After Lori Alexander, author of “The Power of a Transformed Wife,” made posts on X (formerly Twitter) about worldly, tattooed women and their decisions’ long-term effects, social media users debated whether tattoos are sinful.

On April 1, Alexander wrote:

If men marry a woman deeply into debt who has fornicated with many men and is covered with tattoos, even if she repents and believes in Jesus Christ, she will still be deeply in debt, have scars from fornicating, and be covered with tattoos. This is why you must teach your daughters to be debt-free virgins without tattoos. Teach them to be wise, so they don’t have a lifetime of regrets and suffering as a result of their past decisions.

If men marry a woman deeply into debt who has fornicated with many men and is covered with tattoos, even if she repents and believes in Jesus Christ, she will still be deeply in debt, have scars from fornicating, and be covered with tattoos. This is why you must teach your…

— The Transformed Wife 🦋 (@godlywomanhood) April 1, 2024

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“Once we believe, we are completely forgiven for all of our sins, but this in no way means we still won’t suffer the consequences of some of those sins,” she added. “Many women who have turned away from their ungodly lifestyles are infertile, grieve over their abortions, must continue working for years due to all of their debt, and their tattoos grow gray and ugly. Teach your daughters Truth!!!”

Christians Debate the Lasting Consequences of Sin

Reaction to the post about tattooed women was swift, with some people arguing that “tattoos are not sinful” while others quoted Scriptures such as Leviticus 19:28. Others used snark, with one person writing, “That’s why you should only marry people who have never sinned in their life.”

People who defended Alexander’s post said she’s not being judgmental but simply “telling someone to avoid mistakes.” For people who “can’t handle these truthful comments,” someone wrote, “it’s maybe time for some introspection and prayer.”

Ben Zeisloft, editor of the Sentinel, wrote, “[Alexander] is only saying that sins have consequences. She said nothing denying the truth that formerly promiscuous women can be forgiven, redeemed, and cherished by their husbands.”

“I want my future children to avoid my past sexual sins,” said Zeisloft, “to know the goodness of God in his design for human sexuality, and to understand that sins have practical consequences even for those clothed in the righteousness of Christ.” He added, “Of course sin can be forgiven, but sin also has practical consequences that we should want ourselves and our children to avoid.”

Alexander expanded on her original post. “Women who fornicated can be infertile, have disease, and have a hard time pair bonding with their husbands,” she wrote. “The consequences of fornication don’t disappear with repentance and belief. Men deserve to know the risks. There are many reasons God commands sexual purity.”

To people who said Christ came to abolish Old Testament laws, Alexander wrote, “We can still know the heart of God by what He wrote in the Law even though we are not bound to it today.”

Protestia: Repentant Women Are ‘More Precious Than Rubies’

People who disagreed with Alexander’s post about tattooed women offered biblical evidence of God’s compassion and grace. “A woman deeply in debt, who has fornicated with many men and is covered by tattoos, who has repented of her sins and believes in Jesus Christ, is more precious than rubies,” the website Protestia replied, quoting Proverbs. “Any man who makes her his wife ‘has found what is good and receives favor from the LORD.’”

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Someone wrote that telling men to “avoid genuinely repentant women ‘with a past’ is profoundly at odds with the teachings of Christ” and “overlooks the transformative impact of God’s grace in a person’s life through sincere repentance and faith.”

Easter Sunday was a day of celebration. Not only was Life.Church joining churches around the globe to honor and worship the risen Lord, but the church also reached more people than ever before. Life.Church’s Bible app, YouVersion, experienced record-breaking numbers throughout Holy Week and on Easter.

“On Sunday, 16.8 million people opened God’s Word through the YouVersion family of apps,” Life.Church shared with ChurchLeaders in a statement.

Life.Church Celebrates Record Numbers on the YouVersion App and in the Pews on Easter Sunday

Life.Church created the YouVersion app in 2008 to provide “biblically centered experiences that encourage and challenge people to seek God throughout each day.” The YouVersion app family has grown since then, with more than 700 million installations and specific apps for children.

The church reported statistics of interaction, both in person at the more than 40 satellite churches and via digital interaction with the YouVersion app family.

On Easter Sunday, YouVersion experienced “its highest day ever for daily Bible use, up nearly 22% compared to Easter in 2023,” reported Life.Church.

The record numbers, shared Life.Church, were greatly due to “increased access to both the media-rich Bible App and the space-saving Bible App Lite, which is currently available in more than 175 countries and territories as part of a recent effort to equip areas with device and internet limitations.”

