July 31, 2025

Today’s Briefing

Southern Baptists’ top leader in Washington, DC, Brent Leatherwood, has resigned after four tumultuous years as ERLC president.

Nigeria’s Christian hospitals do what the public health care system can’t.

The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s “little Bible.”

The US no longer welcomes Chinese students, but campus ministries still do.

This week on The Bulletin, discussions of QAnon, sports betting, and violence in Syria.

Behind the Story

From news editor Daniel Silliman: It’s been about a year since Google started adding AI-generated summaries at the top of internet searches. How’s that going for news sites that produce the information that artificial intelligence eagerly cannibalizes?

In the words of one favorite millennial meme: Not great, Bob!

Columbia Journalism Review calls the drop in search traffic an “apocalypse” for news sites. The Wall Street Journal, “armageddon.” One study found clicks dropped by nearly half when people got an AI summary of search results.

At CT, we once got a healthy flow of traffic from search engines. People had questions about Christmas trees or Donald Trump’s denomination and found their way to our site. So we’ve seen the decline too.

But our main audience doesn’t come from search engines. We want to build relationships with our readers and establish trust—which is why we spend time sending you a daily email. If you think someone could benefit from our work, tell them to skip the AI garble and sign up for the CT Daily Briefing.

In Other News

An experimental, online church used to push people to find ways to meet in person. No more.
Four countries lost their Christian majorities in the past few years.
Joel Osteen’s mother, “Dodie” Osteen, who helped cofound Lakewood Church in Houston, has died at 91.
A sleepy Church of England bishop showed up barefoot and in a robe to put an end to a choir concert that ran past 10 p.m.

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Today in Christian History

August 1, 1714: The “Schism Bill,” which was intended to bolster Anglicanism in England, dies with its chief supporter, Queen Anne. For years, Dissenters (also known as “Non-conformists”) regarded the date as a day of deliverance, the “Protestant Passover.”

When Praise Is Power, Secular Songs Are the Enemy

When Doechii’s song “Anxiety” went viral at the beginning of the summer, thousands of social media users participated in the dance trend, posting videos of themselves shimmying back and forth…

India Army Dismissed Christian Officer for Refusing Religious Rituals

When Samuel Kamalesan, a Christian officer in the Indian Army, asked to not take part in certain Hindu and Sikh rituals in his regiment’s weekly religious parades, the army dismissed…

A Secular Scholar Remakes God’s Image in His Own Image

Few ideas have changed the world as profoundly as the doctrine that all human beings who have ever lived bear God’s likeness. In Genesis 1:27, when God creates the first…

How a YouTube Atheist Helped Me Out of Cynicism

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here. When a Christian friend texted me an interview with Alex O’Connor, I expected my reaction to be an eye-rolling “Can you believe…

in the magazine

As developments in artificial intelligence change daily, we’re increasingly asking what makes humanity different from the machines we use. In this issue, Emily Belz introduces us to tech workers on the frontlines of AI development, Harvest Prude explains how algorithms affect Christian courtship, and Miroslav Volf writes on the transhumanist question. Several writers call our attention to the gifts of being human: Haejin and Makoto Fujimura point us to beauty and justice, Kelly Kapic reminds us God’s highest purpose isn’t efficiency, and Jen Pollock Michel writes on the effects of Alzheimer’s . We bring together futurists, theologians, artists, practitioners, and professors to consider how technology shapes us even as we use it.

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