Ahead of the theatrical release of “The Chosen,” Season 5, the Bible-based drama took over Times Square in New York City on Thursday (Feb. 13). As crowds gathered to see cast members, creator Dallas Jenkins went live to showcase large promotional posters for “The Chosen: Last Supper.”

The three images, featuring scenes from the new season, were taken by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz. She’s a “huge fan of the show,” Jenkins said, “and wanted to bring this to the world.”

The photographer spent four days on set, capturing the images. “I admire what Dallas Jenkins is doing so much,” Leibovitz said in a statement. “He is the artist of our time doing the Bible.” She added that she has wanted to tackle a Bible-based project for more than a decade and finally had the right opportunity.

RELATED: Dallas Jenkins Gets Emotional Sharing the Gospel With Jordan Peterson During Interview About ‘The Chosen’

Dallas Jenkins: Annie Leibovitz’s Images Will ‘Elevate the Show’

On an Instagram livestream Thursday, Jenkins said looking up at the artwork in Times Square was “unbelievable and overwhelming.” Noting that images from “The Chosen” were right next to an iconic poster from “Wicked,” he said, “A Jesus show has taken over. Look at this!”

Partnering with Leibovitz will bring new viewers to “The Chosen,” according to Jenkins. The photographer “tells stories in seconds, and then you look deeper and you find more,” he said. “And we’re trying to tell stories of some of the most iconic people who ever lived. They actually lived and breathed and had fear and doubt and felt things like joy and betrayal.”

With all the emotions contained in Season 5, the show needed someone like Leibovitz to communicate that visually, Jenkins said. “When she agreed to do it, we knew that it was going to elevate the show and bring something to it with her portraits that we can’t do.”

 

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Season 5 of “The Chosen” premieres in theaters on March 28. The eight-episode season will release in three parts during a four-week run. Later this year, it will be available on streaming.

‘The Chosen’ Actors Gather in Times Square

At Thursday’s event, several cast members from “The Chosen” looked at the new artwork in amazement. Jenkins asked some of them to describe seeing their enlarged faces above Times Square, shot by “the greatest, most iconic photographer of all time.”

Elizabeth Tabish, who plays Mary Magdalene, said the experience was “surreal and exciting.” Andrew James Allen, who plays Pontius Pilate, said being photographed by Leibovitz has been on his bucket list since he was a teenager. “Then seeing your face in Times Square, it just doesn’t compute,” he told Jenkins.

RELATED: ‘It’s Not Just a Role; It’s Been Teaching Me’—’The Chosen’ Star Speaks of the Emotions of Season 5

A former North Carolina pastor has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession and receipt of child sexual abuse material. Ashley Crouse, formerly of New Vision Baptist Church in Granite Falls, was arrested in November 2023 after law enforcement discovered that he had uploaded videos containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to a Dropbox account.

Editor’s note: This article refers to reports of child sex abuse, which some readers might find triggering and/or disturbing.

Following his prison term, Crouse will be subject to a lifetime of supervised release. He will also be required to register as a sex offender. 

In August 2024, Crouse pleaded guilty to possession of CSAM that involved a minor under the age of 12 and receipt of CSAM. 

RELATED: NC Pastor Reported To Have Over 10K Child Sex Abuse Images on Devices, Receives Federal Charge

Law enforcement began investigating Crouse in 2023 after Dropbox alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that one of its users possessed CSAM. The tip included Crouse’s name, email address, and several IP addresses.

Investigators found thousands of videos and images depicting child sex abuse on Crouse’s devices, and Crouse admitted to law enforcement that he would view the material while working in the church office. 

Law enforcement discovered one video downloaded to Crouse’s church office computer showing an 11-year-old girl participating in sexual acts with two different men. This video was accessed while logged into the “pastor” account.

According to a statement released by the district attorney’s office, investigators also found that Crouse maintained a book detailing how to sexually abuse children and used anti-forensic software to delete files.

RELATED: Former Children’s Pastor Pleads Guilty to Attempted Murder of His Family

Investigators said that others at the church reported that Crouse had been locking his office door whenever he left it, even if just to use the restroom. They said that they had not seen the inside of his office in months. 

NEW YORK (RNS) — Not a week goes by at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn without the congregation having to bid farewell to another member. Since the end of the pandemic, many young families and retirees have left the East Brooklyn church because they can’t afford to live in New York City anymore.