Back in October 2022, YouVersion launched YouVersion Bible App Lite, a similar app that’s accessible to those in Africa and Southeast Asia who have “device and data limitations.”

“Christianity is steadily growing throughout the world,” said YouVersion founder and CEO Bobby Gruenewald. “We believe the addition of Bible App Lite to the YouVersion family of apps helps us meet the needs of the growing global Church and makes it possible for more people to build intimacy with God through His Word.”

“During Holy Week 2024, YouVersion saw more than 3.5 million installs across the YouVersion family of apps (up 42% from last year),” Life.Church said.

Easter was the second-highest day for installs. “You Version saw a significant increase in the use of a key Bible App feature as 2.7 million Prayers were created, up 77% over 2023,” the church reported.

Craig Groeschel, founding and senior pastor of Life.Church, shared a video capturing highlights from Easter Sunday at the church’s dozens of satellite churches.

“I wanted to take a moment to thank God for you and to thank God with you that we saw an all-time record attendance on Easter weekend celebrating the resurrection of Jesus to the glory of God,” Groeschel began.

A dispute between a youth minister and a pastor’s son ended in violence and death on Sunday, as Denzel Branch of New Generation Church in Dallas was shot and killed following the church’s Easter service. 

Branch, 31, had served as New Generation Church’s youth minister for several years and had just preached at the church’s Good Friday service. Branch’s mother, Shaylor Wilcot, told WFAA that Branch was a father of five.

Joshua Bell, 30, was taken into custody following the shooting. Police say that he admitted to shooting Branch. Bell is the son of New Generation Church founding and lead pastor, Eric J. Andrews.

According to FOX 4, Bell was in a romantic relationship with Branch’s ex-wife. 

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After service on Sunday (March 31), the two men got into a verbal altercation down the street from New Generation Church. The altercation turned physical when Branch reportedly punched Bell in the face through the open window of the car Bell was sitting in. 

It was then that eyewitnesses said Bell pulled a gun and began firing. Bell later told police that Branch had attempted to flee but that Bell had continued to fire at Branch until “he saw [Branch] laying on the middle of the road,” according to the Christian Post.

Bell initially left the scene but later turned himself into police. Bell reportedly told police that he had been in an intimate relationship with Branch’s ex-wife since May 2023 and that she divorced Branch around November 2023. 

Bell has been charged with murder. 

In a statement posted to Facebook on Monday (April 1), New Generation Church said, “​​Our hearts are deeply saddened by the tragic incident that took place down the street from our church after our morning service yesterday.”

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“We sincerely appreciate everyone’s prayers and concern and we ask for your continued prayers for the families and our church family as we navigate through these difficult times,” the statement continued. 

WASHINGTON (RNS) — In 2017, as Donald Trump settled into the presidency thanks in no small part to broad support from conservative Christians, a Vatican-approved magazine published an article bemoaning the “surprising ecumenism” found among far-right Protestants and Catholics who sought a “theocratic type of state.”

Years later, the ideology highlighted by the article — co-authored by a confidante of Pope Francis — is often described using the umbrella term “Christian nationalism.” And as the U.S. barrels toward yet another presidential election featuring Trump, most attention has been paid to the Protestant variety: forms of evangelicalism that have become increasingly vocal about a desire to create a particular kind of Christian America.

But the movement’s Catholic cousins have also quietly continued to grow. Cousins, plural, because Christian nationalism and related ideas espoused by Catholics don’t constitute a unified ideology, experts say. There are hard-liners and extreme voices who self-identify as Christian nationalists — Nick Fuentes and his America First group, for example. There are the extra-ecclesial groups, like Eternal Word Television Network or the now-defunct Church Militant. And then there are Catholic integralists, who often insist they aren’t nationalists at all.

“Integralism was operating before any self-understood Christian nationalists were operating,” explained Kevin Vallier, an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University whose new book, “All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism,” examines Catholic integralism.

The movement, Vallier said, traces its origins to the fall of the Roman Empire, when the Catholic Church took on many of the functions of the state. For generations, popes argued that God ordained two powers: kings to rule “temporal” matters and promote “ordinary natural good,” and the church to promote spiritual “eternal goods.”

“In many cases, these two divinely authorized institutions will sort of clash,” Vallier said. “The question is ‘Well, which is superior?’ The integralist says that the church is superior … and that means it can delegate to the state to help enforce its spiritual mission.”

