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April 17, 2026

This edition is sponsored by Catholic Charities USA

Today’s Briefing

A few churchgoers mobilized an 18-hour road trip—through an ice storm—to bring an ICE-detained refugee back home, Emily Belz reports from Minnesota.

What should Christians do when AI chatbots impersonate the dead?

As India starts census counting, believers face difficult decisions about whether to identify as Christians in a hostile environment.

Poet Malcolm Guite reveals his new epic, Galahad and the Grail, as a modern spin on Arthurian legends that also points to the light of Christ.

Behind the Story

From senior staff writer Emily Belz: I spent four hours one recent spring evening in Minnesota talking to the two churchgoers who are featured in today’s story on the detention of their friend, a refugee.

We sat in their pastor’s office as the church youth group wrapped up its evening on the other side of the door. The men’s story was full of so many twists and turns that it felt as if even that long interview just scratched the surface.

These two churchgoers, Tim Fletcher and Michael Forbes, are part of a Good Neighbor team that had formed a close bond with this refugee family. The Good Neighbor program is officially about 25 years old and grew organically out of World Relief’s resettlement of refugees after the Vietnam War.

“It’s easy to do different individual volunteer opportunities,” World Relief’s Catherine Gross told me about the thinking behind Good Neighbor. “It’s a lot of work to support something that’s more team based.”

This refugee family needed a team of support when their world came crashing down. No individual could have done it all. We want to report important news stories, full stop, but I also hope the stories can show the value of church communities.

Paid Content

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In Other News

Franklin Graham downplayed the severity of President Donald Trump’s post depicting himself as a Jesus-like healer, adding that the pope should thank Trump for protecting Catholics and religious liberty.
Proposed foreign law changes could endanger Christian ministries in India, giving power to Hindu nationalists.
One of the Artemis II crew members said a chaplain’s cross brought him to tears after the astronaut returned from a historic moon flyby mission.

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Today in Christian History

April 20, 1853: Fugitive slave Harriet Tubman, who had escaped from the eastern shore of Maryland four years earlier, makes a return trip to the South to rescue other slaves. By the time slavery was abolished, she had made 19 such trips, liberating at least 300 fellow African Americans.

An Unsung Iran Peace Initiative Grapples with Failure

Early in the morning on February 28, Ed Martin awoke in his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, rolled over in bed to check his phone, and let out a slow sigh.…

Black Immigrants Are Diversifying the American Church

This is the fourth in a series. Here are the first, second, and third articles. About 300 ago, enslavers captured a group of Black Catholics from Central Africa and the Kingdom of…

Artemis II Showed Us What Integrity Looks Like

On April 10 at 5:07 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Integrity, the crew-named Artemis II spacecraft, splashed down off the coast of San Diego after its ten-day mission around the moon…

A Map Through Natural Theology

This piece was adapted from CT’s books newsletter. Subscribe here. Christopher R. Brewer, Understanding Natural Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan Academic, 2026) Works of academic theology often proceed…

IN THE MAGAZINE

In this issue of Christianity Today and in this season of the Christian year, we explore the bookends of life: birth and death. You’ll read Karen Swallow Prior’s essay on childlessness and Kara Bettis Carvalho’s overview of reproductive technologies. Haleluya Hadero reports on artificially intelligent griefbots, and Kristy Etheridge discusses physician-assisted suicide. There is much work to be done to promote life. We talk with Fleming Rutledge about the Crucifixion, knowing that while suffering lasts for a season, Jesus has triumphed over death through his death. This Lenten and Easter season, may these words be a companion as you consider how you might bring life in the spaces you inhabit.

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