Until recently, the 3,000-member congregation hosted three Sunday morning services: 6 a.m., 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. However, it has canceled its 6 a.m. service, formerly frequented mostly by older congregants, sometimes 300 at once. The church has since invested in its online programming to keep up with the hundreds of members who have relocated to places like Atlanta, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

These regular goodbye sessions have also taken an emotional toll on the congregation, noted the Rev. David K. Brawley, St. Paul’s lead pastor.

“Some of my core leaders walk up to me in tears saying, ‘I just can’t,’ and almost, seemingly in shame, ‘I can’t afford to stay here anymore,’” he said.

St. Paul Community Baptist Church, and other churches located in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, are joining together in hopes of reversing the tide by keeping the neighborhood accessible to low-income families. Among other ideas, the churches want to encourage other houses of worship to build affordable housing on their vacant lots.

One of the main challenges today is finding land on which to build housing. Church-owned parcels can be repurposed for this, Brawley said, noting that churches could also bank on these housing projects to diversify their revenue since many are struggling financially as congregations shrink.

St. Paul Community Baptist believes up to 800 affordable units could be built on its parking lots. The church’s application to use city land is currently in its last stage, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which can take about seven months.

After being reviewed by the Department of City Planning, the application will be examined by community boards impacted by the project, the borough president, the city planning commission, the city council and the mayor.

The church has also suggested that underutilized parking lots in existing public housing complexes could be used to build up to 15,000 senior housing units. It also believes schools, hospitals and state-owned parcels offer great opportunities for housing construction.

New York has launched similar efforts in other neighborhoods. The city administration, in 2016, launched the New York Land Opportunity Program to support faith-based organizations in their construction projects. The initiative was brought by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit in partnership with Local Initiatives Support Corporation New York (LISC NY), a nonprofit advocating for community development.

Five churches were selected as part of the program and received technical assistance from attorneys, architects and LISC housing officers to draft requests for proposals. The congregations involved were the Community Church of New York in Manhattan; St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx; Shiloh Church of Christ in Central Harlem; Wakefield Grace Methodist Church in Wakefield, Bronx; and St. John’s Global Ministries in Queens.

Shiloh Church of Christ told RNS the program was helpful and gave the church much-needed direction to set up a request for its proposal and to advertise the project. The church now waits to land a deal.

Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which was recently awarded the trademark of the far-right group Proud Boys, is using that trademark to sell t-shirts that say, “Stay Proud, Stay Black” and “Stay Proud, Black Lives Matter.” Rev. William H. Lamar IV said his church will not be intimidated and will “use this evil symbol to make some good in the world.” 

“We will not allow intimidation, fascism, white Christian nationalism to win the day,” said Lamar in a conversation with ChurchLeaders. “We will continue to do the work of our own Black prophetic tradition, which is a tradition that centers the joy and humanity of all persons, that has never been segregated, never been exclusive, never been extractive, never been oppressive.”

“We continue to lift that way of being Christian together amidst other Christianities in the United States that would exclude and even use violence,” he added.

RELATED: Black Church Gains Control of Proud Boys Trademark in Compensation for Destruction of ‘Black Lives Matter’ Sign

Metropolitan AME Pastor: Church Leaders Must Choose Between the ‘Gospel of Jesus or the Empire of America’

The Proud Boys are a controversial group that got national attention during a debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden prior to the 2020 presidential election. During that debate, Trump said he would be willing to denounce white supremacy but did not do so. When Biden named the Proud Boys as a group Trump should denounce, Trump made the comment, “Stand back and stand by.” 

After that debate, the Proud Boys posted in their Telegram channel, “Standing down and standing by sir,” and also created t-shirts, some of which featured the Proud Boys logo of a yellow wreath around the initials “PB” over a black background. The shirts had phrases including “Proud Boys Standing By” and “Stand Back and Stand By.” 

On Dec. 12, 2020, members of the Proud Boys were filmed destroying Black Lives Matter signs belonging to churches following a “stop the steal” event in Washington, D.C. One of those churches was Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

On Jan. 4, 2021, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church sued the Proud Boys “for engaging in acts of terror and vandalizing church property in an effort to intimidate the Church and silence its support for racial justice.” The church requested damages and a jury trial. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and other Proud Boys members were later convicted of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

In the summer of 2023, Metropolitan AME Church won a default ruling ordering the Proud Boys to pay $2.8 million in damages, which the Proud Boys did not do. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was serving a 22-year prison sentence when President Donald Trump took office and granted clemency to Tarrio and more than 1,500 others charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.

