When we expand our vision globally with the 2025 report from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, we can see several trends that give us good news about the kingdom of God. (Earls, Lifeway Research)

Southern Baptist leaders working to address abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination say they will focus on helping churches access other databases of abusers and training churches to do better background checks. However, the so-called Ministry Check database, which was a centerpiece of reforms approved by Southern Baptist messengers — or local church representatives — is now on the back burner. (Smietana, Religion News Service)

Experts and people who know them say the group is led by LaSota, who in online postings discussed the nature of consciousness and rational decision making. Many of the group members are vegan, and either have degrees in computer science or have studied related fields. Some members of the group are transgender, or have rejected binary sexuality. (Hughes, USA Today)

Political science suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific authorities. One cross-country analysis published by the Systemic Risk Center at the London School of Economics found that people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership. This loss of trust persists for years, even decades, in part because political ideology tends to solidify in a person’s 20s. (Thompson, The Atlantic)

Despite Wheaton College’s attempts to quiet a backlash from alumni over its pro forma congratulatory message recognizing alumnus and newly confirmed White House official Russell Vought, the actions of the “deliberately non-partisan” evangelical Christian school have only brought more controversy. (Post, Religion News Service)

Increasing obesity means that some Europeans can no longer expect to live longer than their parents did, a study has found, and England is lagging behind the rest of the continent for improvements in life expectancy. (Hayward, The Times)

Artificial intelligence may be poised to change the world, but viewers of this year’s Super Bowl were unimpressed with its big-game advertising. The most popular commercial in USA Today’s annual, panel-based Super Bowl Ad Meter was Budweiser’s tale of an ambitious Clydesdale foal, while AI-themed ads for ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Meta Platforms’ Ray-Ban smart glasses ranked near the bottom. (Coffee, The Wall Street Journal)

The government plans to enforce the anticonversion law in March, following a court directive. This push comes as the influence of Hindutva, a political ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy, grows throughout the country and is championed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Christians in Arunachal Pradesh fear a new wave of repression is on the horizon. (Kaur, Christianity Today)

South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron’s death this week has triggered an outpouring of grief and calls for changes to the way the country’s celebrities are treated in the public arena and on social media, which critics say can foster a culture of harassment. (Tong-Hyung, AP News)

To get at the effect of the significant expansion of online betting platforms since 2018, Ayers and his colleagues looked at internet search terms that indicated people are struggling with gambling addiction. People are Googling phrases like "Am I addicted to gambling?" and "Help me find help with gambling addiction.” … And we see that those searches nationally increased about 23 percent since the Supreme Court case legalized sportsbooks." (Riddle, NPR)

Pope Francis is seriously worried about his health after being hospitalized with severe bronchitis, and is rushing to tie up loose ends ahead of the battle to succeed him. The pope was admitted to a special ward earlier this month in Gemelli Hospital in Rome with a respiratory infection, and he has since been forced to cancel a number of public appearances. (Munster, Politico)

Fundamental differences arose between Americans over what we expect from our government, how much tolerance we have for health risks, and which groups and sectors to prioritize in a pandemic. Many of these divides continue to play out in the nation’s politics today. (Tyson, Lipka & Deane, Pew Research)

The Baptists’ decision to accept the grant comes as faith-based groups such as Church World Service, Lutheran Services in America, Catholic Charities and World Relief have been under fire for accepting federal funds for helping immigrants and refugees. President Donald Trump’s political allies have called the grants “money laundering” and “illegal,” while some of the president’s religious allies accuse charities of selling their faith out to liberals. (Smietana, Religion News Service)

The Church of England has endured for nearly 500 years, embedded in the very fabric of the nation, with the King at its helm. Yet now, after months — some say years — of turmoil, it faces an existential crisis of profound historical and constitutional significance. (Newman, The Times)

After a half-century of comedy and music (and what at times felt like an equal amount of buildup and hype), how do you at last kick off a prime-time 50th anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live”? Calmly and serenely, it turns out. (Itzkoff, The New York Times)