In recent years, Christianity Today editor in chief Marvin Olasky has taken trips to stay in homeless shelters around the United States, interviewing 200 people experiencing homelessness. He’s published a series of articles this summer exploring homelessness in the United States, writing for CT this week that “America has 134 million households and 146 million housing units, which means that at any one point, we have 12 million year-round vacant housing units.”
But homelessness “is not simply supply and demand.”
“Washington State had a low vacancy rate in 2024 and was the worst state in the US for chronic homelessness,” he writes. Causation “is not so simple. One mayor in the state led a study showing Washington is also the worst state in its per capita rate of fentanyl and opioid overdoses seen in emergency rooms. It’s also had the fourth highest rate of adult mental illness.”
The rest of his series brings reporting, research, and interviews with people in homeless shelters to bear on the problem, emphasizing that Christians must see people experiencing homelessness as inherently worthy of respect and love.
David Brooks of The Atlantic joined The Russell Moore Show this week to talk about artificial intelligence and the ways technology changes how we relate to our work and to ourselves.
“We are more than our information. We are people with souls. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are not whole bodies, we are not whole souls, we are not whole persons,” he said. “We are about to be cured of that, because we have made a machine that’s a brain on a stick. And now we’re going to figure out, ‘Oh, we’re a lot more than that.’” | Listen here.
Join CT deputy editor Bonnie Kristian and political strategist Justin Giboney on August 6 at 1:00 p.m. EDT for a live conversation on pursuing unity amid cultural and political conflict.
Elise Brandon, copy editor: Use up three browning bananas with healthy banana muffins—best slathered with butter fresh out of the oven. They’re not very sweet, so they’d be good with extra sugar on top or mixed-in cinnamon chips.
Mia Staub, senior editorial project manager: I recently made this five-ingredient miso pasta (but I made it without parmesan because I am lactose intolerant), and it was a super easy work-from-home lunch!
Haley Byrd Wilt, interim Weekend editor: The new Hillbilly Thomists album is gorgeous. I particularly love “Maybe I’ll Rise.” (Here’s a glimpse at how many instruments go into any given Hillbilly Thomists song.)
For pastors and religious workers who are at risk of detainment and deportation.
For churches helping immigrants in South Africa.
For peace between tribal groups in India.
“How Jesus Sounded to a First-Century Galilean,” by Andrew Wilson
“The Summer of Taking Christian Nationalism Seriously,” by Megan Fowler
“The Curly, Coily Hair God Made,” by Jordone Massey
“Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night of the Soul,” by Cody Benjamin
While the internet seems consumed with political debate, as Christians, we must practice acknowledging cultural fissures and fractures while also placing our ultimate hope in God alone. Christ’s work invites us to work toward repair. As America observes its 250th birthday this year, we both celebrate the American experiment in democracy and speak honestly about it; as Justin Giboney writes in “America 250,” “We must be able to critique and appreciate with impartiality.” In her essay on notable books, Jen Pollock Michel calls readers to consider how freedom for (not just freedom from) is necessary. Also, historian George Marsden looks back at 1976, the year of the evangelical, and Bonnie Kristian examines Charlie Kirk’s legacy. We hope you’ll spend some time with Angela Lu Fulton’s feature “The Cost of Training Up a Chinese Child,” about Chinese Christians who have kept their faith preeminent, and Emily Belz’s reporting on an Anglican church’s support of families healing a year after a school shooting. Whether you find yourself naming fractures or repairing fissures, we hope this will lower the cultural temperature, showing that our faithful work matters but also that Christ promises to make all things new.
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