The church began to shift away from this idea in the aftermath of World War II — and particularly after the Second Vatican Council — but there has been a resurgence of support in the 21st century in conservative academic circles. The movement found champions in University of Notre Dame’s Patrick Deneen and especially Harvard University’s Adrian Vermeule, both of whom insist liberalism has failed Western society. They and like-minded “New Right” and “post-liberal” scholars have organized their own conferences, such as a 2022 gathering at the Franciscan University of Steubenville that also featured a speech from then-U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance of Ohio. (Representatives for Vance did not respond to questions about whether he supports Catholic integralism.)

Integralist ideas sometimes directly conflict with ideals of self-identified Christian nationalists. Integralists are often deeply supportive of immigration, for instance, and tend to shy away from the political violence endorsed by some extreme Christian nationalists, who exhibit higher support for political violence in polls than the average American.

According to Vallier, integralists prefer a “soft power” approach to exerting Christian influence over society.

“There’s the sense that the liberal order is so corrupt that elite Catholics have to find positions of influence and use them in a kind of noble and appropriate way,” he said.

Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian “strategic adviser” to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised “pagan kings.”

And while Vermeule has argued that “nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated,” he has conceded that nationalism can be a “second-best defensive strategy” against liberalism.

Prayer is a powerful and essential element of the Christian walk, and new believers don’t need to be intimidated by it, said the guests in a recent episode of Trinity Broadcasting Network’s (TBN) “Takeaways With Kirk Cameron.” Cameron was joined by his sister, actor and producer Candace Cameron Bure, Pastor Greg Laurie, and author, Bible teacher, and TBN host Sheila Walsh.

“God doesn’t always answer prayers the way we want him to, but [prayer] is so important because it not only connects us to him but it’s just saying, ‘Lord, I am dependent upon you, no matter what happens,’” Bure explained during her brother’s show. 

‘Takeaways With Kirk Cameron’ Focuses on Prayer

Kirk Cameron, who became famous through the sitcom, “Growing Pains,” and starred in three “Left Behind” movies that were released in the early 2000s, launched “Takeaways” in 2021. 

Similar to her brother, Bure became famous as a child through starring on a sitcom. She played D.J. Tanner in “Full House,” later starred in the reboot, “Fuller House,” and is now an executive at the Great American Family channel.

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Bure said she’s “not one of these spiritual, super powerhouse, prayer people, verbally.” While she loves praying, she is not quick to volunteer to do so in a group. “I don’t feel as confident in that,” she said. “But I pray so much, and I see God answer so many things, to the smallest tiny things and sometimes really big things.”

“You’ll be amazed,” said Bure. “If you don’t have a prayerful life, or you don’t know how to pray, it’s just talking to God.”

Bure said she can tell if she forgets to pray for a period of time. After a week or more, “I notice such a massive difference in my life.” But when she remembers to pray, the practice brings her closer to God.

“It connects you to God so much because when you see the little prayers being answered,” she said, “it’s reminding you every day, God’s with me, God’s with me.”

Law enforcement officials are looking for two Kansas women. Veronica Butler (27) and Jilian Kelley (39) went missing over Easter weekend while they were on their way to pick up children.

Kelley is the wife of Pastor Heath Kelley of Hugoton First Christian Church and the mother of four children. She runs the children’s programs at the church and serves as the church’s secretary.

RELATED: Texas Pastor Missing for Nearly a Week Found Dead From a Gunshot Wound

A missing persons alert reads,

Veronica and Jilian were traveling together to pick up children. They never made it to the pick up location. Their car was left abandoned on the side of the road. Veronica has several tattoos, a Chinese symbol on her left forearm, [and] a sunflower on her left shoulder. Jilian has a butterfly tattoo on her left forearm.

On Saturday (March 30), deputies from the Texas County Sheriff’s Department in Oklahoma found the car Butler and Kelley were driving abandoned in a rural area south of Elkhart, Kansas. It is unclear if the children they were picking up were related to either woman.

Hunter McKee, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) public information manager, said, “As of right now, as the investigation continues and we were requested, we’re unsure where these women are or what happened to them. That unknown is what has created it suspicious for us at this time.”

Yarbrough Schools, which is located near where the vehicle was found and is the school from which Butler graduated, locked the school down on Tuesday (April 2).

“Given the unknown nature of the missing persons incident, the close proximity of the event to the school and parental concerns, we felt that it was in our students’ best interest to lock down the school for the day,” the school’s superintendent told KWCH 12News. The superintendent added that it was “purely a safety-first decision.”

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“Our prayers are with these families as they face the unimaginable,” he said. “Veronica is a 2015 graduate of Yarbrough School, and we pray for her and Jilian’s safe return.”