On Feb. 3, Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier awarded Metropolitan AME Church the Proud Boys trademark, thereby preventing the Proud Boys from selling their own merchandise or using their trademark without the church’s consent. 

In a rare show of unity, 27 religious groups are suing the federal government over its new policy of allowing immigration-related arrests in churches. The coalition, which includes about 15 Christian denominations, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Feb. 11 in the District of Columbia. It follows a similar lawsuit filed last month in Maryland by Quaker organizations.

After President Trump’s January inauguration, he rescinded a long-standing practice that kept the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration agents out of churches, schools, and hospitals. Religious groups say allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel into sanctuaries violates the First Amendment right to freely worship.

“Every human being, regardless of birthplace, is a child of God worthy of dignity, care, and love,” the groups stated in the lawsuit. “Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is thus a central precept of their faith practices.”

RELATED: SBC Pastor in Tennessee Faces Backlash for Immigration Comments

Immigration Arrests: Faith Groups Sue Trump Administration 

Immigration arrests and raids on churches “shatter the consecrated space of sanctuary, thwart communal worship, and undermine the social service outreach that is central to religious expression and spiritual practice for Plaintiffs’ congregations and members,” the suit stated.

Plaintiffs include major Christian denominations such as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Mennonite Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Church of the Brethren. Other plaintiffs include various councils and networks, as well as some Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The coalition argues that the Trump administration policy violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expressive association, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Pointing to a Supreme Court precedent, the lawsuit noted, “Defendants cannot show that immigration enforcement action at Plaintiffs’ places of worship serves a compelling state interest ‘that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms.’”

The lawsuit mentioned Rogelio Velasquez Cruz, a Honduran man who was in the process of seeking asylum in the United States. Tracked via his immigration ankle monitor, Cruz was arrested by ICE agents outside a Georgia church in late January.

Trump Administration Responds to Lawsuit

Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, defended the policy. “We are protecting our schools, places of worship, and Americans who attend,” she said, “by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and take safe haven there, because these criminals knew that under the previous administration that law enforcement couldn’t go inside.”

Matthew Lee Richards of Shawnee, Kansas, has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder. The former children’s pastor was accused of attacking his wife and children with a knife before setting his home on fire. 

The incident occurred in the early morning hours of Sept. 16, 2023. At the time, Richards was a pastor on the staff of Crossroads Christian Church. 

The victims included Richards’ wife and five children, four of whom were minors. His eldest child was 19 years old at the time. 

On the night of the crime, police received a 911 call about a house fire. A child also called 911 saying that their father was chasing them with a knife, and another caller told police she had been stabbed.

RELATED: Remains of Pastor’s Wife and Friend Identified; OK County GOP Chair Among ‘God’s Misfits’ Murder Defendants

When police and other emergency personnel arrived on the scene, they discovered three victims with stab wounds waiting outside for help, and smoke could be seen coming from inside the house. 

Firefighters soon extinguished the fire. Richards’ wife and two of his children were rushed to the hospital with critical injuries. His adult child and two other children were treated for minor injuries.

Richards himself was treated for smoke inhalation before being taken into custody for questioning. 

During questioning, Richards admitted to setting his home on fire and attempting to murder his family. He told investigators that his home was in foreclosure and that his family was unaware of their dire financial situation. He concluded that it would be better for the family to die than to “find out the truth.”

“I stabbed my family…I stabbed my kids, detective. I stabbed my wife,” Richards said during the interview. He also referred to himself as a “monster.”

RELATED: Retired Pastor Found Not Guilty of 1975 Murder of 8-Year-Old Girl

Richards was charged with five counts of attempted first-degree murder with premeditation and one count of aggravated arson with the risk of bodily harm. 

(RNS) — In late January, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein announced $30 million in grants to fund his state’s recovery from Hurricane Helene.

Included in that total was $6 million for two faith-based groups helping rebuild homes after the storm: $3 million for Habitat for Humanity, a housing nonprofit based on Christian principles; and $3 million for Baptists on Mission, an auxiliary of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

The Baptists plan to use their $3 million to buy building supplies to repair as many as 1,000 homes in the coming year, said Richard Brunson, executive director of Baptists on Mission.

