What has Westboro Baptist Church been up to for the last decade? Examining 2015-2025 🧵

For many, Westboro Baptist Church is one of the most infamous and notorious churches in the country. Founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kansas, in 1955, it rose to prominence in the early 1990s and 2000s for its showy, public protests. Fred Phelps had thirteen children, nine of whom have been involved in running the organization in various ways at various points, but none so much as his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper.

She oversaw the day-to-day operations of the church, the expansion of their protesting activities, a vocalist for their church parody videos (see below) and also functioned as the face of the church.

🧵Top 10 Oldest Protestant Churches in America: How Many have Stayed Faithful vs Become Progressive and Woke? (Part 1) Graphic designer Joshua Barzon recently shared a countdown of the top 10 oldest Protestant churches in America. Given that they all would have been founded by godly men and women with conservative ideals and a biblical foundation, we wanted to see how many of them have remained in the faith after hundreds of years, or how many have gone off the rails into rank heresy and progressivism.

A megachurch in Oklahoma has erected a statue inside their church of a literal 'demon-god.'

Not only that, but they are inviting congregants and visitors to take pictures of themselves with it. 🧵 We recently brought you the story of , 85,000-member, seeker-sensitive, multi-site-based Oklahoma church that has 40 locations, after the Omaha branch put on a Moana-themed sermon series, decking out the church with elaborate set pieces. Life.Church

The Mormon Church could be a $1 Trillion denomination in 20 years, having so much money that they could fund all their operations without ever needing to collect tithes again. Here's how: 🧵 Imagine a denomination so wealthy it could cover all its current expenses “forever” without a single penny more from congregants. This is the reality for the LDS church, boasting an eye-watering estimated wealth of $293 billion in 2024 and on track for $1 trillion by 2044.

A new reality TV show from Christian couple Chip and Joanna Gaines, Back to the Frontier, prominently features a same-sex couple among its three families in an eight-episode social experiment. 🧵 The Gaineses gained fame through their HGTV series Fixer Upper (2013–2018), with Chip overseeing construction and Joanna doing the interior design. They built Magnolia, a successful brand that includes a market, bakery, restaurant, real estate company, and home decor lines, and launched the Magnolia Network in 2021.

ICYMI. Christianity Today runs a month of ads to promote MTR, an LGBTQ-affirming podcast from an explicitly gay-affirming activist organization that has close ties to Andy Stanley's church.

(Video and pics below) In 2023, Andy Stanley hosted the Unconditional Conference, which featured nearly all gay-affirming speakers, including several who were same-sex married. The conference was put on by Embracing the Journey, a radical gay-affirming ministry that partners with North Point.

We covertly attended the conference, with our report here protestia.com/?s=embracing+t…

Let's review the '2024 Annual Report' of a progressive Lutheran congregation to see what we can learn from a congregation that hates Christ.🧵 Located in Chicago, IL, St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square describes themselves as a "radically welcoming congregation" that "affirms all races, ethnicities, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, and other diverse backgrounds."

According to their website "We are on a journey toward antiracist and anti-oppression transformation, seeking to inhabit these values as lifelong spiritual practices."

A story in five pictures, as we examine what RZ considers a "conservative PCUSA church, and by extention, the value and mission of 'Operation Reconquista' 🤔

🧵2.3B Streams? $101M In Tithes? A Review of Elevation Church’s 2024 Annual Report

Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC, is a 17,000-member multisite campus with 20 locations led by pastor Steven Furtick.

Along with being a popular speaker, author, and Grammy-winning musician, Furtick is known for having the term “narcegesis” (narcissistic exegesis) named after him, wearing expensive luxury clothing, and having a generally poor grasp of theology. We recently wrote about him after he was accused of using geofencing technology to intentionally target smaller churches with location-based ads. This ensured that as soon as congregants stepped foot onto their own church property, they were pushed advertisements intended to draw them away.

protestia.com/2024/07/18/ste…

🧵20% Of The Biggest Southern Baptist Churches Are Pastored By Women?

It’s no secret that the SBC has been monkeying about with its theological foundations as of late, shrugging off the oppressive mantle of complementarianism in exchange for the more lightweight and flexible windbreaker of s̷o̷f̷t̷-̷c̷o̷m̷p̷l̷e̷m̷e̷n̷t̷a̷r̷i̷a̷n̷i̷s̷m̷ egalitarianism. To catalog the downgrade of the SBC, a couple years back, we directed ourselves to Thom Rainer’s website where he lists the SBC 500.

This is a compendium of the 500 largest Southern Baptist Churches in the United States by membership size (or in this case, 494) ranging from the 1,092 congregants at Calvary Baptist Church in Dothan, AL all the way to the 31,215 reported by Newspring Community Church in Anderson, SC.

Trump's spiritual advisor Paula White praising deranged Moonies cult leader is so dangerous. Here is why 🧵 During a recent Universal Peace Federation’s Peace Summit, White, who was attending, repeatedly praised ‘Mother Moon,’ otherwise known as Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, the widow of the Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, co-founder of the Universal Peace Federation and the World Unification Church. Ie, Moonies.

Worship artist / Singer-Songwriter Topping Gospel Music Charts Is Actually a Muslim?

Musical artist Nouri is a Kurdish singer and songwriter that was born and raised in a Syrian refugee camp. Remaining there until she was three, her family was ultimately given refugee status in New Zealand, where she grew up.

She later moved to L.A., where she lived out the back of her car, before finally hitting it big in the music industry with her 2018 debut album 'Where Do We Go from Here,' which hit #1 on several charts and gained international attention. Building on her successes, after sharing multiple covers of worship songs on her TikTok account, she recently released the original worship song 'Change In Your Name' this past summer- a slow, soaring gospel ballad that placed #10 on iTunes Gospel Charts and reached #4 on Billboard's Top Gospel Songs. Receiving millions of streams, it now sits at 15th place half a year later.

After doing this for over two decades, listening to literally 10,000 sermons, this is one of the craziest thing I've ever heard.

Broken into 4 parts, a United Methodist impastor offers a *DEFENSE* of Jezebel and Asherah worship in ways that blow my mind ⬇️⬇️⬇️🧵

A must watch! In a recent sermon, wearing her Spirit of Jezebel shirt, Rev. Debra McKnight claims that the "Jezebel Spirit" is basically any woman who is "competent, attractive, and smart," just like Jezebel herself and Kamala Harris.

Lecrae, who previously revealed he stopped going to church because it was too 'triggering', and that now 'church' for him is going to an album launch party or hanging out with a bunch of friends on a tour bus, answers the question 'can you love God and not go to church.' It's not good.

https://twitter.com/Protestia/status/1728432951040369074

It amazes me to see these Intellectual Calvinists point to some debate Michael Brown did with James White a decade ago as justification for commending him as someone we should listen to and view as a faithful bible teacher, and not the squirrely scoundrel that he is. No one is saying you can't be friends with him. That's a misnomer and a strawman. What we are saying is you don't have to promote the guy. And yet, apparently, all you have to do is note you have "deep theological disagreements" with him as a disclaimer and he gets a pass

Here's a thought. Based on the information GCC elders had at the time, there was sufficient reason to believe D was repentant and the home was safe. E disagreed, and justifiable church discipline ensued, on account of not submitting to their collective spirit-led wisdom. Suppose later D emerged as a child predator who fooled everyone and necessitated a separation/ divorce, does that mean that GCC is guilty in light of their initial assessment, based on the information they had at the time? There's a case to be made that they're not.