Brunson told Religion News Service that accepting the grants made sense. “More than half the cost of building is labor, but with volunteers providing the labor we can double or even triple the number of families that we can get back in their homes,” Brunson said in accepting the grant. He also thanked Stein for a previous state grant of $5 million for disaster relief.

But the Baptists’ decision to accept the grant comes as faith-based groups such as Church World Service, Lutheran Services in America, Catholic Charities and World Relief have been under fire for accepting federal funds for helping immigrants and refugees. President Donald Trump’s political allies have called the grants “money laundering” and “illegal,” while some of the president’s religious allies accuse charities of selling their faith out to liberals.

The Center for Baptist Leadership, run by former Trump administration staffer William Wolfe, claimed that a ministry center run by Send Relief, a Southern Baptist ministry, violated the denomination’s official statement of faith by accepting government funds in a partnership with World Relief to assist refugees.

“The fact that Send Relief took federal grant funding from the Biden State Department, laundered through World Relief, is shocking,” the Center for Baptist Leadership claimed.

To back the claim, the center pointed to a section of the Baptist Faith & Message that opposed any taxes that would benefit churches — a reference to long-held Baptist opposition to state churches. “The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work,” the Baptist Faith & Message states. “The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends.”

The Trumpworld criticism is at odds with last week’s announcement that Paula White-Cain, a close adviser to Trump, would head the White House Faith Office, which promotes partnerships between faith groups and the government. The first such office began in the George W. Bush administration, which built on federal legislation called Charitable Choice that began to loosen restrictions on government grants to faith groups in the 1900s.

Trump’s recent executive order establishing the faith office said faith groups should be able “to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.”

Texas pastor Bart Barber, an expert on SBC polity, said Baptists have long opposed direct government funding of churches. Early American Baptists Roger Williams and Isaac Backus clashed with government leaders over state funding to establish a church in New England, while in Virginia, Baptist leader John Leland opposed a “general assessment bill” in the 1780s that would have taxed everyone and sent the money to the church of their choice.

“They thought it would make Baptists, Methodists, everybody happy,” said Barber. Instead, Baptists sank the bill.

The next edition of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible will change Genesis 3:16 from saying, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you,” back to the ESV’s 2001 translation, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” The ESV Translation Oversight Committee (TOC) announced this revision on Feb. 11, along with a number of other translation changes. 

“One notable revision in this update involves Genesis 3:16 and 4:7. The committee changed the ESV 2016 translation of the Hebrew preposition ‘el from ‘contrary to’ back to the original ESV 2001 translation ‘for,’ said the TOC, “which provides a more natural translation in continuity with the historic stream of formal equivalent English Bible translations (for example, the RSV, NASB, and NKJV), and which preserves the range of interpretive options in the Hebrew.”

“The interpretive options can now be seen in the alternative renderings provided in the footnotes: ‘Or to, or toward, or against,’” the update continued. “The conjunction ‘but’ has been changed to ‘and’ in Genesis 3:16 and 4:7 so as not to impose a contrast that is not explicit in the Hebrew text.” 

“As general editor for the ESV Bible, J. I. Packer (1926–2020) often reminded the committee,” said the TOC, “‘We respect readers when we pass along to them the job of interpretive work, not going beyond what the linguistic details require and not foreclosing the interpretive options.’”

English Standard Version Updates Genesis Phrasing on ‘Desire’

Genesis 3 describes Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God following the creation of the world, as well as the consequences with which God responds. After God curses the serpent, he says to the woman in Genesis 3:16 (NIV): “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This is the first place this Hebrew word for “desire,” teshuqah, is used in Scripture.

Interpreting the meaning of “your desire will be for your husband” is a matter of some debate and even controversy. Some have interpreted the desire of the woman in Genesis 3:16 as a strong sexual desire or an unhealthy emotional longing. 

However, one common interpretation of this passage held by many complementarians is that it describes a distortion of God’s intent that in marriage men are to lead and women are to submit to that leadership. 

In this interpretation, “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you,” means that women will try to control or dominate men but will ultimately be unsuccessful at subverting men’s leadership. 

To support this view, adherents point to Genesis 4:7, the second place this Hebrew word for desire is used in Scripture. In Genesis 4, the context is that God is warning Cain that sin wants to master him. The ESV translation of Genesis 4:6-7 currently says, “The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.’”

The only other place in Scripture this word for desire is used, besides the two examples in Genesis 3 and 4, is in Song of Solomon 7 in the context of a passionate description of romantic desire. Verse 10 says, “I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.”